About Me

Antoine J. Polgar was born in France of French and Hungarian parentage.  His family emigrated to the United States during World War II with the assistance of Henry Church, a family friend and expatriate American Patron of the Arts who lived in France and launched the quarterly Mesures. It was through Barbara Church, Henry Church’s widow, that Polgar became personally acquainted in his teens with Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens and many French writers including Jean Paulhan of The Nouvelle Revue Française.

In the Sixties, Polgar’s poetry was published in (TLR) The Literary Review, which also published his translations of Black Francophone Poets of West Africa and the Caribbean, including then-President Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal, Aimé Césaire of Martinique, and Jean Brierre of Haiti.  These may have been the first published English translations of Black Francophone poets in the U.S.  Polgar also read before the Poetry Society of America. 

Polgar was educated at the Lyçée Francais in New York, received an M.A. I Liberal Studies from Empire State College, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University at Buffalo.  He has taught at Niagara University, Buffalo State College, Medaille College, and Champlain College.  He now lives in Middlebury, Vermont and teaches literature online at Southern New Hampshire University. His poems have appeared in The Literary Review, Kiosk, and Prelude.  Other work has appeared in theory@buffalo, the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Les Cahiers du Celat (Univ. of Quebec at Montreal), and CLC (Comparative Literature & Culture) Web (March 2014).  In 2015, he published a volume of poetry, Chronicles & Elegies.  His book of short stories, The Path of Least Time and Other Stories, was published in October 2018.  His short story entitled Where Am I Going on the Next Carpet Ride was published in the December 2020 edition of 34th Parallel.