William Jay Smith (April 22, 1918 – August 18, 2015) was an American poet. He was appointed the nineteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1968 to 1970.
Life
William Jay Smith was born in Winnfield, Louisiana. He was brought up at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, south of St. Louis. Smith received his A.B. and M.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and continued his studies at Columbia University. Smith later attended Wadham College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and continued his education at the University of Florence.
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 Williams College from 1959 to 1967 and taught at Columbia University from 1973 until 1975. He served as the Professor Emeritus of English literature at Hollins University. He was the first Native American named to the position of Poet Laureate in the United States.
As of 2008, he lived in houses located in both Cummington, Massachusetts, and Paris, France.
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, The New York Review of Books,
Works
Poetry
reprint 2002
Poems for children
reprint 1980
rev. ed., 1989
Translations
Poems of a Multimillionaire by Valéry Larbaud (1955) reprint 1972 Two Plays by Charles Bertin : "Christopher Columbus" and "Don Juan" (1970) Songs of C, Federico García Lorca (1994).
Non-fiction
Editor
Plays
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