Lloyd Schwartz

Lloyd Schwartz Poems

The black water.
Lights dotting the entire perimeter.
Their shaky reflections.
...

yes
no
...

Every October it becomes important, no, necessary
to see the leaves turning, to be surrounded by leaves turning;
...

I'm working on a poem that's so true,
I can't show it to anyone.
...

In today's paper, a story about our high school
drama teacher evicted from his Carnegie Hall
...

Lloyd Schwartz Biography

Lloyd Schwartz (born November 29, 1941) is an American poet who is Frederick S. Troy, professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is also classical music editor of The Boston Phoenix and a regular commentator for NPR's Fresh Air. Lloyd Schwartz was born in Brooklyn, New York, graduated from Queens College in 1962 and earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1976. Schwartz's books of poetry include Cairo Traffic (University of Chicago Press, 2000) and the chapbook Greatest Hits 1973-2000 (Pudding House Press, 2003), which were preceded by Goodnight, Gracie (1992) and These People (1981). He co-edited the collection Elizabeth Bishop and Her Art (University of Michigan Press, 1983). In 1990, he adapted These People for the Poets' Theatre in a production called These People: Voices for the Stage, which he also directed. Schwartz was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1994 for his work with The Boston Phoenix. Schwartz served as co-editor of an edition of the collected works of Elizabeth Bishop for the Library of America, entitled Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters (2008) and edited the centennial edition of Elizabeth Bishop's Prose for Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2011). His poems, articles, and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Agni, The Pushcart Prize, and The Best American Poetry. Between 1968 and 1982 he worked as an actor in the Harvard Dramatic Club, HARPO, The Pooh Players, Poly-Arts, and the NPR series The Spider's Web, playing such roles as Scrooge (A Christmas Carol), the Mock Turtle (Alice in Wonderland), Froth (Measure for Measure), Trofimov (The Cherry Orchard), Zeal-of-the-Land Busy (Bartholomew Fair), The Worm (In the Jungle of Cities), Krapp (Krapp's Last Tape), the Disciple John (Jesus: A Passion Play for Cambridge), and played a leading role in Russell Merritt's short satirical film The Drones Must Die. He also directed two operas, Ravel's L'Heure Espagnol (Boston Summer Opera Theatre) and Stravinsky's Mavra (New England Chamber Opera Group), 1972.)

The Best Poem Of Lloyd Schwartz

Nostalgia (The Lake At Night)

The black water.
Lights dotting the entire perimeter.
Their shaky reflections.
The dark tree line.
The plap-plapping of water around the pier.
Creaking boats.
The creaking pier.
Voices in conversation, in discussion—two men, adults—serious inflections
(the words themselves just out of reach).
A rusty screen-door spring, then the door swinging shut.
Footsteps on a porch, the scrape of a wooden chair.
Footsteps shuffling through sand, animated youthful voices (how many?)— distinct, disappearing.
A sudden guffaw; some giggles; a woman's—no, a young girl's—sarcastic reply; someone's assertion; a high-pitched male cackle.
Somewhere else a child laughing.
Bug-zappers.
Tires whirring along a pavement... not stopping ... receding.
Shadows from passing headlights.
A cat's eyes caught in a headlight.
No moon.
Connect-the-dot constellations filling the black sky—the ladle of the Big Dipper not quite directly overhead.
The radio tower across the lake, signaling.
Muffled quacking near the shore; a frog belching; crickets, cicadas, katydids, etc.—their relentless sexual messages.
A sudden gust of wind.
Branches brushing against each other—pine, beech.
A fiberglass hull tapping against the dock.
A sudden chill.
The smell of smoke, woodstove fires.
A light going out.
A dog barking; then more barking from another part of the lake.
A burst of quiet laughter.
Someone in the distance calling someone too loud.
Steps on a creaking porch.
A screen-door spring, the door banging shut.
Another light going out (you must have just undressed for bed).
My bare feet on the splintery pier turning away from the water.

Lloyd Schwartz Comments

Johnathan Pendleton 26 April 2019

I think you have amazing poems even if they are just some words on a page words speak just as loud as actions

1 1 Reply
William Shakespeare 19 April 2019

Gee, Lloyd, You call that drivel you write " poetry" ? It's nothing more than sentences of unoriginal thought glued together with a paste of water and flour and hung out to dry on a line called " Poem" .

1 2 Reply

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