David Bergman (poet)

by George J. Dance

David Bergman. Courtesy Ohio State University Press.

David Bergman (born 1950) is an American poet and academic.

Life

Bergman was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and grew up in New York City. At age 3 1/2, he became partially paralyzed in an accident and was bedridden for 2 years, during which time he began writing. "As long as I can remember I wanted to be a writer," he has said.

He earned a B.A. from Kenyon College, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.

In 1974 he began teaching at Towson University in Towson, Maryland, where he is a professor of English.

His poetry has appeared in the Kenyon Review, New Criterion, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Poetry, and Raritan.

He is openly gay and Jewish. At Towson, he directed the program in lesbian and gay studies. He also served as an editor for the “Living Out: Gay & lesbian autobiography” series published by the University of Wisconsin Press.

Recognition

He received the George Elliston Poetry Prize for his 1985 collection, Cracking the Code.

His 1991 non-fiction book, Gaiety Transformed: Gay self-representation in American literature, was cited as an Outstanding Book of the Year by both Choice and the Gustavus Myers Center for Human Rights.

With Karl Woelz, he won a Lambda Book Award for editing Men on Men 2000.

Publications

Poetry

• The Care and Treatment of Pain: Poems. Lawrence, KS: Kairos Editions, 1994.
• Cracking the Code, Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1985.
• Heroic Measures Coluumbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1998

Non-fiction

• Gaiety Transformed: Gay self-representation in American literature. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.
• Camp Grounds: Style and homosexuality. Amherst : University of Massachusets Press, 1993.
• The Violet Hour: The Violet Quill and the making of gay culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
• The Poetry of Disturbance: The discomforts of postwar American poetry. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 2015.

Translated

• Jean Sénac, Selected Poems (translated with Katia Sainson). Riverdale-on-Hudson, NY: Sheep Meadow Press, 2010.

Edited

• Heath Guide to Literature (edited with Daniel Mark Epstein). Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1984, 1987, 1992.
• John Ashbery, Reported Sightings: Art chronicles, 1957-1987. New York: Knopf, 1989; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.
• Edmund White, The Burning Library: Essays. New York: Knopf, 1994.
• The Violet Quill Reader: The emergence of gay literature after Stonewall. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, 1997; New York: InsightOut Books, 2001.
• Gay American Autobiography: Writings from Whitman to Sedaris. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009.

Men on Men

• Men on Men 5: Best new gay fiction. New York: Plume, 1994.
• Men on Men 6: Best new gay fiction. New York: Plume, 1996.
• Men on Men 7: Best new gay fiction. New York: Plume, 1998.
• Men on Men 2000: Best new gay fiction for the millennium (edited with Karl Woelz). New York: Plume, 2000; New York: Penguin, 2000.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• LGBT poets
• List of U.S. poets

External links

Poems

• David Bergman at the Poetry Foundation

Prose

• "The Condition of Essex Hemphill"
• David Bergman at the Good Men Project

Books

• David Bergman at Amazon.com

About

• "Dr. David Bergman's star shines in the gay literary world," Baltimore Sun

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