About David Ferry
David Russell Ferry, who lived from March 5, 1924, until November 5, 2023, was an influential American poet, translator, and educator. He published 8 poetry collections and a literary criticism volume. His collection Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations, released in 2012, won the National Book Award for Poetry. In 2000, his book Of No Country I Know, which features new and selected poems and translations, was awarded the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize by the Academy of American Poets and the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress, recognizing the best poetry published in the previous two years. He is also known for his highly regarded verse translation of the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. The poet W. S. Merwin noted that Ferry's work has an assured quiet tone that expresses complexities of feeling with unfailing proportion and grace.Ferry was also honored with the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award. In 2011, he received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. In 2012, he was awarded the National Book Award for Poetry for his book Bewilderment (University of Chicago Press), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award (2012, Poetry).
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