Gerald Stern was a poet who won a National Book Award in 1998 for his collection “This Time: New and Selected Poems.”
- Died: October 27, 2022 (Who else died on October 27?)
- Details of death: Died at Calvary Hospice in New York City at the age of 97.
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Writing career
Stern was a native of Pittsburgh, a home that later influenced his poetry. After serving in the U.S. Army Air Forces just after World War II, he began teaching, including at Temple University and at the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. Success came relatively late to Stern; he was past 50 before he won his first writing award. But his reputation continued to grow in the second half of his life, and he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1991, as well as winning awards including the Melville Caine Award, Paterson Poetry Prize, and National Jewish Book Award in Poetry. His writing was compared to Walk Whitman’s. In 2000, Stern became the first Poet Laureate of New Jersey. He published almost 20 poetry collections over five decades, including his most recent, “Blessed As We Were: Late Selected and New Poems, 2000—2018.”
Notable quote
“There is a sweetness buried in my mind
there is water with a small cave behind it
there’s a mouth speaking Greek
It is what I keep to myself; what I return to;
the one thing that no one else wanted” —from Stern’s poem “The One Thing in Life”
Tributes to Gerald Stern
Full obituary: The New York Times
