Edward Weismiller
| Edward Weismiller | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 3, 1915 |
| Died | August 10, 2010 (aged 95) |
| Nationality | American |
| Genre | poetry |
Edward Ronald Weismiller (August 3, 1915 Monticello, Wisconsin - August 25, 2010 Washington, D.C.) was an American poet, scholar and professor of English, George Washington University. .
He was raised in Wisconsin and Vermont. In 1936, the twenty-year-old Edward Weismiller became the youngest poet to win the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets prize.
He graduated from Cornell College in 1938, from Harvard University with a master’s in 1942, and from Oxford University, with a D.Phil. in 1950, where he was a Rhodes scholar.
Professor Weismiller, an eminent scholar of John Milton’s poetry, came to Washington, DC in 1968 to study original source materials in the Folger Library, and stayed on to teach in the English department of the George Washington University. After his retirement in 1980 he remained there, reveling in the city’s beauty, variety, and cultural ferment. He was in love with words and stories and had a gift for making and keeping friends. An inspiring teacher, he worked to instill the love of beautiful and precise language in his students, and many of them went on to success as writers, artists, actors, teachers.
Weismiller was proud of what he called a nice American success story. His father, Jacob Weismiller, came of German-Swiss stock; his mother, Georgia Wilson, was of Scottish descent. Young Edward grew up inventing word games and creating crossword puzzles for his sister Jean. The family lived on a tiny farm in rural Wisconsin and the children went to a small country school where Edward won good grades from his teachers and attacks from a bully. His mother died when he was 11, shattering the family. Two years later, taken in by his older sister Luverne, he began doing better in high school and writing songs and poetry. Gently guided by his brother-in-law, paper chemist Westbrook Steele, he won scholarships to Swarthmore and then to Cornell College in Iowa, where he fell in love with Milton’s poetry and began to publish his own. At age 20 he became the youngest Yale Younger Poet when his first book of poems, The Deer Come Down, was selected for publication by series editor Stephen Vincent Benet.
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