1981-1982

Maxine Kumin

Kumin (1925-2014), born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, received a BA in 1946 and an MA in 1948, both from Radcliffe College. She is the author of 18 poetry collections, including Up Country: Poems of New England, which won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize. Kumin also published more than 20 children’s books, a memoir, five novels, several books of essays, and a collection of short stories. She taught writing at Princeton University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University, and Tufts University.

1982-1984

Anthony Hecht

Hecht (1923-2004), born in New York City, graduated from Bard College in 1944. During his service with the U.S. Army, Hecht’s division helped to liberate the Flossenbürg concentration camp, an event that affected him deeply. While Hecht wrote formal verse expressing dark observations of mankind, he also wrote lyrical evocations of love and, in the 1950s, he invented a humorous poetic form similar to a limerick called the double dactyl. His collection The Hard Hours won the Pulitzer Prize in 1968. He received the Bollingen Prize in 1983, and taught at the University of Rochester and Georgetown.

1984-1985

Robert Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald (1910-1985) served as Consultant in Poetry in a health-limited capacity. He arranged several programs, but did not come to the Library. Fitzgerald grew up in Springfield, Illinois, and received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1933. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Fitzgerald was a journalist for the New York Herald Tribune and Time magazine and the poetry editor of the New Republic. From 1965 to 1981, he was the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University. The author of four poetry collections, Fitzgerald is best known as a translator of ancient Greek and Latin.

1984-1985

Reed Whittemore

Whittemore (1919-2012), who previously served as Consultant in Poetry from 1964 to 1965, served an interim appointment to assist the ailing Fitzgerald.

 

1985-1986

Gwendolyn Brooks

Brooks (1917-2000) was born in Topeka, Kansas, and raised in Chicago, where she spent most of her life. She graduated from Wilson Junior College in 1936, and in 1945 published her first poetry collection, A Street in Bronzeville, to critical acclaim. Her second book of poems, Annie Allen, won the 1950 Pulitzer Prize, making Brooks the first African American recipient of the Pulitzer. In 1988, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Her additional honors include the Frost Medal, the Shelley Memorial Award, and the National Medal of Arts. Brooks taught creative writing at Columbia College Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago State University, Columbia University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

1986-1987

Robert Penn Warren

Warren (1905-1989), who previously served as Consultant in Poetry from 1944 to 1945, became the first to be designated Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.

 

1987-1988

Richard Wilbur

Wilbur (1921-2017), born in New York City in 1921, earned a bachelor’s from Amherst College in 1942 and a master’s from Harvard in 1947. He served in the U.S. Army as a cryptographer in World War II. He is the author of 14 poetry collections, including Things of This World, which won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in 1957, and New and Collected Poems, for which Wilbur received a second Pulitzer Prize in 1989. His additional honors include the Bollingen Prize, the Robert Frost Medal, and the Shelley Memorial Award. While a professor at Wesleyan University, Wilbur helped found the Wesleyan University Press poetry series in 1959.

1988-1990

Howard Nemerov

Nemerov (1920-1991) previously served as Consultant in Poetry from 1963 to 1964.

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