David Epstein
Poetry
ABOUT
David Epstein, Isle of Skye, October 2017
How do I get my writing done? Check out my contribution to rob mcclennan's writer-filled blog about process.
David Epstein grew up winters in Lexington, Massachusetts, and spent summers in Woods Hole, MA, where he can still be found mucking about in boats several months of the year. Since 2000, David has been a resident of West Hartford, Connecticut. Despite living in different places, he often wakes up in the middle of the night in the imaginary town of Sonnetville. This is a place where, just to prove one’s self-worth, one has to write some kind of a sonnet before going back to sleep. You can read all about his personalized sonnet form, the "fifteener," here.
David has a Ph.D. in literature from Brandeis University, specializing in 19th and 20th century poetry and fiction. He tried teaching school, but the job was such deskstitution that he left it. For work, he repairs vandalized multi-family buildings in New Britain, Connecticut. In his spare time, serves on the Board of the Hartford Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens. He has three children, at least one of whom writes poems, and all of whom have also been life-long summer residents of Woods Hole.
During summers David spends as much time as possible on the waters around Woods Hole, racing sailboats and writing humorous race accounts for friends and the Falmouth Enterprise.
David says his poetry “reflects my efforts to garner wisdom in a vacuous world, and to understand cosmological conundrums like Dark Energy and Black Holes.” He has published poems in Poesia, Poetic Hours, The Lyric, Blue Collar Review, Marsh Hawk Review, and Shofar, but a book-length volume of his poetry has yet to occur.
He was recently chosen as a featured contributor by the Bellingham Review, where his poem, "The Rain The Last," appears in the Fall 2017 issue. In Spring, 2019, Marsh Hawk Review published his poems, "Fairy Tale" and "Sip of Djinn."