Robert Dana
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Robert Dana | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1929 |
| Died | 2010 |
| Nationality | United States |
| Alma mater | University of Iowa Drake University |
| Awards | Poet Laureate |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Poetry |
| Institutions | Cornell College University of Florida |
Robert Dana (June 1, 1929 to February 6, 2010) was an award-winning American poet and the poet laureate for the State of Iowa.
Biography
Robert Dana was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1929. He served in the South Pacific in World War II as a U.S. Navy radio operator. After the war, he moved from Boston to Des Moines, Iowa, where he attended Drake University and worked as a sports writer for the Des Moines Register. Later he studied at the University of Iowa and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and received a masters degree in 1954. From 1954 to 1994 he served as Poet-in-Residence and Professor of English at Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa.[1] In 1964, Dana was responsible for the resumption of the publication of The North American Review, and served as its editor for a number of years. He also taught at the University of Florida.[1]
Dana published over a dozen collections of his poetry. In addition, Dana's work has appeared in publications such as The Nation, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review and the Sewanee Review.
Dana's poetry won a number of awards. His poetry collection Starting Out for the Difficult World was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. In 1989, he was the recipient of the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award for Poetry, given by New York University. He received a Pushcart Prize in 1996, and has been awarded the Rainer Maria Rilke Prize for Poetry. He was also the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships (1985 and 1993).
In September 2004, Robert Dana was named poet laureate for the State of Iowa. He also served as Distinguished Visiting Writer at Stockholm University and at several American colleges and universities.[1]
Bibliography
Poetry
- My Glass Brother and Other Poems (Constance Press/Stonewall Press 1957)
- The Dark Flags of Waking (1964)
- Some Versions of Silence (W.W.Norton 1967)
- The Power of the Visible (The Swallow Press 1971)
- In a Fugitve Season: A Sequence of Poems (Ohio University Press 1980)
- What the Stones Know (1982)
- Blood Harvest (1986)
- Starting Out for the Difficult World (Harper & Row, 1987)
- What I Think I Know: New and Selected Poems (1991)
- Yes, Everything (Another Chicago Press, 1994)
- Hello, Stranger: Beach Poems (Anhinga Press, 1996)
- Summer (Anhinga Press, 2000)
- The Morning of the Red Admirals (Anhinga Press, 2004)
Prose
- Against the Grain: Interviews with Maverick American Publishers (1986)