William Meredith, 88, Pulitzer-Winning Poet
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William Meredith, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, has died a week after being admitted to a local hospital. He was 88.
Meredith, a professor at Connecticut College for nearly 30 years, died Wednesday night at Lawrence & Memorial Hospital, a hospital spokesman, Kelly Anthony, said.
Meredith, a resident of the Uncasville section of Montville, received more than 25 awards, grants, fellowships, and honorary degrees, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1988 for “Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems” and the National Book Award for Poetry in 1997 for “Effort at Speech.”
Born at New York City in 1919, Meredith displayed a lifelong love of poetry. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University in 1940 with a bachelor’s degree in English and wrote his senior thesis on Robert Frost.
Meredith taught at Connecticut College from 1955 to 1983.
“In Connecticut College’s history there are a number of great public intellectuals who have been associated with the college. William Meredith is certainly in that very select group,” the president of Connecticut College, Leo Higdon Jr., said in a statement yesterday.
