The Fellows in American Letters of the Library of Congress are awarded by the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the '' de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...

History

In 1943, during his tenure as

Librarian of Congress The Librarian of Congress is the head of the Library of Congress, appointed by the president of the United States with the advice and consent of the United States Senate, for a term of ten years. In addition to overseeing the library, the Libra ...

(1939–1944), poet Archibald MacLeish appointed poet

Allen Tate John Orley Allen Tate (November 19, 1899 – February 9, 1979), known professionally as Allen Tate, was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and poet laureate from 1943 to 1944. Life Early years Tate was born near Winchester, K ...

Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—commonly referred to as the United States Poet Laureate—serves as the official poet of the United States. During their term, the poet laureate seeks to raise the national cons ...

(1941–1986, the predecessor of the current

Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—commonly referred to as the United States Poet Laureate—serves as the official poet of the United States. During their term, the poet laureate seeks to raise the national cons ...

). Tate, in turn, created an advisory panel of "Fellows in American Letters," which, over the course of the next few years, would include most of the pillars of English modernist literature. Among them were

T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biog ...

, W. H. Auden,

Mark Van Doren Mark Van Doren (June 13, 1894 – December 10, 1972) was an American poet, writer and critic. He was a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thin ...

Van Wyck Brooks Van Wyck Brooks (February 16, 1886 in Plainfield, New Jersey – May 2, 1963 in Bridgewater, Connecticut) was an American literary criticism, literary critic, biographer, and historian. Biography Brooks graduated from Harvard University in ...

Carl Sandburg Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg ...

, Willard Thorp, Ted Spencer,

Conrad Aiken Conrad Potter Aiken (August 5, 1889 – August 17, 1973) was an American writer and poet, honored with a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, and was United States Poet Laureate from 1950 to 1952. His published works include poetry, short s ...

, and

Karl Shapiro Karl Jay Shapiro (November 10, 1913 – May 14, 2000) was an American poet. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1945 for his collection ''V-Letter and Other Poems''. He was appointed the fifth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to t ...

. Virtually all of the Fellows were friends of Tate, several of them his protégés. In 1944, MacLeish stepped down as Librarian and Tate's term expired. MacLeish's successor, non-poet Luther H. Evans (1945–1953), relied on Tate to serve as an ongoing consultant and recommend candidates to fill the Poetry Consultant position. Among those Tate recommended to become Consultant were his old friend and colleague

Robert Penn Warren Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the liter ...

(1944–1945), Louise Bogan (1945–1946), Shapiro (1946–1947),

Robert Lowell Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (; March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the ''Mayflower''. His family, past and present, were important subjects i ...

(1947–1948), Léonie Adams (1948–1949),

Elizabeth Bishop Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Aw ...

(1949–1950), and Aiken (1950–1952). Most Consultants accepted invitations to become Fellows when their terms expired. The Fellows may be best known for the controversy created in 1948-1949 over the newly established

Bollingen Prize The Bollingen Prize for Poetry is a literary honor bestowed on an American poet in recognition of the best book of new verse within the last two years, or for lifetime achievement.

which was to be awarded by the Library of Congress upon the recommendation of a jury consisting of a committee of the Fellows. Eliot and other renowned poets who felt a great debt to

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

planned to use the prize to build a momentum to free Pound, then confined in

St. Elizabeths Hospital St. Elizabeths Hospital is a psychiatric hospital in Southeast, Washington, D.C. operated by the District of Columbia Department of Behavioral Health. It opened in 1855 under the name Government Hospital for the Insane, the first federally ope ...

in Washington, where he had been confined after being charged with treason but declared mentally unfit to stand trial. Pound was awarded the prize for ''

The Pisan Cantos ''The Cantos'' by Ezra Pound is a long, incomplete poem in 120 sections, each of which is a ''canto''. Most of it was written between 1915 and 1962, although much of the early work was abandoned and the early cantos, as finally published, date ...

'' in 1949, despite objections by juror Shapiro (who had originally favored the award but then withdrew his vote) over the anti-Semitic nature of many parts the work Pound began while incarcerated in an American military prison in

Pisa Pisa ( , or ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, central Italy, straddling the Arno just before it empties into the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its leaning tower, the c ...

. A firestorm followed, dividing the literary establishment. And the public outcry over the involvement of a public institution (the Library of Congress) in bestowing an award on a fascist sympathizer led Congress to end the Library's participation in the prize, which was subsequently awarded by the

Yale University Library The Yale University Library is the library system of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Originating in 1701 with the gift of several dozen books to a new "Collegiate School," the library's collection now contains approximately 14.9 milli ...

. The following year (1950), Yale awarded the prize to the thoroughly non-controversial

Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance comp ...

External links

The Library of Congress website
American literary awards Library of Congress