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Joseph Auslander
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Joseph Auslander
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Illustration of "The Lamb" from "Songs of Innocence" by William Blake, 1879. poem; poetry
A Study of Poetry
4:043 Dickinson, Emily: A Life of Letters, This is my letter to the world/That never wrote to me; I'll tell you how the Sun Rose/A Ribbon at a time; Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul
Famous Poets and Poetic Form
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) only confirmed photograph of Emily Dickinson. 1978 scan of a Daguerreotype. ca. 1847; in the Amherst College Archives. American poet. See Notes:
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Born:
October 11, 1897, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died:
June 22, 1965, Coral Gables, Florida (aged 67)
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Joseph Auslander
Joseph Auslander In 1937 American poet and novelist Joseph Auslander became the first person to serve as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress, a position that later became that of U.S. poet laureate.

Joseph Auslander

American author
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Joseph Auslander (born October 11, 1897, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died June 22, 1965, Coral Gables, Florida) was an American novelist and lyric poet who was noted for his war poems. In 1937 he became the first poet selected to serve in the newly created role of consultant in poetry to the U.S. Library of Congress.

Auslander attended Columbia and Harvard universities, graduating from the latter in 1917. He taught English at Harvard for several years before studying at the Sorbonne in Paris on a Parker fellowship. In 1929 he joined the faculty of Columbia as a poet-lecturer.

Auslander’s first collection of poetry, Sunrise Trumphets, was published in 1924. Later works include Cyclops’ Eye (1926), No Traveler Returns (1933), and More Than Bread (1936); The Winged Horse Anthology (1929), which he coedited with F.E. Hill, became a classroom favorite. Auslander often wrote about war, and his poetry was used to sell U.S. war bonds during World War II. The Unconquerables (1943), a collection dedicated to Nazi-occupied countries, was particularly notable to the effort.

Illustration of "The Lamb" from "Songs of Innocence" by William Blake, 1879. poem; poetry
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A Study of Poetry

Auslander also wrote novels in collaboration with his second wife, Audrey Wurdemann, the recipient of the 1935 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Their works include My Uncle Jan (1948) and The Islanders (1951).

Between 1937 and 1941 Auslander served as the first consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress, a position that would later become that of poet laureate of the United States. He was also honored with the Robert Frost Prize for Poetry in 1964.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by René Ostberg.
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