Poet. An author of many books of verse, he used the constraints of meter and rhyme to describe the uncontrollable aspects of the human condition. His first collection, "Love Letter From an Impossible Land" appeared in 1944. Among his works are "Ships and Other Figures" (1948), "The Open Sea and Other Poems" (1958), "Earth Walk: New and Selected Poems" (1970) and "Hazard, the Painter" (1975). One of his best known poems, "The Wreck of the Thresher," was inspired by the loss of the nuclear submarine Thresher, with all 129 hands on board, in 1963. In 1988, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for "Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems" and the National Book Award for Poetry for "Effort at Speech" in 1997. He also was the Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, poet laureate to the Library of Congress and a professor at Connecticut College from 1955 to 1983. He died of cardiac failure.
Poet. An author of many books of verse, he used the constraints of meter and rhyme to describe the uncontrollable aspects of the human condition. His first collection, "Love Letter From an Impossible Land" appeared in 1944. Among his works are "Ships and Other Figures" (1948), "The Open Sea and Other Poems" (1958), "Earth Walk: New and Selected Poems" (1970) and "Hazard, the Painter" (1975). One of his best known poems, "The Wreck of the Thresher," was inspired by the loss of the nuclear submarine Thresher, with all 129 hands on board, in 1963. In 1988, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for "Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems" and the National Book Award for Poetry for "Effort at Speech" in 1997. He also was the Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, poet laureate to the Library of Congress and a professor at Connecticut College from 1955 to 1983. He died of cardiac failure.
Bio by: John "J-Cat" Griffith
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