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National Book Award for Poetry
The National Book Award for Poetry has been given since 1950 and is part of the National Book Awards, which are given annually for outstanding literary works by American citizens. No award for poetry was given 1985-90.
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Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He received the 1947...
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Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for an insurance company in...
John Crowe Ransom
John Crowe Ransom (April 30, 1888, Pulaski, Tennessee- July 3, 1974, Gambier, Ohio) was an American poet, essayist, social and political theorist, man of letters, and academic.
Ransom was the third of four children of a Methodist minister. His...
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Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was a Modernist American poet and writer noted for her irony and wit.
Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, in the manse of the Presbyterian church where her maternal grandfather, John Riddle...
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963), also known as WCW, was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine. Williams "worked harder at being a...
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973, pronounced /ˈwɪstən ˈhjuː ˈɔːdən/) who signed his works W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet, born in England, later an American citizen, regarded by many as one of the greatest writers of...
Conrad Aiken
Conrad Potter Aiken (5 August 1889 – 17 August 1973) was an American novelist and poet, whose work includes poetry, short stories, novels, and an autobiography.
Aiken was born in Savannah, Georgia. When Aiken was eleven years of age, his physician...
Theodore Roethke
Theodore Huebner Roethke (pronounced /ˈrɛtkə/ RET-keh) (May 25, 1908 – August 1, 1963) was an American poet, who published several volumes of poetry characterized by its rhythm and natural imagery. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in...
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish (7 May 1892 – 20 April 1982) was an American poet, writer and the Librarian of Congress. He is associated with the modernist school of poetry. He has received three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.
MacLeish was born in Glencoe,...
Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1946....
Randall Jarrell
Randall Jarrell (6 May 1914 – 14 October 1965) was an American poet, critic,children's author, essayist, and novelist. He was the 11th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.
Jarrell was a native of Nashville, Tennessee and...
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Richard Eberhart
Richard Ghormley Eberhart (April 5, 1904 – June 9, 2005) was an American poet who published more than a dozen books of poetry and approximately twenty works in total. He received the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Selected Poems: 1930-1965 and a...
William Stafford
William Edgar Stafford (January 17, 1914 – August 28, 1993) was an American poet and pacifist, and the father of poet and essayist Kim Stafford. He was appointed the twentieth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1970....
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James Dickey
James Lafayette Dickey (2 February 1923 – 19 January 1997) was an American poet and novelist. He was appointed the eighteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1966.
Dickey was born to lawyer, Eugene Dickey, and...
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Robert Bly
Robert Bly (born December 23, 1926) is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement in the United States.
Robert Bly was born in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota to Jacob and Alice Bly, people of Norwegian ancestry ...
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John Berryman
John Allyn Berryman (born John Allyn Smith, Jr.) (October 25, 1914 – January 7, 1972) was an American poet, born in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and often considered one of the...
Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop (8 February 1911 – 6 October 1979) was an American poet and writer. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, and a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956. Elizabeth Bishop House is an artist's retreat in Great...
Richard Wilbur
Richard Purdy Wilbur (born 1 March 1921) is an American poet. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987, and twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1957 and again in 1989.
Wilbur was...
Frank O'Hara
Francis Russell O'Hara (March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American poet who, along with John Ashbery, James Schuyler, Barbara Guest and Kenneth Koch, was a key member of the New York School of poetry.
Frank O'Hara, the son of Russell Joseph O...
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Howard Moss
Howard Moss (January 22, 1922–September 16, 1987) was an American poet, dramatist and critic, who was poetry editor of The New Yorker magazine from 1948 until his death. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1971 and the National Book Award in...
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James Merrill
James Ingram Merrill (March 3, 1926 – February 6, 1995) was a Pulitzer Prize winning American poet. His poetry falls into two distinct bodies of work: the polished and formalist (if deeply emotional) lyric poetry of his early career, and the epic...
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (pronounced /ˈɡɪnzbərɡ/; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet. Ginsberg is best known for the poem "Howl" (1956), in which he celebrates fellow members of the Beat Generation and critiques what he saw as the...
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Marilyn Hacker
Marilyn Hacker (born 1942) is an American poet, critic, and reviewer. Her books of poetry include Going Back to the River (1990), Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons (1986), and Presentation Piece (1974), which won the National Book Award....
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W. S. Merwin
William Stanley Merwin (New York City, September 30, 1927) is an American poet. During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin's unique craft was thematically characterized by indirect, unpunctuated narration. In the 80s and 90s, Merwin's writing...
Philip Levine
Philip Levine (b. January 10, 1928, Detroit, Michigan) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet.
Howard Nemerov
Howard Nemerov (29 February 1920 – 5 July 1991) was American poet, twice appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1963 to 1964, and again from 1988 to 1990. He received the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize for...
