Richard Howard

A distinguished poet, critic and translator, Richard Howard holds a unique place in contemporary American letters. Howard is credited with introducing modern French fiction—particularly examples of the Nouveau Roman—to the American public; his translation of Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal (1984) won a National Book Award in 1984. A selection of Howard's critical prose was collected in the volume Paper Trail: Selected Prose 1965-2003 (2004), and his collection of essays Alone with America: Essays on the Art of Poetry in the United States since 1950 (1969) was praised as one of the first comprehensive overviews of American poetry from the latter half of the twentieth century. First and foremost a poet, Howard’s many volumes of verse have also received widespread acclaim; he won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his collection Untitled Subjects.