David Breskin is the author of a three books of poems, Fresh Kills (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1997), Escape Velocity (Soft Skull Press, 2004), and Supermodel (Soft Skull Press, 2006); a novel, The Real Life Diary of a Boomtown Girl (Viking, 1989); a play, “Kids in the Dark”; a collection of interviews with film directors Francis Coppola, David Cronenberg, David Lynch, Spike Lee, Oliver Stone, Clint Eastwood, Robert Altman and Tim Burton, Inner Views: Filmmakers in Conversation (Faber and Faber, 1992) and reprinted in a new and expanded edition by Da Capo in 1997; and a book and CD collaboration of poems and paintings and music with Ed Ruscha and Wilco’s Nels Cline, Dirty Baby (Prestel, 2010). His poems have appeared in many periodicals, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, DoubleTake, TriQuarterly, Parnassus, Salmagundi, Quarterly West, and Boulevard.

“David Breskin is a contemporary town crier, a businessman-bard, an ironic prophet who goes for the jugular in these canny and acute renderings of our American moment, our postmodern world. He has given us a fresh sound—a new sounding—in American poetry.” –Edward Hirsch 

“James Wright said he wanted to ‘write the poetry of a grown man.’ Breskin has done this, and more. What Breskin has is narrative drive, a sense of the subject, and a beguiling, disruptive wit, which is often deadly; because his tropes come from anywhere he informs his reader with a brash honesty hovering near eloquence, and still grounded in our world, sport, cyberspace, the off-tempos of family: and he has serious intentions to speak for most everybody, which is less a question of voice, and more a responsibility of humanity. This is not tokenism, or hopefencing; it is artistry, sometimes at fever pitch: lend your ears and the eyes will follow.” –Michael S. Harper 

“The work of David Breskin is political, lyrical and funny. In poems like ‘Smart Money’, a denunciation of money’s arrogance, his intelligence has the power to sing. A classic of its kind, ‘Da Hood’ contains all the virtues of his writing: compression, conceptual energy, humor; ‘Town Crier’ displays his edgy lyricism. A poet of concentrated language, Breskin is also an astute cultural critic. At his best, he is among the finest younger poets now writing.” –Paul Hoover

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