David R. Slavitt

1935 –

David R. Slavitt was born in White Plains, New York, in 1935, and educated at Andover, Yale, and Columbia University. A poet, translator, novelist, critic, and journalist, he is the author of more than seventy works of fiction, poetry, and poetry and drama in translation. He is also coeditor of the Johns Hopkins Complete Roman Drama in Translation series and the Penn Greek Drama Series. His most recent collections of original poetry are Falling from Silence: Poems (Louisiana State University Press, 2001) and PS3569.L3 (1998). His latest translations are Sonnets of Love and Death by Jean de Sponde (Northwestern University Press, 2001), The Latin Odes of Jean Dorat (2000), The Book of the Twelve Prophets (1999), Voyage of the Argo: The Argonautica of Gaius Valerius Flaccus (1999), Solomon Ibn Gabirol's A Crown for the King (1998), Joao Pinto Delgado's Poem of Queen Esther (1998), and Ausonius: Three Amusements (1998). David Slavitt's other recent works include The Book of Lamentations: A Meditation and Translation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001) and Get Thee to a Nunnery: A Pair of Shakespearean Divertimentos (1999). His honors include a Pennsylvania Council on Arts award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in translation, an award in literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and a Rockefeller Foundation Artist's Residence. He lives in Philadelphia and is on the faculties of Bennington and Yale.