Robert Fitzgerald

Robert Fitzgerald Poems

In sunburnt parks where Sundays lie,
Or the wide wastes beyond the cities,
Teams in grey deploy through sunlight.
...

Late in the cold night wakened, and heard wind,
And lay with eyes closed and silent, knowing
These words how bodiless they are, this darkness
Empty under my roof and the panes rattling
...

Robert Fitzgerald Biography

Robert Stuart Fitzgerald (12 October 1910 – 16 January 1985) was a poet, critic and translator whose renderings of the Greek classics "became standard works for a generation of scholars and students." He was best known as a translator of ancient Greek and Latin. In addition, he also composed several books of his own poetry. Fitzgerald grew up in Springfield, Illinois and graduated from The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut. He entered Harvard in 1929, and in 1931 a number of his poems were published in Poetry magazine. After graduating from Harvard in 1933 he became a reporter for The New York Herald Tribune for a year. Later he worked several years for TIME magazine, as mentioned by Whittaker Chambers in his 1952 memoir, Witness. In World War II, he served in the U.S. Navy in Guam and Pearl Harbor. Later he was an instructor at Sarah Lawrence and Princeton University, poetry editor of The New Republic. He succeeded Archibald MacLeish as Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory Emeritus at Harvard in 1965 and served until his retirement in 1981. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. From 1984 to 1985 he was appointed Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position now known as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, the United States' equivalent of a national poet laureate, but did not serve due to illness. In 1984 Fitzgerald received a L.H.D. from Bates College. Fitzgerald is widely known as one of the most poetic translators into the English language. He also served as literary executor to Flannery O'Connor, who was a boarder at his home in Redding, Connecticut, from 1949 to 1951. Fitzgerald's wife at the time, Sally Fitzgerald, compiled O'Connor's essays and letters after O'Connor's death. Benedict Fitzgerald, Barnaby Fitzgerald and Michael Fitzgerald are sons of Robert and Sally. Fitzgerald was married three times. He later moved to Hamden, Connecticut, where he died at his home after a long illness.)

The Best Poem Of Robert Fitzgerald

Cobb Would Have Caught It

In sunburnt parks where Sundays lie,
Or the wide wastes beyond the cities,
Teams in grey deploy through sunlight.

Talk it up, boys, a little practice.

Coming in stubby and fast, the baseman
Gathers a grounder in fat green grass,
Picks it stinging and clipped as wit
Into th eleather: a swinging step
Wings it deadeye down to first.
Smack. Oh, attaboy, attyoldboy.

Catcher reverses his cap, pulls down
Sweaty casque, and squats in the dust:
Pitcher rubs new ball on his pants,
Chewing, puts a jet behind him;
Nods past batter, taking his time.
Batter settles, tugs at his cap:
A spinning ball: step and swing to it,
Caught like a cheek before it ducks
By shivery hickory: socko, baby:
Cleats dig into dust. Outfielder,
On his way, looking over shoulder,
Makes it a triple. A long peg home.

Innings and afternoons. Fly lost in sunset.
Throwing arm gone bad. There's your old ball game.
Cool reek of the field. Reek of companions.

Robert Fitzgerald Comments

Robert Fitzgerald Quotes

Is encouragement what the poet needs? Open question. Maybe he needs discouragement. In fact, quite a few of them need more discouragement, the most discouragement possible.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Robert Fitzgerald Popularity

Robert Fitzgerald Popularity

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