William Morris Meredith, Jr. (January 9, 1919 - May 30, 2007) was an American poet and educator. He graduated from with Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University in 1940 . He was Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1978 to 1980.
[edit] Biography
''Partial Accounts,'' his new and selected poems -which brought Mr. Meredith the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry - is a rigorous accounting of a life's work. In addition to 11 new poems, it contains 93 from seven books written over more than 40 years. Like Richard Wilbur, the poet he most closely resembles, early in his writing life Mr. Meredith wrote a number of war poems that revealed his strong inclination toward and gift for formalism. His first two books - ''Love Letter From an Impossible Land'' (1944) and ''Ships and Other Figures'' (1948) - are sparely represented in this collection (five poems from each), though wartime experiences inform much of his work. Thereafter he emphasized the need for a civilizing intelligence and humane values. In one sense, all of his work constitutes a desire to recognize and then move beyond catastrophe and despair - whether personal, social or historical. Book by book, he has evolved into a poet by sly wit and quiet skill, working out a thoughtful esthetic of orderliness.
Meredith was born in New York City in 1919. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University in 1940 , writing a senior thesis on Robert Frost.
He worked briefly for the New York Times before joining the United States Navy as a flier. Meredith re-enlisted in the Korean War receiving two Air Medals.
Meredith started writing while still a college student. His first volume of poetry Love Letter from an Impossible Land was selected by Archibald MacLeish for publication as part of Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition.
In 1988 Meredith was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and a Los Angeles Times Book Award for "Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems" and in 1997 he was awarded the National Book Award for "Effort at Speech".[1]
