William Meredith: "Rhode Island"

Today comes the sad news from Connecticut College that William Meredith has died at the age of 88. Meredith, a professor emeritus from that institution, had written 11 books of poetry, most notably Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems (1987), which won the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and Effort at Speech: New and Selected Poems (1997), which received the National Book Award.

Meredith had suffered a stroke in 1983 that limited his speech and hindered his ability to write. He began to suffer from expressive aphasia, an inability to express oneself at will. Michael Collier explained in his foreword to Effort at Speech: New and Selected Poems: “Trapped, as it were, inside his body, which has profoundly betrayed him, for the past decade and a half Meredith has remained occupied with the poet’s struggle—the struggle to speak.”

A more complete obituary appears at the Connecticut College news web site. Perhaps this would be a perfect time to remember William Meredith by listening to an Academy of American Poets recording of him reading a poem, “Rhode Island,” at the Guggenheim Museum on October 26, 1975.