David L. Fisher (poet)

David L. Fisher
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Born	David Lincoln Fisher (1942-03-16)March 16, 1942 North Carolina, U.S.
Died	February 2, 2015(2015-02-02) (aged 72) Sacramento, California, U.S.
Resting place	Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary Cemetery, Wake Forest, North Carolina, U.S.
Occupation	Poet Translator Teacher
Education	High school, Rolesville, North Carolina; Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, Duke University
Notable awards	Two National Endowment fellowships; recipient with Stella Monday of the first annual William Carlos Williams Award (for best book of poetry published by small, non-profit, or university press) for Teachings (Back Roads Books, 1977, 1978); winner of the first William Meredith Award for Poetry 2012 for I Hear Always the Dogs on the Hospital Roof

David Lincoln Fisher; 16 March 1942 – 2 February 2015) was an American, award-winning poet and translator. Fisher was awarded two National Endowment fellowships,. With Stella Monday, he was awarded the first annual William Carlos Williams Award (for best book of poetry published by small, non-profit, or university press) for Teachings (Back Roads Books, 1977, 1978). He is the winner of the first William Meredith Award for Poetry 2012 for I Hear Always the Dogs on the Hospital Roof featuring photographs by Stella Monday, and artwork by George Hitchcock He was published frequently in Kayak and other literary magazines. Fisher remained a relatively unknown outsider in the poetry world due to a lifelong battle with mental illness.

Life and work

Life and studies

Fisher graduated from Duke University. He claimed to have served in the Norwegian Merchant Marines.

He studied at the University of Tübingen in Tübingen, Germany and the Sorbonne in Paris, and completed the work for his doctorate from Yale. He worked as a professor in several colleges, including Saint Mary's College of California in Maraga, CA, and manned suicide prevention hotlines.

David's brother is Hugh Robert Fisher. David married twice and divorced twice. He married Amanda (Mandy) Hawes on 26 August 1967.; they divorced in September 1972. His second marriage was to Eulalia Gutierrez. He had a long-term relationship with Marion Elsa Kessler. He fathered a child with Thelma Genevieve Seto, Hayden Seto Fisher.

Fisher died at the age of 72 in Sacramento, California and was buried at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary Cemetery, Wake Forest, North Carolina, U.S.

Translation

Fisher was fluent in and translated poetry from several languages. Many of his published poems are translations from French, Italian, Spanish, or German. In Soup No. 3, accompanying his poem "Where the Last Huts Are," Fisher wrote: "Good poets borrow, great poets steal. I rest by reading poems in other languages, and rorschach my way into phrasings which I dimly and dreamily understand. When, however, I find a poem which, it seems to me, could not be bettered in any way, and which in its entirety is of living importance, I often seek to translate. As a translator, I am a total conservative; I admire Ben Belitt's translations, but I would never 'better' Neruda or Lorca as he does, so that for example, Neruda's 'confusion of vegetables' becomes 'a bedlam of vegetables,' and in which meaning and number and order freely dissolve. My versions are as literal as I can get them."

Critical appraisals

Josephine Miles wrote: "One great thing about David Fisher's poems—you must read them. Another great thing is—then you must read them again. Of few poets can this be said."

W. S. Merwin wrote: "I've been reading and re-reading Teachings with pleasure, fascination, and admiration. And now The Book of Madness—clearly more penetrating, more troubling, and at once more capsized and more masterful."

William Meredith wrote of I Hear Always the Dogs on the Hospital Roof: “The poems are direct and beautiful, and only afterwards terrifying: you find you have confronted things you might not have had the heart to confront in yourself and the world without this strong and gentle talent to invite you.”

George Oppen wrote: "' . . . you will find me, love, in the streets'—this is the note and the scale and the image of those moving poems: the image that may save us who are now so profoundly endangered. For God's sake, read these poems."

Paul Mariah, co-founder of Manroot Books, wrote: "To David, his vocabulary was multilingual.... We can be arrested on almost every page of David's work; for his style, content, form. He has established himself as a ranking postmodernist surrealist poet."

