The Concise Encyclopedia of English and American Poets and Poetry

Stephen Harold Spender was born on February 28, 1909 in London, England. He was educated at University College, Oxford University. With the help of a small independent income, he left Oxford in 1931 to devote himself entirely to poetry writing. His first collection of poetry, Twenty Poems, was published in 1930. His other poetry collections include Poems of Dedication, Edge of Being: Poems, and Dolphins. His first prose book, The Destructive Element, was published in 1934. His other works included The Burning Cactus, Forward from Liberalism, European Witness, World Within World, Learning Laughter, The Year of the Young Rebels, Love-Hate Relations: English and American Sensibilities, and The Thirties and After. He also taught English literature at several universities including the University College of London University. He was named a Commander of the British Empire in 1962 and was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1971. In 1965, he was the first non-American to serve as Consultant in Poetry in English to the Library of Congress. He was knighted in 1983. He died on July 16, 1995 at the age of 86. Donald Andrew Hall Jr. was born in New Haven, Connecticut on September 20, 1928. He received a bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1951. His first collection of poetry, Exiles and Marriages, was published in 1955. His other collections included Without, The Museum of Clear Ideas, and The Painted Bed. He received several awards including the National Book Critics Circle Award for The One Day, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for The Happy Man, the Poetry Society of America's Robert Frost Silver medal, and the Ruth Lilly Prize for poetry. He served as poetry editor of The Paris Review from 1953 to 1962 and was the United States poet laureate for 2006-2007. He was also a memoirist, an essayist, and the author of textbooks and children's books. His memoirs were entitled Life Work and Unpacking the Boxes. His children's book, Ox-Cart Man illustrated by Barbara Cooney, won the Caldecott Medal. He received a National Medal of Arts in 2011. He died on June 23, 2018 at the age of 89.