Laurence Lieberman

Lieberman has received the Jerome J. Shestack Prize awarded by the American Poetry Review, an NEA Fellowship, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship and Grant, a William Carlos Williams Citation from the Poetry Society of America, and seven nominations for the Pushcart Prize. He appeared in The Best American Poetry (1991). Since 1971, he has served as poetry editor at the University of Illinois Press. His most recent book, Flight From the Mother Stone, appeared in 2000.His critical books include: Beyond the Muse of Memory and Essays on Contemporary American Poets.

"His is a poetry of such awe, a nearly orthodox Romantic ecstasy, that is verges on the plangent... Leiberman's poems look and act like Marianne Moore's syntactical precessions mated with Roethke's nervous green world of passion. He has the grace to make his voyage into the eye of the world and back a communion for the reader."
Dave Smith, American Poetry Review.

"There's a remarkable sensibility guiding these poems, an inquisitiveness, a strong sense of humor and compassion. Lieberman's really is a singular achievement. His subjects, his style and syntax, his syllabic lines and cascading stanza -- all are impossible to imitate or mistake for anyone else's... At sixty, he has become one of our truly indispensable poets."
Thomas Swiss, The Southern Review.

"In purpose and effect, Lieberman's writing is without boundary. Indeed, it's hard to name a more distinctive and original American poet working today."
G.E. Murray, Chicago Sun-Times

"Laurence Lieberman is perhaps the finest American poet writing in patterned free verse form. The style is sensuously narrative and descriptive. It exudes joy and vitality... a true American original."
Charles Guenther, St.Lous Post Dispatch.