August Kleinzahler

Although best known as a poet, Kleinzahler has long dabbled in music criticism, writing columns for the San Diego Reader and other publications, and these are now gathered in Music I-LXXIV (Pressed Wafer), a collection of tart, well-informed and opinionated essays ranging from Muddy Waters to Glenn Gould. ... (more)He writes about Liberace’s “intriguingly repulsive” playing, the joy of bar jukeboxes and, in complete contrast, the crucial role music played in the Terezin concentration camp near Prague. Kleinzahler will also read from his 2008 poetry collection Sleeping It Off in Rapid City (Farrar Straus Giroux) which won the prestigious National Book Critic Circle award. Tickets: £6 (discount for LRB subscribers - contact the shop for details) Book online at http://www.lrbshop.co.uk/events Discounts for LRB subscribers - contact the shop on books@lrbshop.co.uk for details

August Kleinzahler's six books of poetry include The Strange Hours Travelers Keep, which won the 2004 Griffin International Poetry. His 2004 prose book, Cutty, One Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained, was called a "masterpiece" by The Washington Post. From a New Jersey childhood ... (more)as one of few Jews among many Italians, Kleinzahler has become a writer whose edgy, swaggering, and often hilarious work never fails to move us.