Poetry by law professors and lawyers is a pretty rare thing; the doctors had William Carlos Williams, the insurance industry had Wallace Stevens; and James R. Elkins recently edited an anthology of poems about the practice of law, but I am unaware of any lawyer-poets as famous as Williams or Stevens or their ilk. [Update: Of course, Stevens was a lawyer, New York Law School class of 1903. My mistake.] A lot of legal poetry is, for some reason, in the form of haikus about cases, practical stuff.
One law professor taking a shot at serious poetry is Case Western’s Lawrence Mitchell, a distinguished writer in traditional legal styles. His poems on Youtube include work on Robin Williams and on what is surely the most common topic of poetry.
Professor Mitchell’s Youtube channel is here.
Posted by Jack Chin on December 21, 2014 at 07:43 PM
Comments
Quite apart from Prof. Mitchell, the genre of “law professor poetry” sounds like something that could rival the genre of Vogon poetry.
Posted by: Joseph Slater | Dec 24, 2014 12:42:53 PM
Poetry by law professors and lawyers might be less rare than you think. Stevens is obviously our number one, but Charles Reznikoff and Lawrence Joseph also deserve mentions. David Skeel (Penn) has written on Joseph, Thomas Grey (Stanford) has written on Stevens as lawyer-poet, and I have written on law and poetry generally (http://www.texaslrev.com/90-texas-l-rev-1507/)
Posted by: alex roberts | Dec 22, 2014 6:13:54 PM
Creepy
Posted by: GreenWave | Dec 21, 2014 8:05:39 PM