Alan Shapiro

Alan Shapiro is the author of 13 books of poetry, two memoirs, a novel, a book of critical essays and two translations. His awards include the Kingsley Tufts Award, 2 NEAs, a Guggenheim and a Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Award. His newest book of poems, Life Pig, was published in 2016 along with a book of essays, That Self-Forgetful Perfectly Useless Concentration, both from University of Chicago Press. He is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina.

  • Sweet Nothings

    I whispered to your offered ear
  • Divorce Party Bonfire

    As in a secret rite
  • Family

    None of my friends called their grandmother Nana.
  • Geese

    More dream now than memory, though memory is all it is: after an early dinner, I’m dropping them off at their
  • Life Pig

    The hams the hocks the oddly delicate
  • Houses

    Under the cold light of the chintzy white crown chandelier, I’d lean one upright card again
  • Let Me Hear You

    I am the disappearing point of an inverted pyramid
  • ARCHIMEDES

    Bent over the plate, she studies
  • At the Cemetery

    Cloud cover from horizon to horizon
  • Childhood

    A bead of moisture swelling from black metal,
  • Hostile Takeover

    Cheeks puffed, she’s looking up at a horizontal
  • On Thumbing Through Smith’s Recognizable Patterns of Human Malformation

    And what of the bird-headed dwarfs