Pines, Paul 1941- (Paul Andre Pines)

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Pines, Paul 1941- (Paul Andre Pines)

PERSONAL:

Born May 23, 1941, in Brooklyn, NY; son of Bernard (a physician) and Charlotte (a lawyer) Pines; married; wife's name Carol; children: Charlotte. Education: Bard College, B.A., 1963. Religion: Jewish.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Glens Falls, NY. Agent—Clyde Taylor, Curtis Brown Ltd., 575 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10022.

CAREER:

Writer, poet, educator. Merchant seaman, 1966-68; cab driver and bartender in New York, NY, 1969-73; Tin Palace (jazz club), New York, NY, owner and operator, 1973-76; Hanratty's, New York, NY, bartender, 1977-81; Adirondack Community College, Glens Falls, NY, instructor; Glens Falls Hospital, psychotherapist.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Creative Artists Public Service Program fellowship, 1976.

WRITINGS:

Onion (poems), Mulch Press (Northampton, MA), 1971.

The Tin Angel (novel), Morrow (New York, NY), 1983.

My Father's Name Was—: For Voice, Piano, and Bass, Merion Music (Bryn Mawr, PA), 1995.

Breath (poems), Ikon (New York, NY), 1996.

Redemption (novel), Editions Rocher (Paris, France), 1997.

Breath in a Ram's Horn: Songs for My Father, Merion Music (Bryn Mawr, PA), 1998.

Adrift on Blinding Light (poems), illustrated by Josephine Sacebo, Ikon (New York, NY), 2003.

My Brother's Madness: A Memoir, Curbstone Press (Willimantic, CT), 2007.

Also author of poetry books, including Hotel Madden Poems, Pines Poems, and Taxidancing. Contributor of poems to magazines, including New Directions, Pequod, Mulch, Prairie Schooner, Ironwood, and Confrontation.

ADAPTATIONS:

Several of Pines's poetry collections have been adapted for voice and orchestra by Daniel Asia and appear on two CDs, Songs from the Page of Swords and Breath in a Ram's Horn, Summit Label.

SIDELIGHTS:

A poet, novelist, and practicing psychotherapist, Paul Pines led a varied life before he began publishing. In his younger years, he shipped out as a merchant seaman and was in Vietnam in 1964 and 1965. After returning to the United States, he earned a living as a cab driver and bartender until he opened the New York jazz club called the Tin Palace in the early 1970s. Pines has since published several collections of poetry in addition to a 1983 first novel, The Tin Angel. That work of fiction was inspired by the New York jazz club and bar he owned and operated—a watering hole that attracted luminaries such as Kurt Vonnegut, Martin Scorsese, and Charles Mingus, among others.

In his 2007 work, My Brother's Madness: A Memoir, Pines presents a "gracefully written memoir," according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Pines's younger brother, Claude, suffered as a result of their parents' divorce and his subsequent mistreatment at the hands of a stepmother. Pines uses his brother's gradual sinking into the pit of paranoid schizophrenia as a frame through which to view the siblings' childhood in New York City and their subsequent lives. Though separated sometimes by continents, the two stayed close, and Paul Pines always understood that his brother had some sort of mental problem. It was not until 1985, however, that the diagnosis of schizophrenia was finally delivered. The Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded: "Never descending into easy sentimentality, Pines portrays the family tragedy of mental illness and the bare possibility of redemption we have in this life." Similar praise came from a Kirkus Reviews critic who found the work "frantic and meandering in its delivery, but nonetheless a searing portrait of a family hobbled by chronic mental illness." And Richard von Busack, writing in Metro Active, termed My Brother's Madness "one of those heart's-blood memoirs that can only be written after years of reflection, guilt and therapy."