Richard Eberhart

Richard Ghormley Eberhart (April 5 1904 – June 9, 2005) was a prolific American poet who published more than a dozen books of poetry and approximately twenty works in total. Eberhart has been widely recognized for his poetry, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1966 for "Selected Poems: 1930-1965" and a National Book Award in 1977 for "Collected Poems: 1930-1976".

Early career 1904 to 1945

Eberhart was born in 1904 in Austin, a small town in southeast Minnesota. He grew up on a 40 acre (162,000 m²) estate called Burr Oaks, since partitioned into hundreds of residential lots. He published a volume of poetry called "Burr Oaks" in 1947, and many of his poems reflect his youth in rural America.

Eberhart began college at the University of Minnesota, but following his mother's death from cancer in 1921 -- the event that prompted him to begin writing poetry -- he transferred to Dartmouth College. After graduation he worked as a ship's hand, among other jobs, then studied at St. John's College, Cambridge, where I.A. Richards encouraged him to continue writing poetry, and where he took a further degree. After serving as private tutor to the son of King Prajadhipok of Siam in 1931-1932, Eberhart pursued graduate study for a year at Harvard University.

His first book of poetry "A Bravery of Earth" was published in London in 1930. It reflected his experiences in Cambridge and his experience as a ship's hand. "Reading the Spirit" published in 1937 contains one of his best known poems "The Groundhog".

He taught for eight years at the St. Mark's School (1933-1941), where Robert Lowell was one of his students. In 1941 he married Helen Butcher. They had two children.

During World War II he served in the U.S. Naval Reserve; this experience led him to write, in one of his best-known poems, "The Fury of Aerial Bombardment":

::::::Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity?::::::Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all?::::::Is the eternal truth man's fighting soul::::::"Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?"

In 1945, Eberhart published "Poems: New and Selected" containing "The Fury of Aerial Bombardment" and other poems written during his service including "Dam Neck, Virginia" and "World War". He also edited "War and the Poet: An Anthology of Poetry Expressing Man's Reactions to the Present" claiming to be the first collection of poems based on war.

Later career 1945 to 2005

After the war, Eberhart worked for six years for his wife's family's floor wax company, the Butcher Polish Company. "Burr Oaks" was his first work published after the war in 1947 followed by "Brotherhood of Men" in 1949. In 1950 he was a founder of the Poets' Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

From the early 1950s until his retirement he dedicated himself to writing poems and teaching at institutions of higher education, including the University of Washington, Brown University, Swarthmore College, Tufts University, Trinity College, University of Connecticut, Columbia University, University of Cincinnati, Wheaton College, Princeton University and Dartmouth College. He taught for 30 years at Dartmouth as professor of English and poet-in-residence, where he was known for his encouragement of young poets.

Eberhart published "Undercliff: Poems 1946-1953" containing "Fragment of New York" in 1953. Eberhart wrote a number of dramatic works in the 1950s and early 1960s which were performed regionally. These works included "The Apparition", "The Visionary Farms", "Triptych", "The Mad Musicians" and "Devils and Angels". In 1962, these works were published as "Collected Verse Works".

In 1956, "The New York Times" sent Richard Eberhart to San Francisco to report on the Beat poetry scene there. Eberhart wrote a piece published in the September 2, 1956 "New York Times Book Review" entitled "West Coast Rhythms" that helped call national attention to the Beat generation, and especially to Allen Ginsberg as the author of "Howl", which he called "the most remarkable poem of the young group" (Allen Ginsberg, "Howl: Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript & Variant Editions, Fully Annotated by Author, with Contemporaneous Correspondence, Account of First Public Reading, Legal Skirmishes, Precursor Texts & Bibliography", edited by Barry Miles [HarperPerennial, 1995] , p. 155).

President Eisenhower appointed Eberhart as a member of the Advisory Committee on the Arts for the National Cultural Centre in 1959. As well, Eberhart was Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress for 1959-61, and was awarded a Bollingen Prize in 1962.

"The Quarry: New Poems" published in 1964 contained letters in verse to W. H. Auden and William Carlos Williams as well as elegies, lyrics, character sketches and monologues. His "Selected Poems, 1930–1965" (1965) won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. "Collected Poems, 1930–1976", which appeared in 1976, won the National Book Award in 1977. He was New Hampshire's Poet Laureate from 1979 to 1984, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1982. Eberhart has also won the Shelley Memorial Award, the Harriet Monroe Memorial Award, and the Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America.

Written works

Eberhart's published works include:

* "A Bravery of Earth" 1930
* "Reading the Spirit" 1937
* "Song and Idea" 1942
* "War and the Poet: An Anthology of Poetry Expressing Man's Attitudes to War from Ancient Times to the Present" 1945
* "Poems: New and Selected" 1945
* "Burr Oaks" 1947
* "Brotherhood of Men" 1949
* "Undercliff: Poems 1946-1953" 1953
* "Great Praises" 1957
* "Collected Verse Plays" 1962
* "The Quarry: New Poems" 1964
* "Selected Poems: 1930-1965" 1965
* "Shifts of Being" 1968
* "Collected Poems: 1930-1976" 1976
* "The Long Reach: New and Uncollected Works 1948-1984" 1984
* "New and Selected Poems: 1930-1990" 1990

His most notable poems include:

* "The Groundhog"
* "Dam Neck, Virginia"
* "World War"
* "The Fury of Aerial Bombardment"
* "Fragment of New York, 1929"

References

* [http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/623 Academy of American Poets entry on Richard Eberhart]
* [http://www.answers.com/Richard%20Eberhart Answers.com page on Richard Eberhart]
* [http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=842377&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312 ABC News (America) online article on Eberhart's death]
* [http://judithpordon.tripod.com/poetry/id298.html famous (american) poets on "judithpon.com"]

* Allen Ginsberg, "Howl: Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript & Variant Editions, Fully Annotated by Author, with Contemporaneous Correspondence, Account of First Public Reading, Legal Skirmishes, Precursor Texts & Bibliography", edited by Barry Miles [HarperPerennial, 1995] , p. 155

* Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O'Clair, "The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry", 3rd ed., vol. 1: "Modern Poetry" (New York & London: W.W. Norton, 2003), pp. 740-42.

Further reading

* Stuart T. Wright, "Richard Eberhart: A Descriptive Bibliography 1921-1987" Meckler 1989 ISBN 0-88736-346-6

* Bernard F. Engel, "Richard Eberhart" Twayne Publishing 1972 ISBN 0-8057-0228-8

* Joel Roache, "Richard Eberhart: Progress of an American Poet" Oxford University Press 1971 ISBN 0-19-501263-1

* Sydney Lea, Jay Parine and Robin M. Barone (editors), "Richard Eberhart: A Celebration" Middlebury College Publications 1980 ISBN 0-917241-00-2

External links

* [http://www.wiredforbooks.org/richardeberhart/ 1980 interview with Richard Eberhart] by Don Swaim at Wired for Books
* [http://harvardsquarelibrary.org/poets/eberhart.php Richard Eberhart biography and poetry samples. Part of a series of poets.]