ANTIN, DAVID

born Feb. 1, 1932, New York, N.Y., U.S. American poet, translator, and art critic who championed primitive art and poetry and the use of clichs and pop vernacular. He became perhaps best known for his improvisational talk poems, first published in Talking (1972). Antin was educated at the City College of New York (B.A., 1955) and New York University (M.A., 1966). He was curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art (1967) in Boston and from 1968 taught visual arts at the University of California at San Diego. His poetry collections include Definitions (1967), Code of Flag Behavior (1968), After the War (A Long Novel with Few Words) (1973), Talking at the Boundaries (1976), and Tuning (1984). Antin improvised his talk poems in public places, tape-recording his performances. Considering the resulting poems to be adapted notations of his performances, he later published those he thought had merit. His subsequent works include Selected Poems: 196373 (1991) and What It Means to Be Avant Garde (1993). Antin also translated several scientific works from German.