William Rose Benét

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William Rose Benét (born February 2, 1886 in Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn , New York , † May 4, 1950 in New York City ) was an American poet and editor .

Life

Benét was the son of officer James Walker Benét and his wife Frances Neill Rose. From 1904 he attended the Albany Academy (high school), then he attended the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University . Until his graduation in 1907 he was there the magazines Yale Record and Yale Courant out. The first poems were also written. From then on, Benet emerged as a literary journalist, editor and poem author.

In 1911 he became editor of Century Magazine , which he edited from 1914 as an "assistant editor". During the First World War he volunteered in the aviation division of the US Army Signal Corps (a forerunner of the United States Air Force ), to whose ground crew he was one of the people. After the war he became “assistant editor” of The Nation's Business magazine .

From 1920 he wrote for the New York Evening Post , whose literary supplement Literary Review he founded together with Henry Seidel Canby, Amy Loveman and Christopher Morley. In 1924 the same authors founded the Saturday Review of Literature , for which Benét worked as a columnist and editor until his death. In 1933 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

Benét was married four times: his first marriage from 1912 to Teresa Frances Thompson († 1919), with whom he had three children, his second marriage from 1923 to the writer Elinor Wylie († 1928), and his third marriage from 1832 to the actress Lora Baxter and after the divorce in 1937 from 1941 last with the children's book author Marjorie Flack (1887-1958).

His younger brother Stephen Vincent Benét was also a writer.

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Benét's lyrics are characterized by a romantic mood and exotic images. With the publication of his volume of poetry "The Burglar of the Zodiac and Other Poems" (1918) he also showed more modern influences.

For The Dust Which Is God (1941), an autobiography in poetry, Benét received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1942 .

The volume Day of Deliverance , which appeared in 1944 - in the middle of World War II - contains patriotic, propagandistic poems in the spirit of the American government .

Benet's The Reader's Encyclopedia ( Encyclopedia of the reader ) is regarded in the US as a standard reference work on world literature.

Works

Poetry

  • Merchants from Cathay , 1913
  • The Falconer of God , 1914
  • The Great White Wall , 1916
  • The Burglar of the Zodiac , 1918
  • Perpetual Light , 1919
  • Moons of Grandeur , 1920
  • Man possessed , 1927
  • Rip Tide , 1932
  • Starry Harness , 1933
  • Golden Fleece , 1935
  • With Wings as Eagles , 1940
  • Dust which is God , 1941
  • Stairway of Surprise , 1947
  • Spirit of the Scene , 1961
  • Day of Deliverance , 1944

novel

  • The First Person Singular , 1922

Children's book

  • The Flying King of Kurio , 1926
  • Adolphus the Adopted Dolphin , 1941
  • Mother Goose (collection of his nursery rhymes)

Non-fiction

  • Saturday Papers. Essays on literature from the Literary Review , 1921 (co-author)
  • Wild Goslings , 1927 (essays)
  • The Reader's Encyclopedia , 1948

Editing

  • Paul Claudel : The East I know (co-translator), 1914
  • Prose and Poetry of Elinor Wylie , 1932
  • Fifty Poets , 1933
  • From Robert and Elizabeth Browning (correspondence), 1936
  • Oxford Anthology of American Literature , 1938 (Associate Editor)
  • The Poetry of Freedom , 1948 (Associate Editor)

Settings

Some of Benét's poems were set to music:

  • Ritual for voice and piano by Victor Babin, 1950
  • A Ballad of Jesse James for Choir by Earl George, 1957
  • Song heard in Sleep for choir by Gardner Read, 1958

literature

  • Laura Benét: When William Rose, Stephen Vincent and I were young . Dodd, Mead & Company, New York circa 1976, ISBN 0-396-07289-5
  • Stanley Olson: Elinor Wylie. A Life Apart. A biography . Dial Press, New York 1979, ISBN 0-8037-2316-4
  • Louis Untermeyer: From Another World . Harcourt, Brace, New York 1939
  • Lori J. Williams: Benét, William Rose , in: American National Biography Online. Oxford University Press, February 2000

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Members: William Rose Benét. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed February 15, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Benét, William Rose
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American poet and editor
DATE OF BIRTH February 2, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn
DATE OF DEATH May 4th 1950
Place of death New York City