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PAUL PINES grew up in Brooklyn around the corner from Ebbet's Field and passed the early 60's on the Lower East Side of New York. He shipped out as a merchant seaman, spending 65-66 in Vietnam, after which he supported himself driving a taxi and tending bar until he opened his own jazz club, The Tin Palace in 1970 on the corner of 2nd Street and Bowery. A cultural watering hole for the better part of the 70's, it hosted figures like Kurt Vonnegut, Martin Scorsese, Charles Mingus, Eddie Jefferson, Joan Mitchell (the painter) and Larry Rivers. It also provided the setting for his first novel, The Tin Angel (Wm Morrow, 1983). During this period Pines lived and traveled in Central America where he became aware of the genocidal policy targeting the Guatemalan Mayans--the basis for his second novel, Redemption (Editions Rocher, 1997). His My Brother's Madness, (Curbstone Press, 10/07) based on his relationship to his brother who had a psychotic break in his late 40's, explores the unfolding of two intertwined lives and the nature of delusion.
Pines has published nine books of poetry: Onion, Hotel Madden Poems, Pines Songs, Breath, Adrift On Blinding Light and most recently, Taxidancing in hard copy editions, and three books online, New Orleans Variations, Voyage and Songs From The Page of Swords, accessible through his website, paulpines.com . Selections from his poems have been set to music by composer Daniel Asia and appear on his two CD's, Songs from the Page of Swords and Breath in a Ram's Horn, on the Summit Label. His poems have appeared in New Directions #37, First Intensity, Cafe Review, Pequod, Ironwood, IKON, Prairie Schooner, Mulch, Contact II.
His books have won praise from both critics and readers. The Washington Post called his novel, The Tin Angel, "Superb," NPR commentator Andre Codrescu said of My Brother's Madness, "This is the best wrestling match I have yet seen between Sigmund Freud and the Pills, or, between Story and Therapy, or between Greek myth and the Science of the Brain. The great thing about this Paul Pines memoir is that both Story and Therapy win…" Lawrence Joseph in The American Book Review pronounced his Hotel Madden Poems "brilliant and compelling..." The Multicultural Review said of Adrift on Blinding Light: "This wonderfully unpredictable, intuitive book navigates the conscious and subconscious worlds with the fluid, imaginative, and fascinating energy--as poetry should do." He has recently completed a libretto based on The Tin Angel, music to be composed by Dan Asia. A reprint edition of The Tin Angel, brought out through The Authors Guild publishing program backinprint.com is available online at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
Paul Pines lives in Glens Falls, NY, with his wife, Carol and daughter, Charlotte, where he practices as a psychotherapist and hosts the annual Lake George Jazz Weekend.