William Matthews

William Matthews was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on November 11, 1942. He earned a B.A. from Yale and an M.A. from the University of North Carolina. During his lifetime he published eleven books of poetry, including (1996), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Selected Poems and Translations 1969–1991 (1992); Blues If You Want (1989); A Happy Childhood (1984); Rising and Falling (1979); Sticks and Stones (1975); and Ruining the New Road (1970). Collections published posthumously include Search Party: Collected Poems, edited by his son Sebastian Matthews and Stanley Plumly (Houghton Mifflin, 2004) and After All: Last Poems (1998). He was also the author of a book of essays entitled Curiosities (1989).