Jack Marshall (author)

Jack Marshall (born 1936)^[1] is an American poet and author. He was born to an Iraqi father, and a Syrian mother of Jewish heritage.^[2]

Jack Marshall
Born	(1936-02-25) February 25, 1936 (age 89) Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States
Occupation(s)	Poet, writer

Early life

Jack Marshall was born in February 25, 1936 in Brooklyn, New York.^[1] He was raised speaking Arabic in a Mizrahi Jewish household, ruled by traditional Arab Jewish culture.^[3] His father worked in the fabric industry.^[4] He attended public school as well as a Hebrew school in his neighborhood.

Marshall attended Brooklyn College, where he studied literature.^[4] The Young Men's Hebrew Association (YMHA) is where he attended night classes in poetry in 1960 with poets Robert Lowell and Stanley Kunitz.^[4][5]

Career and accolades

He is the author of numerous books and poems which reflect and explore his cultural heritage. Two examples, From Baghdad to Brooklyn: Growing Up in a Jewish-Arabic Family in Midcentury America, along with Millennium Fever:Poems, proved very successful. He was awarded the PEN West Award and was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, for From Baghdad to Brooklyn.^[6]

He is the recipient of two Bay Area Book Reviewers Awards. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008.

Personal life

He has lived in El Cerrito, California since the early 2000s.^[7]

Works

• The Darkest Continent, For Now Press, (1967)
• Bearings, Harper & Row, (1970)
• Floats, Cedar Creek Press, (1971).
• Bits of Thirst, Blue Wind Press, (1976)
• Arriving on the Playing Fields of Paradise, Jazz Press, (1983)
• Arabian Nights, Coffee House Press, (1987)
• Sesame, Coffee House Press, (1993)^[8]
• Millennium Fever, Coffee House Press, (1996)
• Chaos Comics, Pennywhistle Press, (1994)
• Gorgeous Chaos; New & Selected Poems, Coffee House Press, (2002)
• From Baghdad to Brooklyn Coffee House Press, (October 1, 2005) ISBN 978-1-56689-174-5