Robert Mezey

Robert Mezey (February 28, 1935 – April 25, 2020) was an American poet, critic and academic. He was also a noted translator, in particular from Spanish, having translated with Richard Barnes the collected poems of Borges.[1]

He was born in Philadelphia, and attended Kenyon College as a contemporary of E. L. Doctorow and James Wright; after a time and serving in the army he finished in 1959 an undergraduate degree at the University of Iowa. Having worked for a while, he became a graduate student at Stanford University. Then he began teaching at Case Western Reserve University, in 1963. During a year at Franklin and Marshall College he was for a time suspended after an accusation of inciting students to burn draft cards. After holding other positions, he settled in 1976 at Pomona College, until retiring in 2000.[2][3][4]

He received numerous awards including the 2002 Poets' Prize for Collected Poems: 1952-1999.

Works

  • "Fishing Around", The New Yorker, January 21, 2008
  • The Lovemaker (1960), poems, received the Lamont Poetry Prize in 1961.
  • White Blossoms (1965), poems
  • A Book of Dying, poems
  • The Mercy of Sorrow, poems
  • Naked Poetry (1969), anthology, editor with Stephen Berg
  • The Door Standing Open: Selected Poems (1970)
  • Poems from the Hebrew (1973), translator
  • Small Song (1979), poems
  • Tungsteno, novel by Caesar Vallejo (1982), translator
  • Evening Wind (1987), poems
  • Couplets
  • Selected Translations
  • The Collected Poems of Henri Coulette (1990), editor with Donald Justice
  • Natural Selection (1995), poems
  • Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems (1998), editor
  • The Poetry of E. A. Robinson (1999), editor
  • Collected Poems 1952-1999 (2000)
  • Poems of the American West (2002), editor
  • Poems of Jorge Luis Borges, translator with Richard Barnes

References

  1. ^ "Robert Mezey: Poet, Poetry, Picture and Bio".
  2. ^ "TSL Online A&F 030698: Mezey Professes Love for Poetry, Pomona".
  3. ^ "Robert Mezey - Featured Writer". The Pedestal Magazine. Archived from the original on 16 July 2011.
  4. ^ Gioria, Dana (29 April 2020). "Pomona professor, poet and translator Robert Mezey dies". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 30 August 2020.