Lisel Mueller
Lisel Mueller (born February 8, 1924) is an award-winning American poet.
She was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1924 and immigrated to America at the age of 15. Her father, Fritz Neumann, was a professor at Evansville College. Her mother died in 1953....
Archie Randolph Ammons
Archie Randolph Ammons, (February 18, 1926 – February 25, 2001) was an award-winning American poet.
Ammons grew up on a tobacco farm near Whiteville, in southeastern North Carolina. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. After the war, he...
Charles Wright
Charles Wright (born August 25, 1935) is an American poet.
Wright was born in Pickwick Dam, Tennessee, and attended Davidson College and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Wright has been widely published, winning the National Book Award in...
Galway Kinnell
Galway Kinnell (born February 1, 1927 in Providence, Rhode Island) is one of the most influential American poets of the latter half of the 20th century. An admitted follower of Walt Whitman, Kinnell rejects the idea of seeking fulfillment by...
John Ashbery
John Ashbery (born July 28, 1927) is an American poet. He has won nearly every major American award for poetry and is recognized as one of America's most important, though still controversial, poets. In an article on Elizabeth Bishop in his Selected...
Stanley Kunitz
Stanley Jasspon Kunitz (pronounced /ˈkjuːnɪts/) (29 July 1905 – 14 May 2006) was an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress twice, first in 1974 and then again in 2000.
Kunitz was born in...
Mona Van Duyn
Mona Jane Van Duyn (9 May 1921 – 2 December 2004) was an American poet. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1992.
Van Duyn was born in Waterloo, Iowa. She grew up in the small town of Eldora (pop. 3,200...
William Bronk
William Bronk (1918-02-17-1999-02-22) was an American poet. He won the American Book Award in 1982.
James Tate
James Vincent Tate (born December 8, 1943) is an American poet who has received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He was born in Kansas City, Missouri and is a professor of poetry at the University of Massachusetts.
Tate's writing...
Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the [20th] century."
Adrienne Rich was born in Baltimore, Maryland on May 16, 1929. Her...
Hayden Carruth
Hayden Carruth (August 3, 1921 – September 29, 2008) was an American poet and literary critic. He taught at Syracuse University.
Hayden Carruth grew up in Woodbury, Connecticut, and was educated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and...
Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton (born June 27, 1936) is an American poet, writer, and educator from New York. Common topics in her poetry include the celebration of her African American heritage, and feminist themes, with particular emphasis on the female body....
William Morris Meredith, Jr.
William Morris Meredith, Jr. (9 January 1919 - 30 May 2007) was an American poet and educator. He was Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1978 to 1980.
Meredith was born in New York City to William Morris Meredith, Sr....
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Gerald Stern
Gerald Stern (born February 22, 1925) is an American poet.
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...
Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver (born September 10, 1935) is an American poet.
Oliver was born to Edward William and Helen M. V. Oliver on September 10, 1935, in Maple Heights, Ohio, a semi-rural suburb of Cleveland. She briefly attended both Ohio State University and...
Ai
Florence Anthony (born January 2, 1947) is an American poet who legally changed her name to Ai.
Ai, who has described herself as ½ Japanese, Choctaw-Chickasaw, Black, Irish, Southern Cheyenne, and Comanche, was born in Albany, Texas in 1947, and she...
Alan Dugan
Alan Dugan (February 12, 1923-September 3, 2003) was an American poet. His poetry is known for its plain and direct language, though it is supported by technical skill; it is generally trenchant and ironic in its criticism of American life and...
Ruth Stone
Ruth Stone (born June 8, 1915, in Roanoke, Virginia) is an American poet, author, and teacher.
Ruth Stone is the author of thirteen books of poetry. She is the recipient of many awards and honors, including the 2002 National Book Award (for her...
C. K. Williams
Charles Kenneth Williams (b. November 4, 1936, Newark, New Jersey) is an American poet.
He graduated from Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, and received his higher education at the University of Pennsylvania. He began his career as a...
Jean Valentine
Jean Valentine (born 1934) is an American poet, and currently the New York State Poet (2008 - 2010).
She was born in Chicago, received bachelor of arts and a master of arts degrees at Radcliffe College, and has lived most of her life in New York...
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Nathaniel Mackey
Nathaniel Mackey is an American poet, novelist, anthologist, literary critic, editor and Professor of Literature at UC Santa Cruz. Mackey is a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets.
He has been editor and publisher of Hambone since 1982....
Robert Hass
Robert L. Hass (born March 1, 1941 San Francisco) is a Pulitzer Prize winning American poet. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. He was awarded the 2007 National Book Award and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Time and...
Mark Doty
Mark Doty (born August 10, 1953 in Maryville, Tennessee) is a National Book Award winning American poet and memoirist. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, then received his Master of Fine Arts in creative...
