Deborah Landau (born 1973) is an American poet, essayist, and critic. Landau's "taut, elegant, highly controlled constructions" have been described as "confessional and direct, like Sylvia Plath and

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

." Her

meditation Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally cal ...

s upon yearning and selfhood are said to remind us "of the nuanced beauty of language."

Jennifer Michael Hecht Jennifer Michael Hecht (born November 23, 1965) is a teacher, author, poet, historian, and philosopher. She was an associate professor of history at Nassau Community College (1994-2007) and most recently taught at The New School in New York Cit ...

has praised her poems as "Terrificly smart, witty, and slightly terrifying." Nick DePascal asserts that Landau's work "accurately matches form to content" and "leads the reader down a particular path through style as much as the meaning of the actual words on the page...." ''

Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of B ...

'' has described her work as "haunting," "stunning," "dark, urgent, sexy, deeply sad, and, above all, powerful." Landau's poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in ''

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Philip ...

'', ''

The New York Review of Books ''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...

'', ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'', '' The Kenyon Review'', ''

American Poetry Review ''The American Poetry Review'' (''APR'') is an American poetry magazine printed every other month on tabloid-sized newsprint. It was founded in 1972 by Stephen Berg and Stephen Parker in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The magazine's editor is Elizab ...

'', ''The Best American Poetry,'' ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...

'',''The Best American Erotic Poems'', ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'', ''

Poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

'', ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', and ''

'', among other publications. Landau grew up in

Ann Arbor, Michigan Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County, Michigan, Washtenaw County. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851. It is the principal city of the Ann Arbor ...

, graduated with distinction from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, where she was elected to

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal a ...

, received a master's degree in English from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

and a Ph.D. from

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

, where she was a

Jacob K. Javits Jacob Koppel Javits ( ; May 18, 1904 – March 7, 1986) was an American lawyer and politician. During his time in politics, he represented the state of New York in both houses of the United States Congress. A member of the Republican Party, he a ...

Fellow in English and

American Literature American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition thus is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but also inc ...

. In 2016 she was awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

. Landau's most recent books are ''Soft Targets'' (2019) and ''The Uses of the Body'', which was published in 2015 by

Copper Canyon Press Copper Canyon Press is an independent, non-profit small press, founded in 1972 specializing exclusively in the publication of poetry. It is located in Port Townsend, Washington. Copper Canyon Press publishes new collections of poetry by both popu ...

and was a Lannan Literary Selection. Deborah Landau is currently a professor and director of the Creative Writing Program at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

Bibliography

* ''Orchidelirium,''

Anhinga Press Anhinga Press is an American, independent, literary press located in Tallahassee, Fla. The press began in 1972 as an outgrowth of the Apalachee Poetry Center, a non-profit organization promoting the reading and understanding of poetry. In 1976, f ...

, 2003 (winner of the Anhinga Prize for Poetry) * ''The Last Usable Hour,'' Copper Canyon Press, 2011. * ''The Uses of the Body,''

, 2015. * ''Soft Targets,''

, 2019. (winner of the 2019 Believer Book Award) * ''Skeletons,''

, forthcoming April 2023.

References

External links

Deborah Landau websiteDeborah Landau LitHub profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Landau, Deborah American poets American women poets Stanford University alumni Brown University alumni Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni New York University faculty Living people American essayists American women essayists 1973 births Writers from Ann Arbor, Michigan American women academics 21st-century American women