A poem by this poet

Richard Eberhart

1904–2005

Born in Austin, Minnesota, in 1904 Richard Eberhart’s earliest published poems included work in his college’s undergraduate periodicals, and in The Arts Anthology: Dartmouth Verse 1925, where it was introduced by Robert Frost. After taking a B.A. from Dartmouth, Eberhart followed his father’s advice and entered the business world, as a basement floorwalker at Marshall Field and Company’s department store in Chicago. He managed to publish verse on the side, but soon left the job and traveled around the world on various tramp steamers. He eventually settled at Cambridge University where he took a second BA and an MA in 1933. After marriage to Helen Elizabeth Butcher, and service during WWII, Eberhart moved to Boston where he remained until 1952. He taught at many institutions, including the University of Connecticut, Wheaton College, Dartmouth, Columbia and UCLA Davis. His many honors include appointment to the Library of Congress, a 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Selected Poems 1930-1965 (1965); a 1977 National Book Award for Collected Poems 1930-1976 (1976); and election to one of the fifty chairs of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1982). In 1962 he shared the Bollingen Prize with John Hall Wheelock.