Louis Simpson

Louis Aston Marantz Simpson (born March 27, 1923 in Kingston , Jamaica , † September 14, 2012 Stony Brooke , New York State , USA ) was an American poet, critic and Pulitzer Prize winner of Jamaican descent.

Life

Louis Simpson was born the son of a lawyer of Scottish descent (whose mother was black) and a Russian Jew in Jamaica as a White Jamaican. He attended English schools there. At the age of 16 his father died suddenly and because he did not get along with the stepmother who his father had married to his birth mother after the divorce, he moved to New York at the age of 17, where he began to study. Since he had volunteered for the army during the Second World War, was badly wounded and even suffered trauma that he later processed in his literature, he was granted American citizenship in gratitude. During the war he was stationed in Belgium , the Netherlands , France and Germany , among others .

After the war he continued his studies, initially studying briefly in Paris , then at Columbia University , in 1950 he did his master's degree , in 1959 his doctorate ; He then worked as a lecturer and professor at various universities from the end of the 1950s to the mid-1990s, for example at the famous University of California, Berkeley .

As a youth he had his first publication in a magazine campaigning for Jamaica's independence. He published his first volume of poetry in 1949 with the title " The Arrivisits ". Another 18 volumes of poetry followed. In his work, Simpson saw himself as a critic of the American dream, who took up the problems of outsiders and those who failed (he counted himself as an outsider in the 1950s and 1960s) in everyday language; he also met the American myths and legends with skepticism he took up abundantly in his works and described the dark sides of American society. In 1964 he received the Pulitzer Prize in the poetry category . He had also published several books as a literary critic .

A fellow poet called him "the Chekhov of American poetry".

Simpson was married and divorced three times. He leaves three children and died of complications from Alzheimer's .

Awards (selection)

• Rome Prize, 1957, from the American Academy in Rome.
• Pulitzer Prize, 1964. (Poetry section).

Works (selection)

• The arrivisits, 1949, poetry.
• Good news of death and other poems, 1955, poetry.
• A dream of Governors: Poems, 1959, poetry.
• At the end of the open road, 1963, Poetry (Pulitzer Prize).
• Selected Poems, 1965, poetry.
• Three on the tower (on Ezra Pound, TS Eliot, William Carlos Williams), literary criticism, 1975.
• Armidale, 1979, poetry.
• In the room we share, 1990, poetry.
• There you are, 1995, poetry.

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• http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/86
• http://www.nytimes.com/2012/18/arts/louis-simpson