Bibliography

• Requiem for Huertebise: Homage to Jean Cocteau (South San Francisco, CA: ManRoot Books, 1974), ASIN B003NXUYGG
• The Most Wanted Man in America with John William Clouser (Stein and Day, 1975), ISBN 978-0812817713
• The Book of Madness: Poems (Gallimaufry, 1975; Apple-Wood Press, 1980), ISBN 978-0918222169
• Teachings (Cotati, CA: Back Roads Books, and Berkeley: Ross Books, 1978), ISBN 0-918510-01-5
• The Complete Poems of Jean Genet, introduced by David Fisher and Paul Mariah, translated by Gerald Fabian, David Fisher, Paul Mariah, Frank O'Hara, Chet Roaman, Nanos Valaoritis, and Guy Wernham (South San Francisco: Man Root, 1981), ASIN B0041WVP8Y
• Included in 19 New American Poets of the Golden Gate, Philip Dow, ed. (NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), ISBN 978-0156361019
• Appogiatures / Grace Notes - Translations of Jean Cocteau by David Fisher, Paul Mariah, and Chet Roaman, with Joseph Lomax (Boyes Hot Springs, CA: ManRoot Press, 1988), ASIN B001CJZGPC
• Homage to Pablo Neruda (Happy Rock Publishers, 1994), ASIN B001FYM4X6
• I Hear Always the Dogs on the Hospital Roof (New London, CT: Little Red Tree Publishing, LLC, 2012), ISBN 978-1935656173

Literary magazines

• "The Poet Salutes His Malady, by Jean Cocteau," trans. David Fisher, Manroot, No. 9 (Fall 1973)
• "the seahorse," "the house," "the birds of arles," "a junkie with a flute in the rain," Kayak 36, 1974, pp.8-12
• "Requiem for Heurtebise: Homage to Jean Cocteau," Manroot, No. 10 (Oct., 1974), pp.192-196
• "The Teacher," Paris Review, issue 61, Spring 1975
• "Amanda's Music" and "Why Do You Want to Suffer Less?" Back Roads, issue 7, 1975, pp.23,46
• "Le Crytoscope" and "1er Divertissement" by Jean Cocteau translated from the French," Back Roads, issue 8, 1976, pp.28,79
• "Contributors' Notes," Poetry Northwest, 1975, p.40
• "7 madness poems: Torment, The Straitjacket, Hallucinations, For Thai Tran, Your Hair Is Wet with the Fog, Electroshock, and Lost," Kayak 40, 1975, pp.3-6
• "'Come In,' she said, 'Don't Smoke,'" Center, No. 8 (Nov., 1975), p.56
• "The Emergency Room," City Miner, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Summer 1976), p.44
• "the keepsake corporation," Kayak 41 1977, p.44
• [Contributor's Note], Center, No. 10 (Jul., 1977), p.7
• "death of the professor," Kayak 47, 1978, p.42
• "The Deaf Man," Mississippi Review, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1978), p.80
• "Faulkner," Mississippi Review, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1978), pp.18-19
• "harvest poem," "the pastor speaks out," Kayak 51, 1979, pp.18-19
• "the deaf man" and "the amorous poet," Kayak 52, 1979, pp.42-43, pp.42-43
• "Deep Silence," Mississippi Review Vol. 8, No. 1/2 (Winter/Spring, 1979), p.95
• "The Land of Cockaigne (after Breughel)," The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Winter, 1979), p.800
• "Homer," The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Fall, 1980), p.502
• "death of rimbaud," Kayak 57, 1981, p.13
• "Faulkner" and "Stalingrad," Soup, No. 2 (Jan., 1981), p.50
• "the virgin of guadalupe," "The Tailor of Warsaw," "An Old Man," Kayak 58, 1982, pp.33-35
• "Dear George & Marjorie," correspondence, Kayak 66, 1982, p.53
• "The Old Man" and "Natty Old Man with a Sweater," Ironwood, Vol. 10, No. 1 (19) (Apr., 1982), pp.78-79
• "the scotchman in the fillmore," Kayak 62, 1983, p.65
• "Where the Last Huts Are," Soup, No. 3 (Jan., 1983), p.39
• "Snow," Ironwood, Vol. 12, No. 2 (24) (Oct., 1984), pp.163-165
• "The House," Carl[e]ton Miscellany
• "Yellow Sky, Blue Earth," Choice
• "A Language of Stone," Poetry Flash

From The Book of Madness:

• ManRoot
• Gallimaufry
• Hudson Review
• Harper's
• New Letter
• The Wisconsin Review

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