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Bill Zavatsky is an American poet, journalist, jazz pianist, and translator.
Zavatsky has worked as a journalist; his articles have appeared in The New York Times Book Review and Rolling Stone. He was editor-in-chief of SUN press and SUN magazine. He has taught workshops for Teachers & Writers Collaborative, Long Island University, and University of Texas-Austin. For many years he taught English at Trinity School in New York City, where his students frequently won creative writing awards. His cotranslation of André Breton's Earthlight received the PEN Translation Prize.
Zavatsky could be described as a second-generation New York School poet, influenced by such writers as Frank O'Hara and Kenneth Koch. Koch was his professor at Columbia University. In addition to the wry humor typical of the New York School, Zavatsky adds to his poetry an emotional poignancy that gives it additional depth. Like some of his predecessors in the New York School, Zavatsky also excels as a translator of poetry. His work in this area has included English versions of the writers André Breton, Valery Larbaud, Robert Desnos, and Ramón Gómez de la Serna.
His artistic influences include the jazz pianist Bill Evans, whom Zavatsky got to know late in the musician's career. Zavatsky has eloquently eulogized Evans, both in the liner notes to his albums, and in his poem "Live at the Village Vanguard."
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