Frost Medal


 * Not to be confused with the Robert Frost Award.

The Robert Frost Medal is an award of the Poetry Society of America for "distinguished lifetime service to American poetry." Medalists receive a prize purse of $2,500.

The medal was first presented in 1930 to Jessie Rittenhouse, and to the memory of Bliss Carmen and George Edward Woodberry

For the for the following 53 years, the Frost Medal was awarded only eleven times, to poets at the end of their careers. In 1984, it became an annual award to a living poet. Since 1995, the recipient of the Frost Medal has delivered the Frost Medal Lecture, a retrospective reading and talk that is the highlight of the Annual Awards Ceremony.

Robert Frost was the fourth recipient of the Frost Medal, in 1941, after he had retired from Amherst College.

Robert Frost medalists

 * 1930: Jessie Rittenhouse
 * 1930:	Bliss Carmen (in memoriam)
 * 1930:	George Edward Woodberry (in memoriam)
 * 1941: Robert Frost
 * 1942: Edgar Lee Masters
 * 1943: Edna St. Vincent Millay
 * 1947: Gustav Davidson
 * 1951: Wallace Stevens
 * 1952: Carl Sandburg
 * 1955: Leona Speyer
 * 1967: Marianne Moore
 * 1971: Melville Cane
 * 1974: John Hall Wheelock


 * 1976: A.M. Sullivan
 * 1984: Jack Stadler
 * 1985: Robert Penn Warren
 * 1986: Allen Ginsberg / Richard Eberhart
 * 1987: Robert Creeley / Sterling Brown
 * 1988: Carolyn Kizer
 * 1989: Gwendolyn Brooks
 * 1990: Denise Levertov / James Laughlin
 * 1991: Donald Hall
 * 1992: Adrienne Rich / David Ignatow
 * 1993: William Stafford
 * 1994: A.R. Ammons
 * 1995: John Ashbery


 * 1996: Richard Wilbur
 * 1997: Josephine Jacobsen
 * 1998: Stanley Kunitz
 * 1999: Barbara Guest
 * 2000: Anthony Hecht
 * 2001: Sonia Sanchez
 * 2002: Galway Kinnell
 * 2003: Lawrence Ferlinghetti
 * 2004: Richard Howard
 * 2005: Marie Ponsot
 * 2006: Maxine Kumin
 * 2007: John Hollander
 * 2008: Michael S. Harper
 * 2009: X.J. Kennedy
 * 2010: Lucille Clifton
 * 2011: Charles Simic