Peter Glassgold

Peter Glassgold’s most recent books are Anarchy! An Anthology of Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth (Counterpoint, 2012) and the experimental translation Hwæt! A Little Old English Anthology of American Modernist Poetry (Green Integer, 2012), both new and enlarged editions of works published respectively in 1985 and 2001. Forthcoming from New Directions is The Collected Poems of James Laughlin 1935–1997, which he has edited, annotated, and introduced. His previous books include: James Laughlin’s Byways (New Directions, 2005), the posthumous verse memoir by New Directions’ founder, which he also edited, annotated, and introduced; Living Space: Poems of the Dutch Fiftiers (Green Integer, 2005), an expanded new edition, with Douglas Messerli, of the landmark anthology first published in 1979; the novel The Angel Max (Harcourt Brace, 1998); a translation (with Peter Constantine) of Hans Deichmann’s Objects: A Chronicle of Subversion in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy; a translation (with André Lefevere) of the 1907 Flemish classic The Flaxfield (Sun & Moon, 1989), a novel by Stijn Streuvels; and another experiment in translation, Boethius: The Poems from On the Consolation of Philosophy, Translated Out of the Original Latin into Diverse Historical Englishings Diligently Collaged (Sun & Moon, 1994).

He was also the joint editor, with the late James Laughlin, of thirty-one volumes of the avant-garde anthologies series, New Directions in Prose and Poetry. His short fiction, poetry, translations, essays, and critical reviews have appeared in such publications as American Poetry, Columbia, Contact II, the Forward, Icarus (U.K.), The McGraw-Hill Book of Poetry, Modern Poetry in Translation, The Nation, New Directions in Prose & Poetry, The New Leader, North Dakota Quarterly, Paideuma, Plus 22 (N.Y./Bucharest), The Pomegranate Series, Publishers Weekly, Translation Review, and Washington Review.

Peter was born and raised in New York City and now lives in upstate New York. He is a graduate of Columbia College, and as an undergraduate he was an editor and writer for the college humor magazine, The Jester. He has been an editor at The New Leader magazine and of The New-York Historical Society Quarterly. From 1970 to 2005, he was an editor at the literary publishing house New Directions, serving as editor in chief and later as editor at large. He was a member of the Executive Board of PEN American Center from 1982 to 1996 and for ten years chaired that organization’s Translation Committee. He also sat on the Professional Advisory Board of the Center for Research in Translation at SUNY–Binghamton and on the National Board of The Translation Center, Columbia University. In addition, he has taught and lectured at SUNY–Binghamton, Colgate University, Jersey State College, New York University, and Pace University and has spoken on literary translation before gatherings of the Modern Language Association, the American Literary Translation Association, and the American Translators Association.