Joel Sloman was born in 1943 in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from the City College of New York in 1965. After spending time abroad in England and Ireland, he returned to the United States and enjoyed early success with his first book of poetry, Virgil's Machine (1966). The volume was widely praised and poems from the collection were included in prestigious anthologies. Hayden Carruth concluded his Voice That is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the Twentieth Century (1970) with a Sloman poem, citing the author as a "great voice to come."
Sloman directed a poetry project at St. Mark's in the Bowery, but did not publish another volume of poetry for more than 30 years. His latest volume is Stops (1998) and includes an introduction by Denise Levertov. Like his earlier work, these poems are driven by surrealism, metaphor and a wry take on life. Levertov notes that Sloman "can evoke sensory impressions with thrilling, hallucinatory precision."
Copyright © 1999 Chadwyck-Healey Inc.