Daniel Mark Epstein on "Constellations"

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Daniel Mark Epstein’s poetry has been in the public eye for nearly sixty years, since the magazine publication of the poems in his groundbreaking first book, No Vacancies in Hell (1973). Critics praise the erotic and spiritual lyricism of his poetry, as well as its power in capturing crucial moments of American history in dramatic monologues, including prize-winning portraits of a yellow fever epidemic and Henry Adams’s tragic marriage.

Of The Traveler’s Calendar (2002), Booklist commented, “Biographies of Nat King Cole and Edna St. Vincent Millay have won Epstein greater renown, but his best writing is his mythically and historically haunted poetry.” The critic Adam Kirsch called Dawn to Twilight (2015), a selection of Epstein’s lyric poems, “a testament to the achievement of a major American poet.”

Constellations collects, for the first time, the nine books of poems published by a modern master of lyric, dramatic, and narrative poetry. A stirring selection of new work includes the sonnet sequence “Cruel April: Poems from the Pandemic,” which inspired a 2020 short film featuring Tyne Daly.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Daniel Mark Epstein is an award-winning poet, biographer, and dramatist whose works include Lincoln and Whitman, Sister Aimee, and the international best-seller The Ballad of Bob Dylan. Born in Washington, D.C. in 1948, he was educated at Kenyon College. In the 1970s his poetry first appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New Republic. His first volume of poems was published by Liveright in 1973. His plays appeared soon thereafter in regional theater and Off-Broadway, and in 1978 he received the Prix de Rome for his poetry and dramatic works.

In the 1980s he wrote his first biography, Sister Aimee: The Life of Aimee Semple McPherson, now in its fourth printing. His biography Nat King Cole was a 1999 New York Times Notable Book, reviewed on the cover of the NYT Book Review, and his biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay was a New York Public Library Honoree, “Books to Remember” for 2001. The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage, was named one of the Best Books of 2008 by both The Wall Street Journal and The Chicago Sun-Times. His holiday stories Star of Wonder and The Two Menorahs have become mainstays on National Public Radio.

His honors include a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1974, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1984, and an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2006. In April of 2020, he received an Honorary Doctor of Letters Degree from his alma mater.