David N. Ben-Merre, Ph.D.

David Ben-Merre (he/him/his) is professor and Chair of the Department of English at Buffalo State – SUNY, where he teaches classes on twentieth-century literature, literary theory, and poetry, while advocating wholeheartedly for the Oxford comma. He received his B.A. and M.A. from Johns Hopkins University and his doctorate from Brown University. His primary research interests include modernism, poetics, intellectual history, and interdisciplinary studies. His book Figures of Time (SUNY Press, 2018) looks at how nuances of poetic form alter how we have come to understand cultural aspects of temporality. His book on the pedagogical guises of Ezra Pound (co-written with Robert Scholes) is forthcoming (SUNY Press, January 2021). Currently, he is completing work on two manuscripts: the first on poetic apostrophe, and the second on the value of literary misreading. Selected publications include work on Lord Byron, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce and Albert Einstein, World War I poetry, Charles Dickens, Carly Simon, Giorgio Agamben, James Merrill, Martin Amis, Franz Kafka, J.L. Borges, E.A. Poe, Hilda Doolittle, Wallace Stevens, and the early years of Poetry Magazine. In addition to serving on the Board of Directors for The American Mock Trial Association (the governing board for collegiate mock trial), he enjoys the light recreation of crossword construction (in legal and literary journals, and in the New York Times [01/09/2013]).