Donald Justice

Donald Justice (1925-2004). Photo by Curt Richter. Courtesy Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Donald Justice
Born	Donald Rodney Justice August 12, 1925 Miami, Florida, United States
Died	August 6, 2004(2004-Template:MONTHNUMBER-06) (aged 78) Iowa City, Iowa, U.S.
Citizenship	United States
Alma mater	University of Miami, University of Iowa
Notable award(s)	Pulitzer Prize, Bollingen Prize]

Donald Rodney Justice (August 12, 1925 - August 6, 2004) was an American poet and academic who won both the Pulitzer and Bollingen prizes.

Life

Youth and education

Justice grew up in Florida, and earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Miami in 1945. He received an M.A.. from the University of North Carolina in 1947, studied for a time at Stanford University, and then earned a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1954.

Career

Justice taught for many years at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the nation's 1st graduate program in creative writing. He also taught at Syracuse University, the University of California at Irvine, Princeton University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Florida in Gainesville.

In his obituary, Andrew Rosenheim notes that Justice "was a legendary teacher, and despite his own Formalist reputation influenced a wide range of younger writers. His students included Mark Strand, Rita Dove, James Tate, Jorie Graham and novelist John Irving".

His student and later colleague Marvin Bell said in a reminiscence, "As a teacher, Don chose always to be on the side of the poem, defending it from half-baked attacks by students anxious to defend their own turf. While he had firm preferences in private, as a teacher Don defended all turfs. He had little use for poetic theory..."

Writing

Donald Justice, Poets On...

Of Justice's accomplishments as a poet, his former student, poet and critic Tad Richards, noted that: "Donald Justice is likely to be remembered as a poet who gave his age a quiet but compelling insight into loss and distance, and who set a standard for craftsmanship, attention to detail, and subtleties of rhythm."

In summing up Justice's career, David Orr has written: "In most ways, Justice was no different from any number of solid, quiet older writers devoted to traditional short poems. But he was different in one important sense: sometimes his poems weren't just good; they were great. They were great in the way that Elizabeth Bishop's poems were great, or Thom Gunn's or Philip Larkin's. They were great in the way that tells us what poetry used to be, and is, and will be."

Recognition

Justice's debut collection, The Summer Anniversaries, was the winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize given by the Academy of American Poets in 1961. His Selected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1980. He was awarded the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1991, and the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry in 1996.

Other honors included grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1997 to 2003. His Collected Poems was nominated for the National Book Award in 2004. Justice was also a National Book Award Finalist in 1961, 1974, and 1995.

Justice's work was the subject of the 1998 volume Certain Solitudes: On the poetry of Donald Justice, a collection of essays edited by Dana Gioia and William Logan.

Billy Collins included Justice's poem "A Birthday Candle" in his 2003 anthology, Poetry 180.

He is commemorated by the Donald Justice Poetry Prize, awarded annually since 2006 by the West Chester University Poetry Center.

Publications

Poetry

• The Old Bachelor, and other poems. Miami, FL: Pandanus Press, 1951.
• The Summer Anniversaries. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1960
  • revised edition. Nanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1981.
• A Local Storm. Iowa City, IA: Stone Wall Press, 1963.
• Night Light. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967
  • revised edition. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1981.
• Four Poets (with Tom McAfee, Donald Drummond, and R.P. Dickey) Pella, IA: Central College of Pella, 1968.
• Sixteen Poems. Iowa City, IA: Stone Wall Press, 1970.
• From a Notebook. Iowa City, IA: Seamark Press, 1971.
• Departures. New York: Atheneum, 1973.
• Selected Poems. New York: Atheneum, 1979.
• Tremayne. Iowa City, IA: Windhover Press, 1984.
• New and Selected Poems. New York: Knopf, 1995.
• Poems to Go. New York: Knopf, 1995.
• Orpheus Hesitated beside the Black River: Poems, 1952-1997. London: Anvil Press Poetry, 1998.
• Collected Poems. New York: Knopf, 2004.

Non-fiction

• Platonic Scripts (essays). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1984.
• Oblivion: On writers and writing. Ashland, OR: Story Line Press, 1998.

Collected editions

• The Sunset Maker: Poems, stories, a memoir. New York: Atheneum, 1987.
• A Donald Justice Reader: Selected poetry and prose. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1991.

Translated

• Eugène Guillevic, L'Homme qui se ferme / The Man Closing Up. Iowa City, IA: Stone Wall Press, 1973.

Edited

• Weldon Kees, The Collected Poems. Iowa City, IA: Stone Wall Press, 1960
  • revised edition. Loncoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.
• Contemporary French Poetry: Fourteen witnesses of man's fate (edited with Alexander Aspel). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1965.
• Syracuse Poems. Syracuse, NY: Department of English, Syracuse University, 1968.
• Henri Coulette, Collected Poems (edited with Robert Mezey). Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1990.
• Raeburn Miller, The Comma after Love: Selected poems (edited with Cooper R. Mackin & Richard D. Olson). Akron, OH: University of Akron Press, 1994.
• Joe Bolton, The Last Nostalgia: Collected poems, 1982-1990. Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1999.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.

Libretti

• The Young God: A vaudeville (opera by Edward Miller), 1969.
• The Death of Lincoln: an opera by Edwin London on an original libretto by Donald Justice. A. Thomas Taylor, 1988.

Audio / video

Donald Justice, "There Is A Gold Light In Certain Old Paintings."

'Men at Forty' by Donald Justice - Poetry Analysis (How to Read a Poem)-0

• Donald Justice I (cassette). Kansas City, MO: New Letters, 1980.
• Donald Justice: A reading April 29, 1981. Tucson, AZ: Poetry Center, 1981.
• Donald Justice (CD, cassette). New York: Academy of American Poets, 1982.
• Childhood, and other poems (cassette). Washington, DC: Watershed Foundation, 1984.
• Donald Justice Reading (CD). Buffalo, NY: Poetry Collection, University at Buffalo, 1987.
• Donald Justice II (cassette). Kansas City, MO: University of Misouri, [199-?]
• In Pursuit of the Ideal (CD). Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa, 2005.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of U.S. poets

External links

Poems

• Donald Justice profile & poem at the Academy of American Poets
• "A Birthday Candle" at Poetry 180
• "Men at Forty"
• "Counting the Mad"
• Donald Justice 1925-2004 at the Poetry Foundation.
• Donald Justice at PoemHunter (32 poems)

Audio /video

• Donald Justice at YouTube

Books

• Donald Justice at Amazon.com

About

• Donald Justice at the Poetry Center, West Chester University
• Donald Justice at the Fellowship of Southern Writers
• Donald Justice at the Poetry Center, West Chester University
• Donald Justice at NNDB.
• Donald Justice at The Writing University
• Renner, B. (1997). "Donald Justice interview", Elimae (an electronic literary magazine).