Arthur Gatti
After studying poetics with poets Milton Kessler and Stephen Stepanchev, and carrying on correspondence with Robert Bly, Art Gatti graduated Queens College with a minor in poetry and a few honors,—notably the 1965 CUNY-(City University of New York)-wide Dwight Durling Award for a manuscript of poetry.
In the face of the Vietnam War, he entered the world of ‘sixties activism. He was a co-founder of Queens College SDS, collaborator with the late Mario Savio, of Free Speech Movement fame, and co-community-organizer in Newark, New Jersey, with the recently deceased Tom Hayden, of Chicago Eight fame.
Political involvements eventually led him to journalism. He published hundreds of articles and columns and two books, wrote staged downtown comedy shows and sold a screenplay to the Hollywood powerhouse, New Line Cinema. He is a member-in-good-standing of the Producer-Writers Guild of America.
He’s won various writing awards and has been published in The New Mexico Quarterly, America Sings, The East Village Other, PiF, The New York Hangover, And Then, Image9, Allegro, Riverside Library Poets Anthologies, 2015 and 2016, Jefferson Market Library Poets Anthology 2017, The New York Times “Metropolitan Diary”, and the international anthology From Neza York to New York— a collaboration of U.S. and Mexican poets that was honored by the Mexican government and celebrated at its NYC consulate in 2015 and ‘16. He chaired a poetry/fiction workshop at WestBeth, Lower Manhattan’s massive artists residency, and had a regular column, “Misadventures in Poetry,” in WestView News. In 2015 he published a book of poetry about what he consideres as a sister nation, called Mexico— Dust in My Blood.
Songs of Mute Eagles, which brings together his poetic work of the last decades, is the second book of poetry by Arthur Gatti, as well as the second volume of the bilingual series of poetry “Bridges” published by Darklight.
