Karl Shapiro | |
---|---|
Born | Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. | November 10, 1913
Died | May 14, 2000 New York City, New York, U.S. | (aged 86)
Occupation | Poet, essayist |
Alma mater | University of Virginia Peabody Institute Johns Hopkins University |
Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1945) Bollingen Prize in Poetry (1969) |
Spouse | Evalyn Katz (1945–1967) Teri Kovach (m. 1967) Sophie Wilkins (m. 1984-his death) |
Karl Jay Shapiro (November 10, 1913 – May 14, 2000) was an American poet.
Shapiro was born in Baltimore, Maryland. After graduating from Johns Hopkins University in 1939, he was in the U. S. Army for most of World War II. He wrote poems and sent them home to be printed during the war.[1] V-Letter and Other Poems won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1945.[2] He was the editor of Poetry magazine from 1948 to 1950.[3]
He was named to be the fifth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1946.[4] In 1948 he voted against giving Ezra Pound the first Bollingen Prize for Poetry because of Pound's anti-semitism and support for fascism during World War II.[1] He himself won the Bollingen Prize in 1969.[5]
Other honors were an Academy of Arts and Letters grant in 1944,[6] a Guggenheim Fellowship,[7] and the Shelley Memorial Prize of the Poetry Society of America.[8]
Shapiro died in New York City in 2000.[8]