Nick Piombino

Nick Piombino (born October 5, 1942) is an American poet, essayist, artist and psychotherapist. He has been associated with poets from both the New York School of the 1960s and the Language Poets of the 1970s, though his work is not easily classified.

Piombino was born in New York City. He received his BA with honors in English from the City College of New York in 1964 and a master's degree in social work from Fordham University in 1971. He was certified in adult psychoanalysis and psychotherapy at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health in New York in 1982.

Piombino became an active participant in the thriving poetry scene in New York in the 1960s. He studied poetry in writing workshops with William S. Burroughs at City College in 1965 and at the Poetry Project with New York School poet Ted Berrigan in 1967 and Bernadette Mayer in 1973. Mayer in particular was a major influence on Piombino's writing. Encouraged by Berrigan and Mayer, Piombino gave his first poetry reading with singer-songwriter Patti Smith, at The Kitchen, in 1973.

Piombino's writing is informed by his psychoanalytical training. Finding that "early psychoanalytic theory is breathtakingly poetic,", at the same time that he was discovering poetry and fiction, the two disciplines became irrevocably intertwined in his work. Piombino discusses the relationship at length in his third volume of poetry, Theoretical Objects, where he states "psychoanalysis and literature are more interrelated than is apparent.

On a year-long trip to Italy and Morocco in 1968, Piombino began to experiment with another art form. Inspired by the "cut-up" techniques that Berrigan and Burroughs used in their writing workshops and the Merz Pictures of German artist Kurt Schwitters, he constructed collages using found materials.

Piombino began a private psychotherapy practice in 1976 and has held a number of staff positions as a social worker or psychotherapist in the New York City school system. He became a faculty supervisor at the Psychoanalytic Institute New York Counseling and Guidance Services in 1987. His experience as a practicing psychotherapist his use of psychoanalytical theory have greatly influenced his poetry.

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