William Jay Smith

William Jay Smith (April 22, 1918 – August 18, 2015) was an American poet. He was appointed the nineteenth

In 1947 he married the poet Barbara Howes and they lived for a time in England and Italy. They had two sons, David Smith and Gregory. They divorced in the mid-1960s.

Smith was a poet in residence at

As of 2008, he lived in houses located in both Cummington, Massachusetts, and Paris, France.^[4]

Smith was the author of ten collections of poetry of which two were finalists for the National Book Award.

He had been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1975.

His work appeared in Harper's Magazine,^[5] The New York Review of Books,^[6]

Works

Poetry

• Poems. Banyan Press. 1947.
• Celebration at Dark. Farrar, Straus. 1950.
• The Tin Can and Other Poems. Delacorte Press. 1966.
• His Collected Poems: 1939–1989. C. Scribner's Sons. 1990.
  ISBN 978-0-684-19167-6
  .
• The World Below the Window: Poems, 1937–1997. Johns Hopkins University Press. 1998.
  ISBN 978-0-8018-6783-5
  . reprint 2002
• The Cherokee Lottery: A Sequence of Poems. Curbstone Press (original from the University of Michigan). 2000.

• Laughing Time. Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence. 1955.
  ISBN 978-0-440-05534-1
  . reprint 1980
• Boy Blue's Book of Beasts. Little, Brown. 1957.
• Typewriter Town. Dutton. 1960.
  ISBN 0-620-11193-3
  .
• Ho for a Hat!. Joy Street Books. 1964.
  ISBN 978-0-316-80120-1
  . rev. ed., 1989
• Laughing Time: Collected Nonsense. Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence. 1980.
  ISBN 978-0-440-05534-1
  .
• Around My Room. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2000.
  ISBN 978-0-374-30406-5
  .

• Alain Bosquet (July 1995). "Alain Bosquet: Three poems translated by William Jay Smith". The American Poetry Review.
• Poems of a Multimillionaire by Valéry Larbaud (1955)
• Selected Writings of Jules Laforgue. Greenwood Press. 1956.
  ISBN 978-0-8371-0520-8
  . reprint 1972
• Two Plays by Charles Bertin : "Christopher Columbus" and "Don Juan" (1970)
• Songs of C, Federico García Lorca (1994).

• The streaks of the tulip: selected criticism. Delacorte Press. 1972.
• Army brat: a memoir. Persea Books. 1980.
  ISBN 978-0-89255-047-0
  .
• My Friend Tom: The Poet-Playwright Tennessee Williams. University Press of Mississippi. 2012.
  ISBN 978-1-61703-175-5
  .

• James S. Holmes, William Jay Smith, ed. (1984). Dutch interior. Columbia University Press.
  ISBN 978-0-231-05746-2
  .
• Dana Gioia, William Jay Smith, ed. (1985). Poems From Italy. New Rivers Press.

• "The Straw Market". Blackbird. Virginia Commonwealth University. Spring 2006.

Awards

• 1945 Young Poets prize, Poetry
• 1964 Ford fellowship for drama
• 1970 Henry Bellamann Major award
• 1972 Loines award
• 1972, 1995 National Endowment for the Arts grant
• 1975, 1989 National Endowment for the Humanities grant
• 1978 Gold Medal of Labor (Hungary)
• 1980 New England Poetry Club Golden Rose Award
• 1982 Ingram Merrill Foundation grant
• 1990 California Children's Book and Video Awards recognition for excellence (pre-school and toddlers category), for Ho for a Hat!
• 1991 medal (médaille de vermeil) for service to the French language, French Academy
• 1993 Pro Cultura Hungarica medal
• twice a nominee for the National Book Award in poetry
• 1997 René Vásquez Díaz prize, Swedish Academy

References

External links

• "The World below the Window". The Free Library.
• "Laughing Time". Poetry Foundation.
• "Pick Me Up". Poetry Foundation.
• "Moon". Poetry Foundation.
• "Over and Under". Poetry Foundation.
• "The Flight; The Garden". Per Contra. Spring 2008.

External links

• "The CPR Interview: William Jay Smith", The
  Contemporary Poetry Review
• The William Jay Smith Papers at Washington University in St. Louis Archived 2013-01-05 at the Wayback Machine
• "William Jay Smith", 2004 National Book Festival