1990-1991

Mark Strand

Strand (1934-2014), born on Prince Edward Island, Canada, received a BA from Antioch College, a BFA from Yale, and an MA from the University of Iowa. The author of nearly 20 poetry collections, including Blizzard of One—which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999—he received many honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship and three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Strand also published several books for children, including Mr. and Mrs. Baby; many translations; and he edited several anthologies. Strand taught in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, and was professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University from 2005 until his death in 2014.

1991-1992

Joseph Brodsky

Brodsky (1940-1996), born in Leningrad, left school at age 15 and worked in many occupations, including as a milling machine operator and a geologist-prospector. He began writing poetry at age 18 and studied with Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. After Brodsky was exiled in 1972, he came to the United States. He wrote nine volumes of poetry, including the 1980 acclaimed collection A Part of Speech. His 1986 collection of essays, Less Than One, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987.

1992-1993

Mona Van Duyn

Van Duyn (1921-2004), born in Waterloo, Iowa, received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Northern Iowa and a master’s from the University of Iowa. After six women appointed as Consultants in Poetry, Van Duyn was the first woman to be appointed the title of Poet Laureate. From 1947-67, she co-edited and co-published Perspective: A Quarterly of Literature. Van Duyn’s poetry collection, Near Changes, earned her the 1991 Pulitzer Prize. Her other honors include the 1971 National Book Award for To See, To Take, and the 1971 Bollingen Prize.

1993-1995

Rita Dove

Dove (1952- ), the first African-American Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, was born in Akron, Ohio. A Presidential Scholar as one of the 100 top U.S. high school graduates of 1970, she received her BA from Miami University of Ohio and, after a Fulbright year in Germany, her MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her third poetry collection, Thomas and Beulah, won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize. In 2009 she published Sonata Mulattica, followed in 2016 by Collected Poems 1974-2004. Dove, the only poet awarded both the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts, is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia.

1995-1997

Robert Hass

Hass (1941- ) was born in San Francisco, California. He received his BA from St. Mary’s College and his MA and PhD from Stanford University. Hass is the author of nine poetry collections, including Field Guide (1973), winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize; Praise (1979), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award; Sun Under Wood (1996), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005 (2007), winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. For nearly 20 years, Hass translated the work of Polish poet Czesław Miłosz. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Hass teaches at the University of California at Berkeley.

1997-2000

Robert Pinsky

Pinsky (1940- ), born in New Jersey, was the first Poet Laureate to serve an unprecedented three consecutive terms. He attended Rutgers College and Stanford University, where he held a Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing. He is the author of nine poetry collections, including The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996 (1996) and At the Foundling Hospital (2016). In 1994, his translation of Dante’s Inferno won the Academy of American Poets’ Translation Award. Pinsky lives in Boston, where he teaches in the graduate creative writing program at Boston University.
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1999-2000

Special Bicentennial Consultants
Rita Dove, Louise Glück, and W.S. Merwin

Rita Dove (1952- ) also served as Poet Laureate from 1993-95. She has published 10 books of poetry, a short story collection, a novel, a verse play, and a song cycle with music by John Williams. Thomas and Beulah, her third book, won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize; other honors include the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations. She teaches at the University of Virginia. Louise Glück (1943- ) was born in New York City and grew up on Long Island. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University. She is the author of 16 poetry collections, including The Wild Iris (1993), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Ararat (1990), winner of the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry; and Faithful and Virtuous Night (2014), winner of the National Book Award. Other honors include the Bollingen Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. W. S. Merwin (1927- ) was born in New York City and educated at Princeton University. He is the author of more than 15 books of poetry, including A Mask for Janus, selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets; The Carrier of Ladders, winner of the 1971 Pulitzer Prize; and The Shadow of Sirius, which won Merwin a second Pulitzer Prize. He also published nearly 20 books of translation, numerous plays, and many books of prose. Merwin lives in Hawaii.

2000-2001

Stanley Kunitz

Kunitz (1905-2006) also served as Consultant in Poetry (before the title was changed to “Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry” with the passage in 1985 of P.L. 99-194) from 1974 to 1976. He was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1905. His honors included the National Medal of the Arts (presented to him by President Clinton in 1993), the Bollingen Prize, a Ford Foundation grant, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, Harvard’s Centennial Medal, the Levinson Prize, the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award, a senior fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Shelley Memorial Award. He was designated State Poet of New York, and served as a Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets. A founder of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Poets House in New York City, Kunitz taught for many years in the graduate writing program at Columbia University. He lived in New York City and in Provincetown, Massachusetts, until his death.
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