Norman Rosten (January 1, 1913 – March 7, 1995) was an American
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...
,
playwright, and
novelist
A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others asp ...
.
Life
Rosten was born to a
Polish Jewish
The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the lon ...
family in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
and grew up in
Hurleyville, New York. He was graduated from
Brooklyn College and
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, th ...
, and the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
, where he met
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are ''All My Sons'' (1947), '' Death of a Salesman'' (1 ...
. Each won the
Avery Hopwood Award.
In 1979, Brooklyn's borough president
Howard Golden
Howard Golden (born November 6, 1925) is an American lawyer and Democratic politician who served as the Borough President of Brooklyn from January 3, 1977 to December 31, 2001. He concurrently served as chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic Pa ...
named Rosten as the poet laureate of
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
.
Among Rosten's work outside the field of poetry, he wrote the libretto for
Ezra Laderman
Ezra Laderman (29 June 1924 – 28 February 2015) was an American composer of classical music. He was born in Brooklyn.
Biography
Laderman was of Jewish heritage. His parents, Isidor and Leah, both emigrated to the United States from Poland. Thou ...
's opera ''Marilyn''. He also wrote the screenplay for
Sidney Lumet's film ''
Vu du Pont'', adapting Miller's ''
A View from the Bridge''.
He visited
Mickey Knox
Abraham Knox (December 24, 1921 − November 15, 2013) was an American actor with nearly 80 films to his credit. Knox was also a screenwriter, film producer, and novelist. Knox was blacklisted during the McCarthy era, and he subsequently moved to ...
in Rome.
Rosten was a poetry consultant for Simon and Schuster Publishers. It was through that role that he came to know fellow poet
Andrew Glaze. The two became friends and Glaze later dedicated his book ''I am the Jefferson County Courthouse'' to Rosten.
His work appeared in ''The New Yorker''.
Rosten died in New York City from congestive heart failure on March 7, 1995, at the age of 81.
Awards
* 1940
Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition
The Yale Series of Younger Poets is an annual event of Yale University Press aiming to publish the debut collection of a promising American poet. Established in 1918, the Younger Poets Prize is the longest-running annual literary award in the Uni ...
*
1941 Guggenheim Fellowship[ ]
Works
Poetry
* ''Return Again, Traveler,'' Yale University Press, 1940
* ''The big road: a narrative poem'', Rinehart & Company, Inc., 1946
* ''Imagine Seeing You Here: a world of poetry, lively and lyrical''
* ''Thrive Upon the Rock'', Trident Press, 1965
*
*
* In Guernica
Plays
* ''First Stop to Heaven,'' 1941
* (premiere 1956)
* ''Mardi Gras''
* ''The Golden Door''
*
Novels
* ''Under the Boardwalk'', Prentice-Hall, 1968
* ''Over and Out'', G. Braziller, 1972
*
*
Non-fiction
* ''Marilyn: An Untold Story,'' New American Library, 1973
* ''Marilyn among Friends'', with photographer Sam Shaw. UK:
Bloomsbury (1987)
Anthologies
*
References
External links
"Audio Interview with Norman Rosten", ''Wired for Books''*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rosten, Norman
1913 births
1995 deaths
American opera librettists
Jewish American writers
Brooklyn College alumni
New York University alumni
Writers from Brooklyn
University of Michigan alumni
Yale Younger Poets winners
American people of Polish descent
20th-century American poets
20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
Hopwood Award winners
American male poets
American male dramatists and playwrights
Poets from New York (state)
20th-century American Jews