Steve Benson (born 1949 in

Princeton, New Jersey Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of whi ...

) is an

American poet The poets listed below were either born in the United States or else published much of their poetry while living in that country. A B C D E F G H I–J K L M N O P Q * George Quasha (born 1942) R S T U–V ...

and

performer The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Perfor ...

. He is often associated with the

Language poets The Language poets (or ''L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E'' poets, after the magazine of that name) are an avant-garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The poets included: Bernadette Mayer, Leslie Scal ...

. Benson lives in Downeast

Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and ...

where he is a licensed psychologist in private practice.

Life and work

Benson was born in 1949 in

. While in high school, Benson became interested in contemporary art, film and theater. During his college years, he was close to composer Humphrey Evans III, dramatist Evan McHale, actor

Drew Denbaum Drew Denbaum (born December 12, 1949 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American writer, actor, director, and educator, with credits in theater, film, and television. Early life and career Denbaum graduated cum laude with honors from The Lawrencevil ...

, novelist Paul Grimes, and poets

Kit Robinson Kit Robinson (born May 17, 1949) is an American poet, translator, writer and musician. An early member of the San Francisco Language poets circle, he has published 28 books of poetry. Life and work Born in Evanston, Illinois, Robinson graduated ...

Alan Bernheimer Alan Bernheimer (born 1948 in New York City) is an American poet, often associated with the San Francisco Language poets. Biography He attended Horace Mann School, and graduated in 1970 from Yale College, where he became friends with poets Steve ...

, Michael Waltuch, John Alter, and David Wilk among others. He studied writing with Susan Holahan,

Peter Schjeldahl Peter Charles Schjeldahl (; March 20, 1942 – October 21, 2022) was an American art critic, poet, and educator. He was noted for being the head art critic at ''The New Yorker'', having earlier written for ''The Village Voice'', ''ARTnews'', and ...

, and Ted Berrigan. In 1976, Benson moved to

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

with his friend, his then partner,

Carla Harryman Carla Harryman (born January 11, 1952) is an American poet, essayist, and playwright often associated with the Language poets. She teaches Creative Writing at Eastern Michigan University and serves on the MFA faculty of the Milton Avery School of t ...

. With Harryman and a number of other young poets including

Ron Silliman Ron Silliman (born August 5, 1946) is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. He is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman wr ...

Lyn Hejinian Lyn Hejinian (born May 17, 1941) is an American poet, essayist, translator and publisher. She is often associated with the Language poets and is known for her landmark work ''My Life'' (Sun & Moon, 1987, original version Burning Deck, 1980), a ...

Barrett Watten Barrett Watten (born October 3, 1948) is an American poet, editor, and educator often associated with the Language poets. He is a professor of English at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan where he has taught modernism and cultural studie ...

, Tom Mandel,

, Rae Armantrout,

Ted Pearson Ted Pearson (born 1948 in Palo Alto, California) is an American poet. He is often associated with the Language poets. Life and work Pearson was born in 1948 in Palo Alto, California. He began studying liturgical music in 1960, instrumental music ...

, Bob Perelman and others he was instrumental in creating

Language Poetry The Language poets (or ''L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E'' poets, after the magazine of that name) are an avant-garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The poets included: Bernadette Mayer, Leslie Scalap ...

, a new school of innovative writing that emerged in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, and other places during this period. Where much language poetry is seen as emphasizing linguistic features of the literary text, Benson became widely known and admired for his forays into questions of process, especially the process of improvisation, both in composition and in performance. Benson has a BA from

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

and an MFA from the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Franci ...

at Irvine, as well as a PhD in Psychology from the Wright Institute.

Selected publications

* ''As Is'' 1978, The Figures (Berkeley, CA) * ''The Busses'' 1981, Tuumba (Berkeley, CA) * ''Blindspots'' 1981, Whale Cloth (Cambridge, MA) * ''Dominance'' 1985, Coincidence Press (Oakland, CA) * ''Briarcombe Paragraphs'' 1985, Moving Letters (Paris, France) * ''Blue Book'' 1988, The Figures, (Great Barrington, MA) and Roof (New York, NY) * ''Reverse Order'' 1989, Potes & Poets (Elmwood CT) * ''Roaring Spring'' 1998, Zasterle (Tenefife, Canary Islands, Spain) * ''Open Clothes'' 2005, Atelos (Berkeley CA)

Selected links

Ron Silliman reviews
Benson'

The Body & Language Poetry
May 2007

with

Jackson Mac Low Jackson Mac Low (1922–2004) was an American poet, performance artist, composer and playwright, known to most readers of poetry as a practioneer of systematic chance operations and other non-intentional compositional methods in his work, which ...

at New Langton Arts, 1996
Kelly Writer's House
improvised performance 2003

improvised, oral revision of a written text that audience members received at their seats at a poetry reading at Canessa Park Gallery in San Francisco. Return is presented at the link as text, streaming audio, and a facsimile of the original typescript.

a sound recording of an extended oral improvisation, premised on development through variation, presented as a poetry reading at the Discrete series in Chicago in October 2003.
Careers in the Arts
a talk given in February 1978 at the Talk Series curated by Bob Perelman in San Francisco. In addition to a full audio recording of the event, there are links to a 2006 transcript, typescripts copied from handwritten notes used to prepare the talk, and examples of responses to a questionnaire sent out as research in advance of the talk. {{DEFAULTSORT:Benson, Steve Language poets 1949 births Living people Poets from New Jersey Writers from California Writers from Maine