A.M. Juster



A.M. Juster is the pen name of  Michael James Astrue (born 1956). Astrue is an American lawyer, who became Commissioner of the Social Security Administration in 2007. He is also, as Juster, a noted American poet and literary critic.

Life and career
After his secondary education at The Roxbury Latin School, Astrue earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University, where he served as President of the Yale Political Union, and a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School.

Astrue, who previously served in the Social Security Administration as Counselor to the Commissioner, served in the US Department of Health and Human Services as General Counsel and as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Leigislation. He also served as Associate Counsel to the President of the United States at the White House in the Reagan and George Bush Sr administrations. In the private sector, he practiced law and was as a senior executive at several biotechnology companies.

Astrue was nominated as Commissioner of the Social Security Administration by President George W. Bush on September 14, 2006 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on February 2, 2007. He was sworn in on February 12, 2007 to serve a six-year term.

Writing
In the June/July 2010 issue of First Things magazine, Astrue was profiled by poet Paul Mariani, who revealed him as the person behind the pseudonym "A.M. Juster" (an anagram of his given name), the poet and translator associated with New Formalism.

As Juster, Astrue has published a book of Petrarch translations, a translation of The Satires of Horace (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), Longing for Laura (Birch Brook Press, 2001), and a book of original poetry, The Secret Language of Women (University of Evansville 2003). Juster was also the first moderator of Eratosphere, the largest on-line site for formal poetry.

Recognition

 * Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award three times, most recently in 2008.
 * 2002 Richard Wilbur Award, for The Secret Language of Women selected by Rachel Hadas

Publications

 * The Secret Language of Women (2002)
 * Longing for Laura, Petrarch (2002)
 * Longing for Laura, Petrarch (2002)