Max Ritvo
Max Ritvo was born on December 19, 1990, in Los Angeles. He received a BA from Yale University in 2013 and an MFA from Columbia University in 2016.
Ritvo authored Letters from Max: A Poet, a Teacher, a Friendship, with Sarah Ruhl (Milkweed, 2019); The Final Voicemails: Poems, with Louise Glück (Milkweed, 2018); Four Reincarnations (Milkweed Editions, 2016); and Aeons (Poetry Society of America, 2015), which was selected by Jean Valentine to receive the 2014 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship.
About his work Lucie Brock-Broido said,
The poems flicker like fireflies let loose from their captivity in a mason jar, fulgurating like Nobodaddy’s business. Somehow, somewhere, Ritvo must have begun as an infant scholar, a prodigy, a young man of the rarest and most prescient gifts.
In 2012, Ritvo served as an intern at the Academy of American Poets.
Max Ritvo passed away at his home in Los Angeles on August 23, 2016.