William Meredith is the author of ten books of poems, including Love Letter from an Impossible Land (1944, winner of a Yale Younger Poets Award), The Open Sea (1957), Earth Walk (1970), Partial Accounts (1987, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry), and Effort at Speech (1997, winner of the National Book Award). He also published two collections of essays, an opera libretto, translations of Guillaume Apollinaire and poets of Bulgaria, and edited the selected poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Meredith served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 1978 to 1980, then stayed on in the DC area forseveral years afterwards with his partner, Richard Harteis, also a poet. He was a U.S. Navy pilot in the Korean War (1941–42), where he received two air medals and achieved the rank of lieutenant. From 1964 to 1987, he served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Between 1955 and 1983, he taught at Princeton University, the University of Hawaii, and Connecticut College.
Meredith had a stroke in 1983, resulting in expressive aphasia, which affected his ability to speak. He regained language skills only after intensive therapy.
The Homes
6300 Bradley Blvd., Bethesda, MD
William Meredith
6300 Bradley Blvd.
Located in Maryland