American poet, opera librettist and literary critic (1945–2018)
J. D. "Sandy" McClatchy (August 12, 1945 – April 10, 2018)[1] was an American poet, opera librettist and literary critic. He was editor of the Yale Review and president of The American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Life
McClatchy was born Joseph Donald McClatchy Jr., in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, in 1945. He was educated at Georgetown and Yale, from which he received his Ph.D. in 1974.[2] He lived in Stonington, Connecticut, and New York.[3] His husband was graphic designer Chip Kidd.[4] His partner from 1977 to 1989 was poet Alfred Corn.
Career
McClatchy's poetic work was wide-ranging. He authored six collections of poetry, the fifth of which, Hazmat, was a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize.[5] He wrote texts for musical settings, including ten opera libretti, for such composers as Michael Dellaira, Elliot Goldenthal, Daron Hagen, Lowell Liebermann, Lorin Maazel, Tobias Picker, Bernard Rands, Ned Rorem, Bruce Saylor, William Schuman and Francis Thorne.[2] His honors include an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1991).[6] He also was one of the New York Public Literary Lions, and received the 2000 Connecticut Governor's Arts Award.
McClatchy was affiliated with Yale University, where he was an adjunct professor, fellow of Jonathan Edwards College, and editor of The Yale Review.[7]
In 1999, he was elected into the membership of The American Academy of Arts and Letters,[8] and in January 2009 he was elected its president.[9] He previously served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1996 until 2003.[10] In addition to these appointments, he was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation,[11] the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets. When he was given an Award in Literature by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1991, the citation read:
J. D. McClatchy is a poet who has emerged into highly distinctive achievement in his third collection, The Rest of the Way. Formally a master, with enormous technical skills, McClatchy writes with an authentic blend of cognitive force and a savage emotional intensity, brilliantly restrained by his care for firm rhetorical control. His increasingly complex sense of our historical overdeterminations is complemented by his concern for adjusting the balance between his own poems and tradition. It may be that no more eloquent poet will emerge in his American generation.
In addition to being Literary Executor to Anthony Hecht and Mona Van Duyn, McClatchy was also, along with UCLA professor and poet Stephen Yenser, co-executor for the literary estate of James Merrill.[12]
