William Meredith

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Meredith as a pilot on the wing of his airplane (1952–1954)

William Meredith (born January 9, 1919 in New York City , † May 30, 2007 in New London , Connecticut ) was an American poet.

Life

He worked briefly for the New York Times before doing military service as a pilot in the United States Navy . In the Korean War he returned to the Navy and was awarded two Air Medals .

In 1988 Meredith was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and in 1987 the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems . In 1997 he won the National Book Award for Poetry for Effort at Speech . Meredith also received a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship , the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize , the Carl Sandburg Award, and the International Vaptsarov Prize in Poetry .

From 1964 to 1987, Meredith was Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets . In 1968 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

From 1978 to 1980 he was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position that from 1985 onwards was called Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress . He was the first gay writer to hold this post.

Meredith taught at Princeton University , the University of Hawaii, and Connecticut College from 1955 to 1983.

In 1983 he suffered a stroke and was paralyzed for two years. As a result, he suffered from Broca's aphasia , which impaired his ability to speak. He stopped teaching and was unable to write poetry during this time. After intensive treatment, etc. a. in Great Britain, he largely regained his language skills.

As a long-time admirer of the Irish poet William Butler Yeats , he fulfilled his long-cherished wish to visit his spiritual home Sligo in the summer of 2006 . On the occasion he also taught at the Yeats International Summer School .

bibliography

Poetry

  • Love Letter from an Impossible Land , Yale University Press, (1944)
  • Ships and Other Figures (1948)
  • The Open Sea and Other Poems , Knopf, (1957)
  • The Wreck of the Thresher and Other Poems , Knopf, (1964) —finalist for the National Book Award
  • Earth Walk: New and Selected Poems , Knopf, (1970)
  • Hazard the Painter Knopf, (1975) ISBN 978-0-394-49634-4
  • The Cheer , Button, (1980)
  • Dreams of Suicide (1980)
  • Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems , Knopf, (1987) ISBN 978-0-394-75191-7 - Pulitzer Prize Winner
  • Effort at Speech: New and Selected Poems . Northwestern University Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0-8101-5070-6 . —Winner of the National Book Award

Essays

  • Reasons for Poetry, and The Reason for Criticism (1982)
  • Poems Are Hard to Read , University of Michigan Press, 1991, ISBN 978-0-472-09427-1

Translations and anthologies

  • Alcools, Guillaume Apollinaire (translator, 1964)
  • Poets of Bulgaria Unicorn Press, (Editor, 1985) ISBN 978-0-87775-190-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Meredith, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Connecticut College emeritus professor, dies at 88 . In: Connecticut College News , May 31, 2007. Retrieved January 19, 2013. 
  2. ^ Members: William Meredith. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 14, 2019 .
  3. ^ "National Book Awards - 1965" . National Book Foundation. Retrieved April 8, 2012.
  4. ^ "National Book Awards - 1997" . National Book Foundation. Retrieved October 22, 2013.
  5. ^ William Meredith: Reasons for poetry . Archived from the original on February 12, 2007. Retrieved June 3, 2007.
personal data
SURNAME Meredith, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American poet
DATE OF BIRTH January 9, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH May 30, 2007
Place of death New London , Connecticut