1937-1941

Joseph Auslander

Auslander (1897-1965) was born in Philadelphia. He received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, and studied at the Sorbonne on a Parker Fellowship. Auslander is the author of several books of poetry as well as the co-author of two novels, and was the recipient of the Robert Frost Award and the Royal Saint Olav Medal. He was a lecturer of poetry at Columbia University from 1929 to 1937 before being appointed as the first Consultant in Poetry and serving four years.

1943-1944

Allen Tate

Tate (1899-1979) was born in Kentucky and educated at Vanderbilt University. The author of 14 poetry collections, two biographies, a novel, and more than 15 books of prose, Tate won the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1956. He was a founding editor of The Fugitive, a poetry magazine published out of Nashville, named for the group of Southern poets and literary scholars to which Tate belonged. From 1951 until his retirement, Tate was a professor of English at the University of Minnesota.

1944-1945

Robert Penn Warren

Warren (1905-1989) was born in Kentucky and educated at Vanderbilt University and the University of California, Berkeley. Though perhaps best known for his 1946 novel All the King’s Men, he was the author of over a dozen books of poetry in addition to his prose work. He is the only writer to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction (in 1947) and poetry (in 1958 and 1979). Warren’s other honors include a Rhodes Scholarship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the National Medal of Arts. He taught at Southwestern College (now Rhodes College) in Memphis and co-authored several literature textbooks.

1945-1946

Louise Bogan

Bogan (1897-1970) was born in Maine and raised in mill towns throughout New England. She is the author of six poetry collections, including Collected Poems 1923-1953, which won a shared Bollingen Prize in 1954. Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts, as well as an award from the Academy of American Poets. In addition to her poetry, Bogan published several books of prose and translations. She served as the poetry reviewer for The New Yorker for nearly 40 years.

1946-1947

Karl Shapiro

Shapiro (1913-2000) was born in Baltimore and received his bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University. He wrote and published V-Letter and Other Poems during his service in World War II’s Pacific Theater, and subsequently won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1945. Shapiro taught at the University of Nebraska from 1956-1966, and published more than a dozen poetry collections throughout his career. In addition to his Pulitzer, he won the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1966.

1947-1948

Robert Lowell

Lowell (1917-1977) was born in Boston and received a degree in classics from Kenyon College. The author of many collections of poetry spanning four decades, he received a Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for Lord Weary’s Castle and the National Book Award in 1960 for Life Studies. Over the course of his career, he taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Boston University, and Yale University, among others. Lowell is considered by many to be the “father of confessional poetry.”

1948-1949

Léonie Adams

Adams (1899-1988) was born in Brooklyn, New York. She studied at Barnard College, and began publishing poems while still a student there. The author of five poetry collections, she received a shared Bollingen Prize in 1954 for Poems: A Selection, as well as the 1974 Academy Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Shelley Memorial Award. She taught English at various institutions, including Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University.

1949-1950

Elizabeth Bishop

Bishop (1911-1979) was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, and educated at Vassar College. She is the author of several poetry collections, including Poems: North & South/A Cold Spring, winner of the 1956 Pulitzer Prize; The Complete Poems, winner of the 1970 National Book Award; and Geography III, winner of the 1977 National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other honors include the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award, the Shelley Memorial Award, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Bishop taught at Harvard University, New York University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

1950-1952

Conrad Aiken

Aiken (1889-1973) was born in Savannah, Georgia, and raised in Massachusetts after his parents’ deaths. At Harvard University, he edited the Advocate with T. S. Eliot. He published numerous poetry collections, and in 1930 received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Selected Poems. Aiken was also the recipient of the National Medal for Literature, the Bollingen Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Book Award. He returned to Savannah for the last several years of his life.

1952

William Carlos Williams

Williams (1883-1963) was born in New Jersey and educated at the University of Pennsylvania. Revered for his modernist and imagist poetry, he published numerous poetry collections, including the five-volume epic Paterson and Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems. Williams won the first National Book Award for Poetry in 1950 for both Paterson: Book Three and Selected Poems, and in 1963 he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems. In addition to his writing, Williams had a lifelong career as a doctor practicing pediatrics and general medicine. Williams was named Consultant in Poetry in 1952, but did not serve.

1956-1958

Randall Jarrell

Jarrell (1914-1965) was born in Nashville, Tennessee. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Vanderbilt University, where he studied under Robert Penn Warren. Jarrell taught at the University of Texas at Austin before he joined the armed forces, an experience that heavily influenced his second and third poetry collections. For The Woman at the Washington Zoo, Jarrell won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1960. In addition to his poetry, Jarrell is noted for his criticism, in particular his essays on other American poets.

1958-1959

Robert Frost

Frost (1874-1963) was born in San Francisco, though his poetry is heavily associated with New England. After briefly attending both Dartmouth College and Harvard University, Frost moved to a farm in Derry, New Hampshire, where he worked and wrote for nine years. Frost is one of the most honored and anthologized American poets. He was the recipient of four Pulitzer Prizes, the Congressional Gold Medal, a posthumous Bollingen Prize, and he served as Poet Laureate of Vermont. Frost taught at Amherst College from 1917 until his death in 1963.

1959-1961

Richard Eberhart

Eberhart (1904-2005) was born in Austin, Minnesota, and graduated from Dartmouth College. The author of more than 30 poetry collections, he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1966 for Selected Poems, 1930-1965 and the National Book Award in 1977 for Collected Poems, 1930-1975. Eberhart’s other honors include a shared Bollingen Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, and the Robert Frost Medal. Eberhart was a professor of English and poet-in-residence at Dartmouth for 30 years, and served as Poet Laureate of New Hampshire from 1979 to 1984.

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