Gerald Stern

Gerald Stern (born February 22, 1925) is an American poet. His work became widely recognized after the 1977 publication of Lucky Life, which was that year's Lamont Poetry Selection, and of a series of essays on writing poetry in American Poetry Review.  He has subsequently been given many prestigious awards for his writing, including the 1996 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and a National Book Award for poetry in 1998 for his book, This Time: New and Selected Poems. He was Poet Laureate of New Jersey from 2000 to 2002,  and received the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets in 2005. Since 2006, Stern has been a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Stern has taught at Temple University and Indiana University of Pennsylvania. For a number of years prior to achieving fame, he taught at Raritan Valley Community College. For many years he taught poetry writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Stern is former faculty member and co-founder of New England College's Masters of Fine Arts Program in Poetry. Stern is currently serving as distinguished poet-in-residence at Drew University's low-residency MFA Program in Poetry beginning January 2009, with Jean Valentine, the other distinguished poet-in-residence for the program.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. to Harry and Ida Barach Stern, he was educated in the Pittsburgh Public Schools. Stern earned his B.A. at the University of Pittsburgh in 1947 and an M.A. at Columbia University in 1949. He did post-graduate study at the University of Paris in 1949-50. He married Patricia Miller in 1952 (divorced); they have two children: Rachael, a nutrition therapist living in Alabama; and David, an architect living in Massachusetts. Also have 4 grandchildren, Rebecca, Dylan, Julia, and Alana. His companion is poet Anne Marie Macari, and he lives in Lambertville, New Jersey.

Published works
Full-Length Poetry Collections
 * Early Collected Poems, 1965-1992 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010)
 * Save the Last Dance: Poems (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008)
 * Everything Is Burning (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005)
 * Not God After All (Pittsburgh: Autumn House Press, 2004)
 * American Sonnets (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002) (shortlisted for the 2003 International Griffin Poetry Prize)
 * Last Blue (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000)
 * This Time: New and Selected Poems (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998)
 * Bread without Sugar (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992)
 * Two Long Poems (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1990)
 * Leaving Another Kingdom: Selected Poems (New York: Harper & Row, 1990)
 * Lovesick (New York: Perennial Library, 1986)
 * Paradise Poems (New York: Random House, 1984)
 * Odd Mercy (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994)* The Red Coal, poetry, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981)
 * Lucky Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977)
 * Rejoicings: Selected Poems 1966-72 (Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada: Fiddlehead Poetry Books, 1973)
 * The Naming of Beasts (Omaha: Cummington Press, 1972)
 * Pineys (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1971)

Chapbooks
 * The Preacher (Sarabande Books, 2007)

Essay Collectins
 * What I Can't Bear Losing (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2009)
 * What I Can't Bear Losing: Notes from a Life (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004)
 * Selected Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1988)

Honors and awards

 * 2005 Wallace Stevens Award
 * 2005 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry
 * 2000 - 2002 Poet Laureate of New Jersey
 * 1998 National Book Award
 * 1996 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
 * 1992 Paterson Poetry Prize
 * 1991 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry Finalist
 * 1987 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
 * 1982 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
 * 1981 Melville Caine Award
 * 1980 Guggenheim Fellowship
 * 1977 Lamont Poetry Selection
 * 1976 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship