William Jay Smith

William Jay Smith studied at Columbia University, Washington University in St. Louis and Wadham College. The recorded working language is English, French and Swedish. The field of work recorded is literature, English-language literature and translating activity. Positions recorded include United States Poet Laureate. Distinctions recorded are Rome Prize, Rhodes Scholarship and Russell Loines Award for Poetry.

• Born — 22 April 1918 • Birthplace — Winnfield, Louisiana, U.S. • Died — 18 August 2015 • Place of death — Lenox, Massachusetts, U.S. • Education — Washington University (AB, MA) Columbia University Wadham College, Oxford University of Florence • Awards — American Academy of Arts and Letters (1975)

William Jay Smith was born in Winnfield, Louisiana. He was brought up at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, south of St. Louis. Smith received his A.B. and M.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and continued his studies at Columbia University. Smith later attended Wadham College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and continued his education at the University of Florence. In 1947 he married the poet Barbara Howes and they lived for a time in England and Italy. They had two sons, David Smith and Gregory. They divorced in the mid-1960s. Smith was a poet in residence at Williams College from 1959 to 1967 and taught at Columbia University from 1973 until 1975. He served as the Professor Emeritus of English literature at Hollins University. He was the first Native American named to the position of Poet Laureate in the United States. As of 2008, he lived in houses located in both Cummington, Massachusetts, and Paris, France. Smith was the author of ten collections of poetry of which two were finalists for the National Book Award. He had been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1975. His work appeared in Harper's Magazine, The New York Review of Books,

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* • Poems of a Multimillionaire by Valéry Larbaud (1955) • reprint 1972 • Two Plays by Charles Bertin: "Christopher Columbus" and "Don Juan" (1970) • Songs of C, Federico García Lorca (1994).

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