Robert Polito

Robert Polito (born 1951) is an American writer, critic and educator whose work spans biography, poetry and cultural journalism. His biography Savage Art: A Life of Jim Thompson (1995) received the National Book Critics Circle Award. Polito has written extensively on crime fiction, popular music and American literature, and served as president of the Poetry Foundation from 2012 to 2017. He has been director of the Graduate Writing Program at the New School in New York and contributed to Bald Ego and other publications associated with the downtown New York literary scene.

  • Jack Spade, Bald Ego sells out!, no. 3, 2004, front cover, dark green ground, orange bold title, synthetic hair toupee specimen inset Bald Ego no. 3, 2004, interior spread pp. 156–157, paintings by Elizabeth Peyton, Heroes, two watercolour portrait heads, young male and female figures

    BALD EGO NO. 3 / JACK SPADE, Glenn O’Brien and Max Blagg, eds., 2004

    BALD EGO NO. 3 / JACK SPADE, Glenn O’Brien and Max Blagg, eds., 2004