Advertisement

Richard Howard

Richard Howard

Richard Howard

Poet, essayist, and translator Richard Howard was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1929. He studied at Columbia University and the Sorbonne, and, early in his career, worked as a lexicographer. He served as the poetry editor of The Paris Review from 1992 to 2004. His first collection of poems, Quantities, was published in 1962. His landmark volume of essays Alone with America: Essays on the Art of Poetry in the United States Since 1950 (1969) characterized the poetics of a major generation of American poets. Howard won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Untitled Subjects and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1996. A major translator from the French, Howard’s version of Les fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire won the American Book Award; he also translated important works by Roland Barthes, André Breton, Emil Cioran, André Gide, and many others, including The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. In 1982, the French government named him a Chevalier of l'Ordre national du Mérite. He is professor emeritus of professional practice of writing at Columbia University and lives in New York City.

Interview
Poetry
Daily
Feature
In Memory