Aram Saroyan (born September 25, 1943) is an American poet, novelist, biographer, memoirist and playwright. There has been a resurgence of interest in his work in the 21st century, evidenced by the publication in 2007 of several previous collections reissued together as Complete Minimal Poems.

Biography

Saroyan was born in New York City.^[1] His parents were playwright and author William Saroyan and actress Carol Grace (Carol Marcus, Carol Matthau), and his sister was actress Lucy Saroyan. He is the father of Strawberry Saroyan. He is of Armenian and Jewish descent.

Work

Saroyan's poetry has been widely anthologized and appears in many textbooks. Among the collections of his poetry are Aram Saroyan, Pages, and Day and Night: Bolinas Poems, the latter published by Black Sparrow Press in 1999. In 2007 several previous collections were reissued together as Complete Minimal Poems.

Saroyan's prose books include Genesis Angels: The Saga of Lew Welch and the Beat Generation; Last Rites, a book about the death of his father, the playwright and short story writer William Saroyan.^[2]

The UbuWeb site (linked below) says:

His 1968 book, Aram Saroyan, was almost a full-size representation of its contents as they could be presented in typescript or mimeograph, in Courier typeface, printed on one side of each leaf in what looked like unevenly inked print, with a total of only 30 poems. Edwin Newman, a reporter for NBC news, read the entire book aloud on the "NBC Evening News".^[3]

Lighght

One of Saroyan's most famous poems was simply the unconventionally spelled word "lighght" in the center of a blank page. This poem was selected by George Plimpton to be featured in The American Literary Anthology and, like all poems in the volume, received a $500 cash award from the National Endowment for the Arts, then just five years old. Many conservatives, such as Representative William Scherle and Senator Jesse Helms, objected at the per-word amount of the award, complaining that the word was not a real poem and was not even spelled correctly. This was the NEA's first major controversy; the "lighght" controversy was still being referenced by conservatives to decry the NEA 25 years later.^[4]

References

External links

• Aram Saroyan at UBUWEB ? audio & video recordings made by Saroyan in the mid to late 1960s

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