Karl Shapiro

Karl Jay Shapiro (November 10, 1913 – May 14, 2000) was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on 10 November 1913, the son of Joseph and Sarah Omansky Shapiro. He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning United States poet, famous for his poetry written in the Pacific Theater while he served there during World War II. His collection V-Letter and Other Poems, written while Shapiro was stationed in New Guinea, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1945, while Shapiro was still in the military. Shapiro was American Poet Laureate in 1946 and 1947. (At the time this title was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress which was changed by Congress in 1985 to Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.) His other works include Person, Place and Thing (1942), To Abolish Children (1968), and The Old Horsefly (1993). Shapiro received the 1969 Bollingen Prize for Poetry, sharing the award that year with John Berryman. He died in New York City on May 14, 2000.

Awards

• Jeanette S Davis Prize and Levinson prize, both from Poetry in 1942
• Contemporary Poetry prize, 1943
• American Academy of Arts and Letters grant, 1944
• Guggenheim Foundation fellowships, 1944, 1953
• Pulitzer Prize in poetry, 1945, for V-Letter and Other Poems
• Shelley Memorial Prize, 1946
• Poetry Consultant at the Library of Congress (United States Poet Laureate), 1946-47
• Kenyon School of Letters fellowship, 1956-57
• Eunice Tietjens Memorial Prize, 1961
• Oscar Blumenthal Prize, Poetry, 1963
• Bollingen Prize, 1968
• Robert Kirsch Award, LA Times, 1989
• Charity Randall Citation, 1990
• Fellow in American Letters, Library of Congress

Selected bibliography

Poetry

• Adult Bookstore (1976)
• Auto Wreck (1941)
• Collected Poems, 1940-1977 (1978)
• Essay on Rime (1945)
• New and Selected Poems, 1940-1987 (1988)
• Person, Place, and Thing (1942)
• Place of Love (1943)
• Poems (1935)
• Poems 1940-1953 (1953)
• Poems of a Jew (1950)
• Poet: Volume I: The Younger Son (1988)
• The Bourgeois Poet (1964)
• The Old Horsefly (1993)
• The Place of Love (1943)
• Trial of a Poet (1947)
• V-Letter and Other Poems (1945)
• White Haired Lover (1968)

Autobiography

• Reports of My Death (1990)

Essays

• The Poetry Wreck (1975)
• To Abolish Children and Other Essays (1968)
• A Primer for Poets (1965)
• In Defense of Ignorance (1960)

Fiction

• Edsel (1971)

External links

• 1988 audio interview of Karl Shapiro by Don Swaim

Shapiro Spanish Translation. Raúl Racedo.Argentina. [[1]]