Louis Aston Marantz Simpson (March 27, 1923 – September 14, 2012)^[1] was an Americanpoet born in Jamaica. He won the 1964Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his workAt the End of the Open Road.

Simpson was born inJamaica, the son of Rosalind (née Marantz) and Aston Simpson, alawyer. His father was ofScottish and African ancestry. His mother was born in Russia (Simpson did not find out that he was ofJewish descent until his teenage years).^[2][3][4] At the age of 17, he emigrated to the United States and began attendingColumbia University, where he studied underMark Van Doren.^[5] DuringWorld War II, from 1943 to 1945 he was a member of the elite101st Airborne Division and would fight inFrance, theNetherlands,Belgium, andGermany. Simpson was a runner for the company captain, which involved transporting orders from company headquarters to officers on the front line. His company was involved in a very bloody battle with German forces on the west bank of what is now the Carentan France Marina - Simpson wrote his poem "Carentan O Carentan" about the experience of US troops being ambushed there. In the Netherlands, he was involved inMarket Garden andOpheusden fighting. AtVeghel his company suffered 21 killed in a brutal shelling while in the local church yard. AtBastogne bitterly cold temperatures had to be endured while the 101st Division was surrounded by enemy forces for days. After the end of the war he attended theUniversity of Paris.^[1] Subsequently, he returned to the US and worked as an editor in New York. He later completed his B.A. at Columbia University's School of General Studies in 1948,^[6] and completed his M.A. andPh.D. at Columbia University in 1950 and 1959, respectively.^[7]

His first book wasThe Arrivistes, published in 1949. It was hailed for its strong formal verse, but Simpson later moved away from the style of his early successes and embraced a spare brand of free verse.

He taught at universities including Columbia, theUniversity of California-Berkeley, and theState University of New York at Stony Brook. He also briefly taught atThe Stony Brook School^[8] prior to his retirement. Simpson's lifelong expatriate status has influenced his poetry, and he often uses the lives of ordinary Americans in order to critically investigate the myths the country tells itself. Although he occasionally revisits the West Indies of his childhood, he always keeps one foot in his adopted country. The outsider's perspective allows him to confront "the terror and beauty of life with a wry sense of humor and a mysterious sense of fate," wroteEdward Hirsch ofThe Washington Post. Elsewhere Hirsch described Simpson's Pulitzer Prize–winning collection,At the End of the Open Road, as "a sustained meditation on the American character," noting, "The moral genius of this book is that it traverses the open road of American mythology and brings us back to ourselves; it sees us not as we wish to be but as we are."Collected Poems (1988) andThere You Are (1995) focus on the lives of everyday citizens, using simple diction and narratives to expose the bewildering reality of the American dream. PoetMark Jarman hailed Simpson as "a poet of the American character and vernacular."

Simpson lived on theNorth Shore of Long Island, nearStony Brook, New York. He died on September 14, 2012.^[4][9]

• 1962Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1964Pulitzer Prize
• Rome Prize
• 1998Harold Morton Landon Translation Award
• 2004 Finalist,Griffin Poetry Prize (International)

• Riverside Drive. Publisher, Atheneum, 1962

• The Arrivistes: Poems, 1940–1949. Fine Editions Press. 1949.
• Good News of Death. Poets of Today. Vol. 2. Charles Scribner's Sons. 1955.
• A Dream of Governors: Poems. Wesleyan University Press. 1959.
• At the End of the Open Road, Poems.Wesleyan University Press. 1963.ISBN 978-0-8195-2020-3.{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
• Selected Poems. Harcourt, Brace & World. 1965.
• Adventures of the Letter I. Harper & Row. 1971.ISBN 9780060138844.
• Searching for the Ox. Oxford University Press. 1976.ISBN 978-0-19-211860-8.
• Armidale. The Book Bus. 1979.
• Caviare at the Funeral. F. Watts. 1980.ISBN 978-0-531-09937-7.
• The Best Hour of the Night. Ticknor & Fields. 1983.ISBN 978-0-89919-203-1.
• People Live Here: Selected Poems 1949–83. BOA Editions. 1983.ISBN 978-0-918526-43-4.
• Collected Poems. Paragon House. 1988.ISBN 978-1-55778-047-8.
• In the Room We Share. Paragon House. 1990.ISBN 978-1-55778-261-8.
• There You Are: Poems. Story Line Press. 1995.ISBN 978-1-885266-15-6.
• The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems, 1940–2001. BOA Editions, Ltd. 2003.ISBN 978-1-929918-39-3.Louis Aston Marantz Simpson.
• Struggling Times. BOA Editions, Ltd. 2009.ISBN 9781934414194.
• Voices in the Distance: Selected Poems.Bloodaxe Books. 2010.ISBN 978-1-85224-861-1.

Translations

• Louis Aston Marantz, ed. (1997).Modern Poets of France: a bilingual anthology. Story Line Press.ISBN 978-1-885266-44-6.

• James Hogg: A Critical study. St. Martin's Press. 1962.
• Louis Aston Marantz Simpson, ed. (1968).An Introduction to Poetry. Macmillan.
• Air with Armed Men. London Magazine Editions. 1972.
• Three on the Tower. Morrow. 1975.ISBN 978-0-688-02899-2.
• A Revolution in Taste: Studies of Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, and Robert Lowell. MacMillan. 1978.ISBN 978-0-02-611320-5.
• A Company of Poets. University of Michigan Press. 1981.ISBN 978-0-472-06326-0.
• The Character of the Poet. University of Michigan Press. 1986.ISBN 978-0-472-09369-4.
• Selected Prose. Paragon House. 1989.ISBN 978-1-55778-048-5.
• Ships Going Into the Blue: Essays and Notes on Poetry. University of Michigan Press. 1994.ISBN 978-0-472-09559-9.
• The King My Father's Wreck. Story Line Press. 1994.ISBN 978-0-934257-09-1.

• Quotations related toLouis Simpson at Wikiquote
• Poetry Foundation biographical essay and online poems
• Griffin Poetry Prize biography
• Griffin Poetry Prize reading, including video clip
• Community remembers sacrifices inHarrison Daily, Harrison, Arkansas

• 1923 births
• 20th-century American poets
• Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
• Columbia University School of General Studies alumni
• 2012 deaths
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winners
• Stony Brook University faculty
• Jamaican emigrants to the United States
• French–English translators
• United States Army personnel of World War II
• Deaths from Alzheimer's disease in New York (state)
• 20th-century translators
• American male poets
• Jewish American poets
• 21st-century American poets
• 20th-century American male writers
• 21st-century American male writers
• United States Army soldiers
• Jamaican people of Scottish descent
• American people of Scottish descent
• American people of Russian-Jewish descent
• Jamaican people of Jewish descent
• 21st-century American Jews
• Linguists from Jamaica

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles with hCards
• CS1 errors: ISBN date