Lloyd Schwartz


Lloyd Schwartz is an American poet, and the Frederick S. Troy Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He was the classical music editor of The Boston Phoenix, a publication that is now defunct. He is now Senior Music Editor at and , and a regular commentator for NPR's Fresh Air.

Biography

Lloyd Schwartz was born in Brooklyn, New York, graduated from Queens College in 1962 and earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1976.
Schwartz's books of poetry include Cairo Traffic and the chapbook Greatest Hits 1973-2000, which were preceded by Goodnight, Gracie and These People. He co-edited the collection Elizabeth Bishop and Her Art. In 1990, he adapted These People for the Poets' Theatre in a production called These People: Voices for the Stage, which he also directed.
Schwartz was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1994 for his work with The Boston Phoenix.
Schwartz served as co-editor of an edition of the collected works of Elizabeth Bishop for the Library of America, entitled Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters and edited the centennial edition of Elizabeth Bishop's Prose for Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
His poems, articles, and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Agni, The Pushcart Prize, The Best American Poetry, and The Best of the Best American Poetry. Between 1968 and 1982 he worked as an actor in the Harvard Dramatic Club, HARPO, The Pooh Players, Poly-Arts, and the NPR series The Spider's Web, playing such roles as Scrooge, the Mock Turtle, Froth, Trofimov, Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, The Worm, Krapp, the Disciple John, and played a leading role in Russell Merritt's short satirical film The Drones Must Die. He also directed two operas, Ravel's L'Heure Espagnole and Stravinsky's Mavra, 1972. He has appeared in The Poets' Theatre performances of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood and The Word Exchange.