Louis Simpson

Louis Simpson (born March 27, 1923 in Jamaica) is a United States poet. He won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his work At The End Of The Open Road.

Life

Simpson was born in Jamaica, West Indies, in 1923. His father was a lawyer of Scottish descent, and his mother was Russian. At 17 he and his family emigrated to the United States. He attended Columbia University. During World War II, from 1943 to 1945 he was a member of the 101st Airborne Division. He fought in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. At the end of the war he attended the University of Paris. He lives in Setauket, New York.

Career

Simpson's first book was The Arrivistes, (1949). He received a Ph.D. from Columbia, where he later taught. He also taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and Stony Brook University. In 1975 his book Three on the Tower, a critical study of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and William Carlos Williams, brought Simpson acclaim as a literary critic. Other books of criticism include Ships Going Into the Blue: Essays and Notes on Poetry (1994), The Character of the Poet (1986), A Company of Poets (1981), and A Revolution in Taste: Studies of Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, and Robert Lowell (1978). He has received many awards, such as the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1962 and the Prix de Rome.

Bibliography

The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems, 1940-2001
Nombres et poussière; There You Are (1995)
Ships Going Into the Blue: Essays and Notes on Poetry (1994)
In the Room We Share (1990)
Collected Poems (1988)
The Character of the Poet (1986)
People Live Here: Selected Poems 1949-83 (1983)
The Best Hour of the Night (1983)
A Company of Poets (1981)
Caviare at the Funeral (1980)
Armidale (1979)
A Revolution in Taste: Studies of Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, and Robert Lowell (1978)
Searching for the Ox (1976)
Three on the Tower (1975)
Adventures of the Letter I (1971)
Selected Poems (1965)
At the End of the Open Road, Poems (1963)

External Links