Simpson, Louis

Related Category: American Literature: Biographies

1923–, American poet, b. Jamaica, grad. Columbia (B.S., 1948; Ph.D., 1959). He began teaching at the Univ. of California at Berkeley in 1959. Using experience—frequently drawn from his childhood in Jamaica in his earlier work and later reflecting ordinary daily life—Simpson writes finely crafted poems that are often witty, rueful, and grave. His volumes of poetry include The Arrivistes: Poems 1940–48 (1949), At the End of the Open Road (1963; Pulitzer Prize), North of Jamaica (1972), Searching for the Ox (1976), The Best Hour of the Night (1983), People Live Here: Selected Poems 1949–1983 (1984), and The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems, 1940–2001 (2003).

See study by H. Lazer, ed. (1988).