With its proximity to the cultural hub of New York City and its quieter suburban and rural landscapes, Connecticut was fertile ground for artists and writers in the period of Modernist movements between 1913 and 1979. Many of these cultural figures are well known through biographical and critical studies. Creative Places seeks to show how place played a significant role in creative work, and how in turn the artists and writers influenced communities in Connecticut.
1926 – 1995
Merrill was one of his generation’s most acclaimed poets, considered peerless among his contemporaries who were writing in meter and rhyme.
- Biography/Description of Work
Over the course of his extraordinary career, Merrill produced twenty-five volumes of poetry, along with three plays, two novels, numerous essays and a memoir. The multilingual author also translated dozens of works of other poets into French, Portuguese, Dutch and modem Greek, and contributed countless introductions, forewords and afterwords to the publications of his colleagues. His work garnered nearly every major award in his field, including the Pulitzer Prize; two National Book Awards in Poetry; the National Book Critics Circle Award; the Library of Congress’s first Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry; Yale’s Bollingen Prize for Poetry; and the Medal of Honor for Literature from the National Arts Club. He was named the first Poet Laureate of Connecticut from 1985 to 1995.
- Sources view
- NR nomination
- Associated Resource(s)