David Shapiro – författare

Named after Alban Berg's famed violin concerto, In Memory of an Angel is the first full-length collection in fifteen years from New York School maestro David Shapiro. Packed with erudition, pursuing themes of art history, architecture, literature, and Jewish identity, the poems of In Memory of an Angel achieve a rare combination of lyrical abstraction and postmodern self-referentiality, rendered with Shapiro's understated virtuosity. Yet there's a strong current of love poetry flowing through these avant-garde ruminations, as well as reminiscences of childhood and reflections on fatherhood. A surrealistic violation of the boundary between the real and the dream pervades In Memory of an Angel. Shapiro's poems take a bewildering variety of forms, many of his own invention, even as he is equally at home in the quotidian and anecdotal. Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, Jasper Johns, Frank O'Hara—these are only some of the characters peopling Shapiro's New York, a landscape both sophisticated and haunted by memory.

The author of 10 previous books of poems, as well as monographs on John Ashbery, Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, and Mondrian, David Shapiro is a member of the second generation of New York School poets. A child prodigy on the violin, he went on to become a literary and art critic and teaches at Patterson College and Cooper Union. He holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University and has received awards from the Merrill Foundation, the NEA, the NEH, and the Graham Foundation. He lives in Riverdale, the Bronx, NYC.

Praise for In Memory of an Angel:

"A Taoist, a Kabbalist, and a Dadaist walk into a bar. They discover that the bar is really David Shapiro’s new book of poems, where they can drink 'tears from sleeping birds' and relax 'in/ the soft hands/ of the gods.' In Memory of an Angel literally drenches the reader in moments of wonder. Shapiro’s gift is unique. He possesses a childlike, not innocence, but sophistication. His playful erudition draws in everyone from Andy Warhol, to Kenneth Koch, to John Dewey—and it welcomes you as well, in its democratic embrace."—Elaine Equi

"David Shapiro published his first book, January: A Book of Poems, while still a teenager. Since then, now for over fifty years, he has remained one of our very finest American poets. His mind is illuminated and his poems luminous. In Memory of an Angel is a strikingly beautiful and invaluable selection of his work!"—Jim Jarmusch

"It's always a deep pleasure when David Shapiro has a new book, he never ceases to astonish, he has built a singular, hyper-lyrical, always brilliant poetry. In Memory of an Angel is filled with spells and charms and spinning language, elegy, and wild proclamations; as he writes: “I invented the new movement / without photographs like / the affair of the whole being / as it was said ferocious and / intimate and I invent it / to last." And so it will."—Peter Gizzi

"In Memory of an Angel mesmerizes with virtuosic greatness; a deft masterwork by a poet’s poet whose sui generis genius has for five decades defied and invigorated the New York School label. Shapiro upends language not for less meaning, but more—and for a multilayered storytelling sufficiently unfettered to get at life’s labyrinthine mix of 'cardboard and gold' promise and peril. Pervaded by wide erudition and a skilled violinist’s musical acuity, these wise, many-angled poems reward rumination, with their dream-drenched mystery, verbal excitement and open-ended, sometimes near-mystical profundity; always with Shapiro’s pluralistic heart on his metaphysical sleeve."—Kate Farrell

Women rarely kill. How and why a woman can be driven to lethal action is often highly complex and misunderstood. Many of these women who act lethally are driven to such a point as a last resort following prolonged experiences of child abuse and/or domestic violence. This book offers insights into these women, detailing their motivations, their patterns of violence, and how they can be aided through psychological evaluation and proper expert testimony. The chapters in this volume also include discussions of women who did not kill but were punished as if they had. This collection of writings seeks to fill the gaps in research on women who kill.

This book is beneficial to students and researchers of Psychology including Forensic Psychology. It will further aid the field of criminal justice as well as policymakers such that clinicians can provide an enhanced understanding on various psychological and demographic factors which contribute to situations where battered women reach a point where the only option to ensure survival is lethal self-defense. Finally, this book offers clarity as it points out the areas in which the legal system has failed these women.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma.

