Davison, Peter, 1928-2004

Peter Davison (June 27, 1928, New York, New York – December 29, 2004, Boston, Massachusetts) was an American poet, essayist, teacher, lecturer, editor, and publisher. Peter Davison was born in New York City to Edward Davison, a Scottish poet, and Nathalie (née Weiner) Davison. He grew up in Boulder, Colorado, where his father taught at the University of Colorado. Davison attended Harvard University, graduating in 1949. Among his classmates at Harvard were John Ashbery, Robert Bly, and Robert Creeley.

After graduating from Harvard, Davison spent a year at Cambridge University on a Fulbright Fellowship. He worked at publishers Harcourt Brace and at Harvard University Press, serving as an assistant to that press's director. In 1966 he joined the Atlantic Monthly Press, remaining there for 29 years, the final 15 as its director. For 30 years he was also poetry editor for Atlantic Monthly, which later merged with Grove Press to become Grove/Atlantic. In the 1980s he joined Houghton Mifflin, where he edited books for his own imprint from 1985 to 1998. From the 1950s forward he was part of a Boston and New England literary milieu that included Robert Lowell, Robert Frost, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Richard Wilbur, and Donald Hall. In 1963, his first collection of poetry, Breaking of the Day, was selected by Dudley Fitts, for the Yale Younger Poets Prize. He would go on to publish 11 volumes of poetry. His final poetry collection, Breathing Room (2000), received the Massachusetts Book Award. Among the authors Davison edited were Ward Just, Farley Mowat, William Least Heat-Moon, and Robert Coles.