biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1914–65)
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| biography:
| Poet and literary critic, born in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. He was a student of John Crowe Ransom and Robert Penn Warren at Vanderbilt University. His academic career was interrupted by his service with the Army Air Corps in World War 2 (1942–6), but his war poems attracted national attention in the 1940s. Poetry and the Age (1953), a re-evaluation of modern American poets, established his reputation as a critic with unfailing judgment and a witty style, while his one novel, Pictures from an Institution (1954), is regarded as a minor classic of the academic-novel genre. In 1960 his The Woman at the Washington Zoo won a National Book Award. For most of his career he taught at the University of North Carolina (1947–51, 1953–4, 1961–5), and he was consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress (1956–8). His premature death was the result of being hit by a car. |
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