Background
Cynthia Zarin was born on July 9, 1959 in New York City, New York, United States to Michael Zarin, a lawyer, and Renee (Kroll) Zarin, an administrator.
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Cynthia Zarin
Gallery of Cynthia Zarin
Cynthia graduated from Harvard University magna cum laude.
Gallery of Cynthia Zarin
Cynthia graduated from Columbia University with an M.F.A.
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Cynthia graduated from Harvard University magna cum laude.
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Other photo of Cynthia Zarin
Cynthia graduated from Columbia University with an M.F.A.
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- Works
book
The Ada Poems
(A dazzling story of obsessive love emerges in Cynthia Zar...)
A dazzling story of obsessive love emerges in Cynthia Zarin’s luminous new book inspired and inhabited by the title character of Nabokov’s novel Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, who was the lifelong love of her half brother, Van. These electric poems are set in a Nabokovian landscape of memory in which real places, people, and things -the exploration of the Hudson River, Edwardian London, sunflowers, Chekhov, Harlem, decks of cards, the death of Solzhenitsyn, morpho butterflies - collide with the speaker’s own protean tale of desire and loss. With a string of brilliant contemporary sonnets as its spine, the book is a headlong display of mastery and sorrow: in the opening poem, “Birch,” the poet writes “Abide with me, arrive / at its skinned branches, its arms pulled / from the sapling... the birch all elbows, taking us in.” But Zarin does not “Destroy and forget” as Nabokov’s witty, tender Ada would have her do; rather, as she writes in “Fugue: Pilgrim Valley,” “The past’s / clear colors make the future dim, Lethe’s / swale lined with willow twigs.” Like all enduring love poetry, these poems are a gorgeous refusal to forget. A riveting, high-stakes performance by one of our major poets, The Ada Poems extends the reach of American poetry.
https://www.amazon.com/Ada-Poems-Cynthia-Zarin/dp/0307272478/?tag=2022091-20
Swordfish Tooth
https://www.amazon.com/Swordfish-Tooth-Cynthia-Zarin/dp/0679721401/?tag=2022091-20
The Watercourse
https://www.amazon.com/Watercourse-Cynthia-Zarin/dp/0375709770/?tag=2022091-20
Saints Among the Animals
(What do a whatchful fly and a weight-bearing whale have i...)
What do a whatchful fly and a weight-bearing whale have in common? A grateful saint - a saint whose life of work and devotion to God wouldn't have been the same without the loyalty. the friendship of a lion or a blackbird, an eagle or a deer. Other saints in these stories - two of the liveliest are women - deal cleverly with animals who act up: snakes in one instance, greedy geese in another. But in each of these stories, the commonality of all living things is luminously celebrated. The ten saints, whose biographies are given in the last pages, are named on the back of this jacket.
https://www.amazon.com/Saints-Among-Animals-Cynthia-Zarin/dp/1442472960/?tag=2022091-20
Orbit: Poems
https://www.amazon.com/Orbit-Poems-Cynthia-Zarin-ebook/dp/B01GYPQR3I/?tag=2022091-20
An Enlarged Heart: A Personal History
(This exquisite prose debut from prize-winning poet Cynthi...)
This exquisite prose debut from prize-winning poet Cynthia Zarin is a poignant exploration of the author’s experiences with love, work, and the surprise of time’s passage. Zarin charts the shifting and complicated parameters of contemporary life and family in writing that feels nearly fictional in its richness of scene, dialogue, and mood. The writer herself is the marvelously rueful character at the center of these tales, at first a bewildered young woman navigating the terrain of new jobs and borrowed apartments in a long-vanished New York City. By the end, whether describing a newlywed journey to Italy, a child’s life-threatening illness, Mary McCarthy’s file cabinet, or the inner life of the New Yorker staff, this history of the heart shows us how persistent the past is in returning to us with entirely new lessons.
https://www.amazon.com/Enlarged-Heart-Personal-History/dp/1400077648/?tag=2022091-20
Other Work
Albert, the Dog Who Liked to Ride in Taxis
(Always Albert hopes for rain. On rainy days Mrs. Crabtree...)
Always Albert hopes for rain. On rainy days Mrs. Crabtree takes him with her for taxi rides. So much better than walks. One day - brilliantly sunny, for a surprise - Albert hops a taxi alone. More than one taxi, actually. You will never guess where he goes!
https://www.amazon.com/Albert-Dog-Liked-Ride-Taxis/dp/0689847629/?tag=2022091-20
Cynthia Zarin
Edit ProfileEducation
Cynthia graduated from Harvard University magna cum laude, and Columbia University with an M.F.A.
Career
Cynthia teaches at Yale University. She has written for the New York Times, Architectural Digest, and is a contributing editor for Gourmet, and staff writer at the New Yorker. Cynthia Zarin's second collection, Fire Lyric, has no image so arresting it sears its way into the brain, no one poem so visually striking that it stands in stark, memorable relief once the book has been closed.
And that seems curious for a poet to whom seeing matters so very much. Indeed, one of the collection's finest poems, "The Venetian Optician," presents a metaphysics of vision that informs nearly every poem in.
Achievements
Works
book
-
The Ada Poems
(A dazzling story of obsessive love emerges in Cynthia Zar...)
-
Saints Among the Animals
(What do a whatchful fly and a weight-bearing whale have i...)
-
An Enlarged Heart: A Personal History
(This exquisite prose debut from prize-winning poet Cynthi...)
- Swordfish Tooth
- The Watercourse
- Orbit: Poems
-
The Ada Poems
Other Work
-
Albert, the Dog Who Liked to Ride in Taxis
(Always Albert hopes for rain. On rainy days Mrs. Crabtree...)
-
Albert, the Dog Who Liked to Ride in Taxis
Connections
Cynthia married Michael Seccareccia on January 24, 1988. They divorced in 1996. She married Joseph Goddu, an art dealer, on December 6, 1997. She has a daughter Rose and two stepchildren: Anna and Jack.
