short biography
Writer/translator Jack Hirschman was born on December 13, 1933, in New York, NY; he was the son of Stephen Dannemark and Nellie (Keller) Hirschman. Hirschman married Ruth Epstein, a radio programmer, on December 25, 1954. The couple had two children; Celia and David. Hirschman has been honoured in 2006 from the city of San Francisco of the title of 'Poet laureate of the people'.
Hirschman received his Bachelor of Arts degree from City College New York in 1955, and earned both his A.M. and Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1957 and 1961, respectively. He is a member of the Union of Street Poets, the Union of Left Writers, the Roque Dalton Cultural Brigade, and the Jacques Roumain Cultural Brigade.In his career Hirschman has worked as a poet of Dartmouth College (1952--); instructor and assistant professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles (1959-61; 1961-66); painter and collagist, with exhibitions in Los Angeles and Venice, California; and translator of over 25 books from the original German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Albanian, and Greek. He has taken the free exchange of poetry and politics into the streets, where he is, in the words of poet Luke Breit, called, "America's most important living poet." He uses his skills to help awaken the American people to homelessness as an expression of a system that can no longer take care of its people. He has written more than 50 volumes of poetry and essays. His impassioned readings challenge his audience. He speaks on the artist's role in social transformation.
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