| Lou Lipsitz was born and grew up
in a quiet urban lower-middle-class Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn,
New York. His grandparents emigrated from Austria-Hungary, Czarist
Russia and Germany. His father and mother both worked as salespeople
in the garment business. As a small child, he spent many days at
Brighton Beach and in Prospect Park exploring woods, lake and ocean
with his grandfather who also taught him to fish. Later, his time
was filled with after-school street sports played with his friends.
He became an especially avid handball player, an interest that
continued in adulthood. Like so many Brooklynites of that era,
he lived and died with the fate of the Dodgers.
In high school he discovered literature and politics and became
an avid reader. He began to think for the first time of becoming
a writer himself. He was awarded a Ford Foundation Early Entrant
Scholarship to the University of Chicago, where he majored in
political science, but also continued his exploration of literature,
becoming fascinated with Dylan Thomas and William Carlos Williams.
He graduated from Chicago at age 18 and took a job as a reporter
on a daily newspaper in a small town in western Ohio where he
learned how to work 70 hours a week and write clearly. But there
was little time left over for his own writing.
Later he returned to school at Yale University,
where he received a Master’s and Ph.D. in political science. At the same
time, his writing began to focus more and more on poetry and
he discovered the vast and powerful body of modern poetry written
in other languages. He was influenced by the translations he
found in Robert Bly’s magazine, The Fifties (and later
The Sixties). The non-English language poets who influenced him
most were Pablo Neruda and Garcia Lorca, and later, Rolf Jacobsen,
and Zbigniew Herbert. Among American poets, he derived inspiration
from Galway Kinnell, Denise Levertov, James Wright, Gary Snyder,
Robert Bly and the Beats.
He married in 1959. Anne was born in 1961 and Jonathan in 1965.
In 1964 he moved to Chapel Hill, NC, to take a teaching job in
political science at the University of North Carolina. He taught
political philosophy, political psychology, and American politics,
retiring as a full professor in 1995.
His first book of poems, COLD WATER, was published by Wesleyan
University Press in 1967. He was active in the anti-Vietnam war
movement and wrote many political poems during this period.
Ten years later, REFLECTIONS ON SAMSON was published by kayak
press of Santa Cruz, CA. During the next twenty years, Lou wrote
a widely-used textbook on American politics and a play based
on a political trial. Commentary about this play can be found
on the website.
As a result of his own intense experience
in therapy, he finally decided to give up his academic career
and obtain training as
a psychotherapist. He graduated from the University of North
Carolina with a Master’s in Social Work and has since been
practicing as a psychotherapist.
His third and most recent book of poems, SEEKING
THE HOOK, appeared in 1997. His involvement in the men’s movement markedly
affected his writing, reinforcing his desire to explore the profound
emotional consequences of father/child relationships and the
issues of grief, anger and comradeship so significant in men’s
lives. He remains involved in men’s work today as a member
of the leadership council of the Raleigh, NC Men’s Center.
He has recently finished a new poetry manuscript titled IF THIS
WORLD FALLS APART, some poems of which are included on the website.
He is currently working on a new book of poems about the process
of psychotherapy as seen by both patient and therapist.
Lou’s poetry has appeared in many anthologies,
including some used in college and high school literature classes;
and
also anthologies published in Germany, Australia and India.
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