Jack Marshall (author)

Jack Marshall (born 1936 in Brooklyn, United States) is an American poet and author born to an Iraqi father and a Syrian mother of Jewish heritage.^[1]

Upbringing

He grew up speaking Arabic in a Sephardic Jewish household, ruled by traditional Arab Jewish culture.^[2] He attended public school as well as a Hebrew school in his neighbourhood.

Career and accolades

He is the author of numerous books and poems which reflect and explore his cultural heritage. Two examples, From Baghdad to Brooklyn: Growing Up in a Jewish-Arabic Family in Midcentury America, along with Millennium Fever:Poems, proved very successful. He was awarded the PEN West Award and was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, for From Baghdad to Brooklyn.^[3] He is the recipient of two Bay Area Book Reviewers Awards. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008.

Personal life

Jack discovered his love for literature at the New York Public Library, where he used to attend night classes in poetry with poets Robert Lowell and Stanley Kunitz.^[4] He cites History, Geography and Literature as the subjects he is interested in.

He has lived in El Cerrito, California since the early 2000s.^[5]

Works

• The Darkest Continent, For Now Press, (1967)
• Bearings, Harper & Row, (1970)
• Floats, Cedar Creek Press, (1971).
• Bits of Thirst, Blue Wind Press, (1976)
• Arriving on the Playing Fields of Paradise, Jazz Press, (1983)
• Arabian Nights, Coffee House Press, (1987)
• Sesame, Coffee House Press, (1993)
• Millennium Fever, Coffee House Press, (1996)
• Chaos Comics, Pennywhistle Press, (1994)
• Gorgeous Chaos; New & Selected Poems, Coffee House Press, (2002)
• From Baghdad to Brooklyn Coffee House Press, (October 1, 2005) ISBN 978-1-56689-174-5

References

External links

• Sesame, review.

Videos

• From Baghdad to Brooklyn