Eberhart, Richard, 1904-2005

Poet and educator.

Pulitzer prize winning poet, b. Apr. 5, 1904, Austin, Minn.; d. June 9, 2005, Hanover, N.H. at age 101.

Eberhart is an American poet who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1966 and the National Book Award in 1977.

American poet.

Richard Eberhart (1904-2005) was a prize-winning American poet. Over his career he published more than a dozen books of poetry and approximately twenty works in total. Eberhart won a Pulitzer Prize in 1966 for Selected Poems: 1930-1965 and a National Book Award in 1977 for Collected Poems: 1930-1976 .

Poet and Professor.

Richard Ghormley Eberhart, American poet. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1966 for Selected poems: 1930-1965.

Distinguished poet Richard Eberhart was born in Minnesota, and lived an idyllic life until experiencing the twin shocks of family financial crisis and his mother's death; his verse was significantly influenced by these experiences, and he would later cite his mother's death as the moment he became a poet. Eberhart was educated at the University of Minnesota, Dartmouth, Cambridge, and Harvard; he later worked various jobs as a tutor and educator, served in the naval reserve in World War II, and worked in business, all the while writing poetry and verse plays. His poetry gained much critical acclaim, including a Bollingen Prize in 1962, the Pulitzer Prize in 1966, and the National Book Award in 1977. He taught for thirty years at Dartmouth, encouraging young poets such as Robert Lowell.

Richard Eberhart was born in Austin, Minnesota, on April 5, 1904. He received a B.A. degree from Dartmouth College, which conferred an Honorary Doctorship in Letters on him in 1954, a B.A. and M.A. from Cambridge University, and attended graduate school at Harvard. He was a school teacher, before entering the U.S. Navy in World War II. After the war, he joined a family business, the Butcher Polish Company of Boston. In 1952 he went back to teaching and served as a poet in residence, professor, and lecturer at various colleges and universities.

His first book, A Bravery of Earth, 1930, was followed by many others, including Reading the Spirit, 1936, Song and Idea, 1940, Undercliff, Poems, 1946-1953, and Great Praises, 1957, and Selected Poems, 1966. His Collected Poems, 1930-1986, was published in 1988. He received many prizes for his work, including the the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award (1955), the Bollingen Prize (1962), the Pulitzer Prize (1966), the National Book Award (1976), and the Poetry Society of America Robert Frost Medal. He was the Library of Congress Consultant in Poetry from 1959 to 1961. He died June 9, 2005.