David Yezzi

Who is David Yezzi?

David Dalton Yezzi is an American poet, editor, actor, and professor. He currently teaches poetry in the Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University.

Director of the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y in New York City from 2001 to 2005, Yezzi has worked as executive editor of The New Criterion, associate editor of Parnassus: Poetry in Review, and on the staff of The New York Observer.

Yezzi continues to serve as poetry editor of The New Criterion. "It is important to the magazine to publish strong poems," he said in a 2006 interview. "We publish three to five pages of poetry in every issue," in addition to a special feature on poetry in April. "[T]here is a way in which most poetry disqualifies itself within a few lines," Yezzi said. "I would like to say that there are more good poems coming into our offices than we can use, but the truth is that we're always diligently on the lookout for good work. We sometimes solicit work from poets we admire so that we can fill the thirty to fifty pages a year. There's just not that much good verse out there."

Asked what living poets he admires, Yezzi mentioned Geoffrey Hill, Richard Wilbur, A. E. Stallings, David Barber, and Adam Kirsch. He also mentioned Donald Justice and Anthony Hecht, whose official biography he is writing..