William Meredith

William Meredith (1919-2007). Courtesy PoemHunter.

William Meredith
File:WilliamMeredithPoet.jpg
Born	William Morris Meredith, Jr. January 9 1919(1919-Template:MONTHNUMBER-09) New York City, United States
Died	May 30 2007(2007-Template:MONTHNUMBER-30) (aged 88) New London, Connecticut, U.S.
Occupation	poet, academic
Nationality	United States
Partner(s)	Richard Harteis (1970s-2007)

William Morris Meredith, Jr. (January 9, 1919 - May 30, 2007) was an American poet and academic. He was Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1978 to 1980.

Life

Youth and education

Meredith was born in New York City to William Morris Meredith, Sr. and Nelley Keyser. He began writing while a college student at Princeton University, where his 1st volume of poetry, Love Letter from an Impossible Land, was selected by Archibald MacLeish for publication as part of Yale Series of Younger Poets. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton in 1940 , writing a senior thesis on Robert Frost.

Career

He worked briefly for the New York Times before joining the United States Navy as a flier. Meredith re-enlisted in the Korean War, receiving 2 Air Medals.

Meredith taught at Princeton University, at the University of Hawaii, and at Connecticut College from 1955 to 1983. From 1964 to 1987 Meredith served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

From 1978 to 1980, Meredith was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, the position which in 1985 became the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. He has the distinction of being the first gay poet to receive this honor.

In 1983, he suffered a stroke and was immobilized for 2 years. As a result of the stroke he suffered with expressive aphasia, which affected his ability to produce language. Meredith ended his teaching career and could not write poetry during this period. He regained many of his language skills after intensive therapy and traveling to Britain for treatment.

A long time admirer of Irish poet W.B. Yeats, in the summer of 2006 Meredith fulfilled a long-time ambition of visiting Yeats's spiritual homeplace of Sligo, Ireland. While there he also attended the renowned Yeats International Summer School, which attracts many renowned academics and admirers of Yeats to Sligo every summer.

Meredith died in New London, Connecticut, near his home in Montville, where he lived with his partner of 36 years, poet Richard Harteis.

Recognition

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

A film about his life, Marathon, premiered on November 19, 2008 in Mystic, Connecticut.

Awards

• 1988 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry – Partial Accounts
• 1997 National Book Award for Poetry – Effort at Speech
• 1975 Guggenheim Fellowship

Publications

Poetry

• Love Letter from an Impossible Land. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press (Yale Series of Younger Poets), 1944.
• Ships, and other figures. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1948.
• The Open Sea, and other poems. New York: Knopf, 1957.
• The Wreck of the Thresher, and other poems. New York: Knopf, 1964.
• Winter Verse. privately printed, 1964.
• Year-End Accounts. privately printed, 1965.
• Two Pages from a Colorado Journal. privately printed, 1967.
• Earth Walk: New and selected poems. New York: Knopf, 1970.
• Hazard the Painter. New York: Knopf, 1975. ISBN 978-0-39449634-4
• The Cheer. New York: Knopf, 1980.
• Partial Accounts: New and selected poems. New York: Knopf, 1987. ISBN 978-0-39475191-7
• Effort at Speech: New and selected poems. Evanston, IL: TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0-81015070-6

Non-fiction

• Reasons for Poetry / The Reason for Criticism: Two lectures. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1982.
• The Poet and the Poem. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1990.
• Poems Are Hard to Read. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1991. ISBN 9780472094271

Translated

• Guillaume Apollinaire, Alcools: Poems, 1898-1913. New York: Doubleday, 1964.

Edited

• Shelley: Poems. New York: Dell, 1962.
• University and College Poetry Prizes, 1960-1966, in Memory of Mrs. Fanny Fay Wood. New York: Academy of American Poets, 1966.
• Eighteenth-Century Minor Poets (editor with Mackie L. Jarrell). New York: Dell, 1968.
• Poets of Bulgaria (translated by Denise Levertov et al). Greensboro, NC: Unicorn Press, 1985.
• Window on the Black Sea: Bulgarian poetry in translation (edited with Richard Harteis). Pittsburg, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1992.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation .

Poetry William Meredith "Parents"

Audio / video

• William Meredith (cassette). New York: Academy of American Poets, 1975.
• Selected Poems, 1977 (recording). Watershed, 1977.

See also

• List of U.S. poets

External links

Poems

• William Meredith profile & 7 poems at the Academy of American Poets
• William Meredith 1919–2007 at the Poetry Foundation.
• William Morris Meredith Jr. at PoemHunter (26 poems).
• Selected works by William Meredith.

Audio / video

• William Meredith at YouTube
• marathon the movie

Books

• William Meredith at Amazon.com

About

• William Meredith at NNDB.
• William Meredith page, Connecticut College Library, Department of Special Collections
• Edward Hirsch (Spring 1985). "William Meredith, The Art of Poetry No. 34". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2911/the-art-of-poetry-no-34-william-meredith. 

Etc.

• William Meredith Foundation