David Shapiro grew up in New Jersey, a violin and literary prodigy in an artistic family. At 10, he decided to become a poet. He left high school after his junior year and studied at Columbia University with the poet Kenneth Koch and the art critic Meyer Schapiro. He published January (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965), the first of his eleven books of poetry, as an 18-year-old Columbia undergraduate. Awarded a Kellett Fellowship upon graduation, he earned an MA from Clare College, Cambridge University, before returning to Columbia for his PhD. His other books of poetry include A Man Holding an Acoustic Panel (Overlook Press, 1971), nominated for a National Book Award; New and Selected Poems (Overlook Press, 2013), and In Memory of an Angel (City Lights, 2017). He also coedited with Ron Padgett An Anthology of New York Poets (Random House, 1970).

In addition, Shapiro was a prolific prose writer and a respected art historian and critic. Associated early on with the New York School of Poets, he wrote the first monograph on the poet John Ashbery (Columbia University Press, 1979).  His other books include Jim Dine: Painting What One Is (Harry N. Abrams, 1981); Jasper Johns: Drawings,1954–1984 (Harry N. Abrams, 1984); and Mondrian: Flowers (Harry N. Abrams, 1991).

Shapiro taught literature at Columbia University, Princeton University and Brooklyn College and was a tenured art historian at William Paterson University. For twenty years, he also taught an interdisciplinary course in aesthetics at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union. He translated extensively and collaborated with Rudy Burckhardt on three films. His honors include a poetry grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts; the 1977 Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Graham Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the NEA and the NEH, as well as the 2018 ‘T’ Space Poetry Award. Shapiro died of complications from from Parkinson’s disease on May 4, 2024.

You Are The You: Writings and Interviews
on Poetry, Art, and the New York School  by David Shapiro,
is now available from MadHat Press.