Discussion
Ask a question about 'Frost Medal' Start a new discussion about 'Frost Medal' Answer questions from other users |
The
Robert Frost Medal is an award of the
Poetry Society of AmericaThe Poetry Society of America is a literary organization founded in 1910 by poets, editors, and artists including Witter Bynner. It is the oldest poetry organization in the United States. Past members of the have included such renowned writers as Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Edna St. Vincent...
for "distinguished lifetime service to American poetry." Medalists receive a prize purse of $2,500.
The medal was first presented in 1930 to Jessie Rittenhouse, and to the memory of Bliss Carmen and
George Edward WoodberryGeorge Edward Woodberry, Litt. D., LL. D. was an American literary critic and poet. -Education:Woodberry was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, on May 12th, 1855. The Woodberrys or Woodburys—various spellings of the name exist—immigrated early and, since settlement took root on the North Shore, have...
For the for the following 53 years, the Frost Medal was awarded only eleven times, to poets at the end of their careers. In 1984, it became an annual award to a living poet. Since 1995, the recipient of the Frost Medal has delivered the Frost Medal Lecture, a retrospective reading and talk that is the highlight of the Annual Awards Ceremony.
Robert FrostRobert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...
was the fourth recipient of the Frost Medal, in 1941, after he had retired from
Amherst CollegeAmherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
.
Robert Frost medalists
- 1930: Jessie Rittenhouse
- 1930: Bliss Carmen (in memoriam)
- 1930: George Edward Woodberry
George Edward Woodberry, Litt. D., LL. D. was an American literary critic and poet. -Education:Woodberry was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, on May 12th, 1855. The Woodberrys or Woodburys—various spellings of the name exist—immigrated early and, since settlement took root on the North Shore, have...
(in memoriam)
- 1941: Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...
- 1942: Edgar Lee Masters
Edgar Lee Masters was an American poet, biographer, and dramatist...
- 1943: Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American lyrical poet, playwright and feminist. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and was known for her activism and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work...
- 1947: Gustav Davidson
Gustav Davidson was a poet, writer, and publisher.Davidson attended Columbia University in New York City and worked for the Library of Congress.-Works:...
- 1951: Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...
- 1952: Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,...
- 1955: Leona Speyer
- 1967: Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore was an American Modernist poet and writer noted for her irony and wit.- Life :Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, in the manse of the Presbyterian church where her maternal grandfather, John Riddle Warner, served as pastor. She was the daughter of mechanical engineer and inventor...
- 1971: Melville Cane
- 1974: John Hall Wheelock
John Hall Wheelock was an American poet. He was a descendant of Eleazar Wheelock, founder of Dartmouth College.He wrote fourteen books of poetry and was co-winner of the 1962 Bollingen Prize...
- 1976: A.M. Sullivan
- 1984: Jack Stadler
- 1985: Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...
- 1986: Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
/ Richard EberhartRichard Ghormley Eberhart was an American poet who published more than a dozen books of poetry and approximately twenty works in total...
- 1987: Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...
/ Sterling Brown
- 1988: Carolyn Kizer
Carolyn Ashley Kizer is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet of the Pacific Northwest whose works reflect her feminism.-Life and work:...
- 1989: Gwendolyn Brooks
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an American poet. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.-Biography:...
- 1990: Denise Levertov
-Early life and influences:Levertov was born and grew up in Ilford, Essex.Couzyn, Jeni Contemporary Women Poets. Bloodaxe, p74 Her mother, Beatrice Spooner-Jones Levertoff, came from a small mining village in North Wales...
/ James LaughlinJames Laughlin was an American poet and literary book publisher who founded New Directions Publishers.- Biography :He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Henry Hughart and Marjory Rea Laughlin...
- 1991: Donald Hall
Donald Hall is an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2006.-Personal life:...
- 1992: Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."-Early life:...
/ David Ignatow-Life:David Ignatow was born in Brooklyn on February 7, 1914, and spent most of his life in the New York City area. He died on November 17, 1997, at his home in East Hampton, New York. His papers are held at University of California, San Diego.-Career:...
- 1993: William Stafford
- 1994: A.R. Ammons
- 1995: John Ashbery
John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...
- 1996: Richard Wilbur
Richard Purdy Wilbur is an American poet and literary translator. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987, and twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1957 and again in 1989....
- 1997: Josephine Jacobsen
- 1998: Stanley Kunitz
Stanley Jasspon Kunitz was an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress twice, first in 1974 and then again in 2000.-Biography:...
- 1999: Barbara Guest
Barbara Guest née Barbara Ann Pinson was an American poet and prose stylist. Guest first gained recognition as a member of the first generation New York School of poetry....
- 2000: Anthony Hecht
Anthony Evan Hecht was an American poet. His work combined a deep interest in form with a passionate desire to confront the horrors of 20th century history, with the Second World War, in which he fought, and the Holocaust being recurrent themes in his work.-Early years:Hecht was born in New York...
- 2001: Sonia Sanchez
Sonia Sanchez is an African American poet most often associated with the Black Arts Movement. She has authored over a dozen books of poetry, as well as plays and children's books...
- 2002: Galway Kinnell
Galway Kinnell is an American poet. He was Poet Laureate of Vermont from 1989 to 1993. An admitted follower of Walt Whitman, Kinnell rejects the idea of seeking fulfillment by escaping into the imaginary world. His best-loved and most anthologized poems are "St...
- 2003: Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...
- 2004: Richard Howard
Richard Howard is an American poet, literary critic, essayist, teacher, and translator. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio and is a graduate of Columbia University, where he studied under Mark Van Doren, and where he now teaches...
- 2005: Marie Ponsot
Marie Ponsot, née Birmingham is an American poet, literary critic, essayist, teacher, and translator.-Life:Ponsot was born in Brooklyn, New York, but along with her brother grew up in Jamaica, Queens. She was already writing poems as a child, some of which were published in the Brooklyn Daily...
- 2006: Maxine Kumin
Maxine Kumin is an American poet and author. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1981-1982.-Early years:...
- 2007: John Hollander
John Hollander is a Jewish-American poet and literary critic. As of 2007, he is Sterling Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University...
- 2008: Michael S. Harper
Michael Steven Harper is an American poet from Brooklyn, who was the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island from 1988 to 1993. He has published ten books of poetry, two of which, "Dear John, Dear Coltrane" and "Images of Kin" , have been nominated for the National Book Award. A great deal of his poetry...
- 2009: X.J. Kennedy
- 2010: Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton was an American writer and educator from Buffalo, New York. From 1979–1985 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland...
- 2011: Charles Simic
Dušan "Charles" Simić is a Serbian-American poet, and was co-Poetry Editor of the Paris Review. He was appointed the fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2007.-Early years:...
See also
External links