Allen Grossman, Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus in
the Humanities in the Johns Hopkins
University Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, has been
named the 2009 winner of Yale University's
Bollingen Prize in American Poetry.
Established in 1949, the $100,000 prize is awarded
biennially by the Yale University Library to
an American poet for the best book published during the
previous two years, or for lifetime
achievement in poetry. The award places Grossman in the
company of renowned poets Wallace
Stevens, Marianne Moore, W.H. Auden, E.E. Cummings, Louise
Gluck and Adrienne Rich, and of
Archibald MacLeish, Grossman's teacher at Harvard.
In choosing him, the three-judge panel described
Grossman as "a profoundly original American
poet whose work embraces the co-existence of comedy and
tragedy, exploring the intersection of high
poetic style and an often startling vernacular." The judges
said his most recent book, Descartes'
Loneliness (New Directions, December 2007), "is a bold
and haunting late meditation, comparable to
Thomas Hardy's masterpiece, Winter Words." The panel goes
on to describe Grossman as "a
distinguished teacher of poetics and literature, [who] has
influenced three generations of American
writers."
Upon receiving notification that he'd won, Grossman
said, "I read it several times in
astonishment. The Bollingen Prize is an exceptional honor
— and the money that comes with it is a small
compensation for getting old."
A fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
Grossman has received many awards
during his career, including a fellowship from the National
Endowment for the Arts in 1985 and a
MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called "genius grant," in
1989. But through the years, he said he's most
proud of the teaching awards he received, including a
Distinguished Faculty Award from his Johns
Hopkins students in 1999.
"What I greatly liked to do was to teach great works
in the tradition of The Iliad and The
Odyssey," Grossman said. "I tended to win teaching
awards, and that's the kind of recognition that
made a difference to me. If there is anything I miss as a
professor emeritus, it's being in the
classroom."
Grossman joined the
Department of English at Johns Hopkins in 1991. He
began his teaching
career in 1957 at Brandeis University, where he received
his doctorate in 1960. His many collections
of poetry include A Harlot's Hire (1959), The
Woman on the Bridge Over the Chicago River (1979),
The Bright Nails Scattered on the Ground (1986),
The Ether Dome and Other Poems, New and
Selected 1979-1991 (1991), How to Do Things With
Tears (2001) and Sweet Youth (2002).
Since retiring from teaching in 2005, Grossman
published Descartes' Loneliness, and in May the
University of Chicago Press will be publishing
True-Love: Essays on Poetry and Valuing, which
Grossman says will be his "farewell text" and will include
things he wrote while he was at Johns Hopkins.
"The English Department is thrilled to see Professor
Grossman receive this great honor," said
department chair Amanda Anderson, the Caroline Donovan
Professor in English Literature. "In his
years at Johns Hopkins, he stood out as an exceptionally
charismatic and humane teacher."