Whether he’s writing poetry or songs, teaching or editing, David Lehman has been an influential man in the literary world. Author of six books of poetry, editor of a new edition of “The Oxford Book of American Poetry” and the head of the poetry department of the New School’s graduate writing program in New York, Lehman wears many different hats. Thursday night he will put on his poet hat for a reading at the Hammer Museum.
Lehman will be sharing poems from his upcoming book, “Yeshiva Boys,” a frank, autobiographical collection about his upbringing in Jewish day school.
In an interview with the Daily Bruin’s Jennifer Bastien, Lehman shares experiences from all of his different professions, which share a common thread visible in Lehman’s love for and knowledge of poetry.
Daily Bruin: Which poems do you plan to read at the Hammer?
David Lehman: Well, this is the first time I am reading at the Hammer Musuem since about 2004, so I might read poems I’ve written since then. I have a new book coming out in the fall and probably (will) try out some of those poems.
DB: How are your new poems different from other poems you have written?
DL: Some of my new poems are frankly more autobiographical than work I’ve done before. The greater part of this book is about my upbringing. The fact is that I am the son of Jewish refugees and my grandparents perished in the Holocaust. I was brought up in the Yeshiva, which is a Jewish day school. So I talk about these things, the Holocaust and history of my own childhood and my own past in Europe and present in America.
DB: Is it difficult to write more autobiographical work?
DL: Well, I’ve written about other aspects of my autobiography in the past, but this part I began writing in 1988, and it took me 20 years to finish the title poem of this book, which is called “Yeshiva Boys.” I had worked on it for a couple of years and then I would come back to it, and it was 2005 or 2006 when I finally figured it out; it’s a 12-part poem and it’s very complicated.
DB: What do you hope people gain from attending your reading at the Hammer?
DL: Well, there are different parts of the audience. There are those in the audience that follow poetry in general and even have a specific interest in me and my poetry, and those people I think will be interested in seeing what kind of work I have been coming up (with). They’ll be curious to know whether the new poems are different in their theme or in their approach.
I have a reputation for being witty and for being able to make people laugh, and I wonder if people will look forward to that.
DB: You also recently edited a book of American poetry. What was that like?
DL: I edited “The Oxford Book of American Poetry”; it’s a one-volume comprehensive anthology devoted to American poetry from its origins, from its first poets Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor in the 17th century up to the present. This gave me the opportunity to reread American poetry, as much of it as I could possibly do; with a staff of assistants, it took five years, and I picked 210 poets. The last time there was an Oxford book there were only 78 poets represented, so this is a big expansion of the canon and I think it’s a real achievement.
DB: Have you always wanted to be a poet?
DL: I realized I wanted to be a writer in my first year of college. Almost immediately upon arriving at college, I realized that this was what I wanted to do.
DB: And now you do some teaching as well?
DL: I taught at NYU for 11 years a course called “Great Poems” and it was strictly for first-year students. It was really wonderful because it gives you a chance to get in touch with the younger generation and to reach people at just that moment when they are entering college, when they are most perceptive and vulnerable. It’s a great gift you can give them if you can instill in them a love of poetry and show them from a poet’s point of view how to read poetry. Not just analyzing things for a term paper, but seeing what a poet sees in the language. And now I run the poetry part of the graduate writing program at the New School in New York.
DB: What is most challenging for you about writing poetry?
DL: The most challenging part for me is to have the determination to continue to write and to do all the reading necessary to keep you in good form as a writer even when there may be a lot of doubt in your mind about what you’re doing, and even when there is a lack of substantial material reward or chance of public recognition.
DB: Do you prefer poetry to prose?
DL: I like writing in both forms. In addition to writing my books of poetry ““ I think there are about eight of them ““ I’ve also written about five or six nonfiction books, and I’m finishing one right now. It’s about the American songbooks, great jazz standards that were written by the Gershwin brothers, Rodgers and Hart, Jerome Kern. A lot of those songs that maybe you know by heart, but just didn’t know who wrote them, and they were written by these great songwriters.
DB: Do you find writing about that to be very different from your poetry?
DL: It has something in common with poetry because those songs also have lyrics and it’s always an interesting question how to distinguish song lyrics from poetry; are they two different things or two types of the same thing? For example, Bob Dylan. Would you say that Bob Dylan is a songwriter or a poet? I think it’s a very good question.