Fifth Poet Laureate of the United States who won a Pulitzer Prize for a 1945 work entitled V-Letter and Other Poems. His other poetry collections include The Old Horsefly, The Bourgeois Poet, and Adult Bookstore.
He attended the University of Virginia and criticized the institution for its anti-Semitic and racist views.
He taught English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln and at the University of California, Davis.
He grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. He married Evalyn Katz in 1945.
He was influenced by the work of poet William Carlos Williams.