Eleanor Lerman

Eleanor Lerman was raised in the Bronx and Far Rockaway, and has lived in New York City all her life. Her first book of poetry, Armed Love (Wesleyan University Press), was published in 1973 when she was twenty-one and was nominated for a National Book Award.

While Lerman quickly became known as an exciting young poet with a direct, new voice, she also faced criticism for her overt tone. A reviewer for The New York Times stated that if poetry were rated, Armed Love would receive a "double X." Lerman published one more collection, Come the Sweet By and By (1975), and then, partly in response to the backlash against her first book, which looked frankly at sexuality and popular culture, she did not write another book of poems for 25 years.

When Sarah Gorham, president of Sarabande Books, started the press, she approached Lerman, whom she had long admired, and asked if she might have a book for Sarabande. Lerman compiled a manuscript of poems, and in 2001 Sarabande published The Mystery of Meteors, followed by Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds (2005), which was awarded the 2006 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets for the year's most outstanding book of poetry. Since then, Lerman has also published The Sensual World Re-emerges (2010).

On choosing the collection for the Marshall Prize, poet Tony Hoagland wrote: "Eleanor Lerman's poems have sociological savvy, philosophical rue, historical recognition, and vernacular resilience. They sing a song that is bravely gloomy, but they sing it with a fierce and earned dignity."