Jeffrey Friedman, poet, West Lebanon

Jeffrey Friedman, born in Chicago, Illinois, grew up in Saint Louis, Missouri. His publications, Scattering the Ashes, The Record Breaking Heat Wave, and most recently, Taking Down the Angel has brought him praise from The Missouri Review, the Milton Dorfman Poetry prize, and a previous New Hampshire State Council on the Arts Fellowship in 1993. Friedman teaches at Keene State College and New England College

"[The poems] explore the relationships that help forge an identity though a language that mingles plain diction with a startling music, direct observation and transformative vision. Though the poems center themselves around a story, the narratives are fragmented into illuminated moments. The tone is often elegiac. The poems seek to preserve or recover the past of an individual clan, placing it in the context of the larger society and the mythic history of the tribe."

Click here to read a poem by Jeffrey Friedman
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Last updated: January 4, 2005