U.S. Consultant in Poetry, 1984-1985
Robert Fitzgerald was born in Springfield, Illinois, in 1910. He was the author of four poetry collections, including Poems (1935), A Wreath for the Sea (1943), and Spring Shade: Poems, 1931-1970 (1972). He also wrote two books of prose and translated or co-translated several volumes. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Fitzgerald worked as a journalist for the New York Herald Tribune and Time magazine, and served as poetry editor of the New Republic. For his work, he received fellowships from the Ford and Guggenheim Foundations, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and was the recipient of the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. Fitzgerald was the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University from 1965-1981, and served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1968-1995. In 1984, he was appointed Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress but was unable to serve due to illness. Robert Fitzgerald died in 1985.
Audio Recordings with Robert Fitzgerald
- As part of Poetry in English at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., May 5, 1969: Academy of American Poets thirty-fifth anniversary program featuring Allen Tate, Elizabeth Bishop, John Hall Wheelock, Louise Bogan, Robert Lowell, Robert Fitzgerald