Women rarely kill. How and why a woman can be driven to lethal action is often highly complex and misunderstood. Many of these women who act lethally are driven to such a point as a last resort following prolonged experiences of child abuse and/or domestic violence. This book offers insights into these women, detailing their motivations, their patterns of violence, and how they can be aided through psychological evaluation and proper expert testimony. The chapters in this volume also include discussions of women who did not kill but were punished as if they had. This collection of writings seeks to fill the gaps in research on women who kill.

This book is beneficial to students and researchers of Psychology including Forensic Psychology. It will further aid the field of criminal justice as well as policymakers such that clinicians can provide an enhanced understanding on various psychological and demographic factors which contribute to situations where battered women reach a point where the only option to ensure survival is lethal self-defense. Finally, this book offers clarity as it points out the areas in which the legal system has failed these women.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma.

This new book by David Shapiro, author of the classic Neurotic Styles, throws light, from a clinical standpoint, on a subject of importance, both theoretically and for therapeutic practice, for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, as well as for those with general interests in philosophy or psychology. A Psychodynamic View of Action and Responsibility explores the individual’s experience of ownership or responsibility for what he or she does, says, and even believes, and their avoidance of that experience.

David Shapiro considers the self-deception necessary for these disclaimers of responsibility and the surrender of personal conviction and autonomous judgment. With numerous excerpts from therapeutic sessions, he shows these to be self-protective reactions forestalling or dispelling the anxiety of internal conflict and also, as in false confessions, external threat or intimidation. Shapiro presents this important thesis in his usual lucid way and in many contexts. Its recognition, in his view, is critical for therapeutic work. This book demonstrates the central place in psychological dynamics of the subjective sense of personal responsibility or ownership of what one says or does. The subject is nowhere treated with the depth and emphasis on subjective experience seen in these chapters.　

A Psychodynamic View of Action and Responsibility will appeal to professionals and students of psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy, as well as clinical psychologists, CBT practitioners, philosophers, and legal scholars.

This new book by David Shapiro, author of the classic Neurotic Styles, throws light, from a clinical standpoint, on a subject of importance, both theoretically and for therapeutic practice, for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, as well as for those with general interests in philosophy or psychology. A Psychodynamic View of Action and Responsibility explores the individual’s experience of ownership or responsibility for what he or she does, says, and even believes, and their avoidance of that experience.

David Shapiro considers the self-deception necessary for these disclaimers of responsibility and the surrender of personal conviction and autonomous judgment. With numerous excerpts from therapeutic sessions, he shows these to be self-protective reactions forestalling or dispelling the anxiety of internal conflict and also, as in false confessions, external threat or intimidation. Shapiro presents this important thesis in his usual lucid way and in many contexts. Its recognition, in his view, is critical for therapeutic work. This book demonstrates the central place in psychological dynamics of the subjective sense of personal responsibility or ownership of what one says or does. The subject is nowhere treated with the depth and emphasis on subjective experience seen in these chapters.　

A Psychodynamic View of Action and Responsibility will appeal to professionals and students of psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy, as well as clinical psychologists, CBT practitioners, philosophers, and legal scholars.

David is a freshly minted NYU grad who’s working a not-quite-entry-level job, falling in love, and telling his parents he’s studying for the LSAT. He starts a Tumblr blog, typing out posts on his BlackBerry under his desk—a blog that becomes wildly popular and brings him to the attention of major media (The New York Times) as well as the White House. But his outward fame doesn’t quell his confusion about the world and his direction in it.

This semiautobiographical debut is a coming-of-age story perfect for our time. In A Sense of Direction author Gideon Lewis-Kraus’s words, “If Tao Lin had been born to Gary Shteyngart’s parents and spent his early twenties slaving for pageviews at NewYorker.com, he would have written something like this, the Bright Lights, Big City of the click-here-now generation.”