Léonie Adams
Born	Léonie Fuller (1899-12-09)December 9, 1899 Brooklyn, New York,U.S.
Died	June 27, 1988(1988-06-27) (aged 88) New Milford, Connecticut, U.S.
Occupation	Poet
Education	Columbia University (BA)

Léonie Fuller Adams (December 9, 1899 – June 27, 1988)^[1] was an Americanpoet. She was appointed the seventhPoet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1948.^[2]

Adams was born inBrooklyn,New York, and raised in an unusually strict environment. She was not allowed on the subway until she was eighteen, and even then, her father accompanied her.^[3] Her sister was the teacher and archaeologistLouise Holland and her brother-in-law the archaeologistLeicester Bodine Holland. She studied atBarnard College ofColumbia University, where she was a contemporary and friend of roommateMargaret Mead. While still an undergraduate, she showed remarkable skill as a poet, and at this time her poems began to be published.^[4] In 1924, she became the editor ofThe Measure. Her first volume of poetry, titledThose Not Elect, was in 1925.^{[citation needed]}

In the spring of 1928, she had a brief affair withEdmund Wilson. Adams apologized to Wilson for having "moped and quarreled" on the day she left for France.^[5]

While in London, Adams metH.D., who introduced her to several figures in the London literary scene; in Paris she was invited to tea byGertrude Stein. At the beginning of 1929, when Wilson wrote to her that he was thinking of marrying another woman, Adams wrote back that she had had a pregnancy and hinted that she had had a miscarriage, mentioning the need for a visit to a London doctor in October.^[6] Guilt over the pregnancy — both Wilson, and a former student, Judith Farr, reported that Adams had a gift for making others feel guilty — combined with his heavy drinking, and indecision in other elements of his personal life led Wilson to a nervous collapse.Louise Bogan later revealed to him that Léonie's pregnancy had been imaginary,^[7] and this caused a temporary rift between Bogan and Adams.^{[citation needed]}

In 1929, her volumeHigh Falcon was published. During the 1930s, she lived in theRamapo Mountains nearHillburn, New York, and commuted toNew York City to lecture on Victorian poetry atNew York University.^[8] In 1930, she met writer and fellow New York University teacherWilliam Troy. The two married in 1933. That same year she publishedThis Measure. In 1935 she and her husband joined the faculty ofBennington College.^{[citation needed]}

She taught English at various other colleges and universities includingDouglass College (then known as the New Jersey College for Women), theUniversity of Washington, theBread Loaf Writers' Conference,Columbia University, andSarah Lawrence College. The poets for whom Adams acted as a mentor includedLouise Glück, recipient of the 2020Nobel Prize in Literature and formerUnited States Poet Laureate.^[9][10] Fantasy writer, poet and editorLin Carter attended her Poetry Workshop while studying at Columbia University.^[11]Marcella Comès Winslow painted a portrait of Adams in 1947.^[12] In 1950, she received an honorary doctorate from the New Jersey College for Women.^{[citation needed]}

HerPoems: A Selection won the 1954Bollingen Prize. In a review of the book, Louise Bogan wrote: "Poems such as "Companions of the Morass," "For Harvest," "Grapes Making," and "The Runner with the Lots" spring from and are indications of a poetic endowment as deep as it is rare."^[13]

In 1955, in a brief autobiography written for a biographical dictionary of modern literature, Adams threw a little light on her religious and political views: "My father... made me a childhood agnostic — I am now a Roman Catholic.... I am a very liberal democrat."^[14]

In 1988, she died at the age of 88 inNew Milford, Connecticut.^{[citation needed]}

Superficially, Léonie Adams' style did not change greatly over her lifetime, but there was an initial shy wonder at the world that eventually became an intense and almost devotional lyricism. Her rich descriptions demonstrated great delicacy of perception and an exalted spirit. She bore comparison withHenry Vaughan and 17th centurymetaphysical poetry, especially in her near-religious ecstasy. In a mid-2000s critical commentary for theWom-Po (Discussion of Women's Poetry) website, poetAnnie Finch provided a more postmodern reading of Adams as "a lush, sensual poet who directed her sensuality not towards other people but primarily towards the materials of poetry, towards syntax and symbol, diction and word-sound, in short, towards the language itself," and went on to say that "Adams' poetry teases the balance between the incantatory and representational powers of poetic language. She uses the sounds of language as counterweights to her poems' ostensible meanings, complicating the act of reading and calling into question a reader's emotional responses."^[15]

• 1954: the Bollingen Prize forPoems: A Selection (1954)
• 1974: Academy Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets
• the Shelley Memorial Award
• fellowship from The Guggenheim Foundation
• grants from The National Council of the Arts and The National Institute of Arts and Letters,

• Those Not Elect, Robert M. McBride & Co, 1925; Reprint Services Corp, 1992,ISBN 978-0-7812-6913-1
• High Falcon and Other Poems, John Day, New York, 1929.
• Midsummer, Ward Ritchie, 1929
• This Measure, A. A. Knopf, 1933
• Poems: A selection, Funk & Wagnalls, 1954

• The Lyrics of Francois Villon, Limited Editions Club, New York, 1933.

• "A casque for Amadis," The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1928.
• "The tale of Tenjin : or how a much-abused man became a saint," The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1928.

• David Lehman, ed. (2006)."Magnificat in Little; The Horn; The Figurehead; Bell Tower".The Oxford book of American poetry. Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-516251-6.
• David Cecil, Allen Tate, ed. (1958)."Country Summer; Caryatid; Early Waking; These Not Elect; Grapes Making".Modern Verse in English. Taylor & Francis.

• Media related toLéonie Adams at Wikimedia Commons
• Works by or aboutLéonie Adams atWikisource
• Léonie Adams and William Troy Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
• Brief Note at Library of Congress site
• Academy of American Poets entry
• Works by Léonie Adams atLibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

• 1899 births
• 1988 deaths
• American women poets
• American poets laureate
• Catholics from New York (state)
• Barnard College alumni
• Bennington College faculty
• Bollingen Prize recipients
• Converts to Roman Catholicism from atheism or agnosticism
• Poets from New York (state)
• Sarah Lawrence College faculty
• 20th-century American poets
• 20th-century American women writers
• Writers from Brooklyn
• 20th-century American women academics
• 20th-century American academics
• Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

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• Articles with unsourced statements from December 2021
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