Eberhart, Richard

Eberhart, Richard (ĕb`ərhärt'), 1904–2005, American poet, b. Austin, Minn., grad. Dartmouth (1926) and Cambridge (1929, 1933). He taught at various universities before becoming a professor at Dartmouth (1956–71). His poetry, noted for its lyric simplicity and directness, has as frequent themes the loss of innocence and spontaneity and the conflict between matter and spirit. Among his several dozen volumes of poetry are A Bravery of Earth (1930), Undercliff (1953), Shifts of Being (1968), and Ways of Light (1980). His poems are collected in Selected Poems, 1930–1965 (1965; Pulitzer Prize), Collected Poems, 1930–1976 (1976), The Long Reach: New and Uncollected Poems, 1948–1984 (1984), and New and Selected Poems: 1930–1990 (1990). Eberhart's Collected Verse Plays was published in 1962. He was the consultant in poetry at the Library of Congress from 1959 to 1961.

Bibliography

See biography by B. E. Engel (1971); studies by R. J. Mills, Jr. (1966), J. Roache (1971), and S. Lea and J. Parini, ed. (1980); descriptive bibliography by S. Wright (1989).

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Eberhart, Richard (Ghormley) (1904–  ) poet, teacher; born in Austin, Minn. He studied at the University of Minnesota (1922–23), Dartmouth College (B.A. 1926), Cambridge (England) (B.A. 1929), and Harvard (1932–33). He worked as a floorwalker, deckhand, and tutor (1930–33), then as a teacher (1933–41) and, after service in World War II, for a family business (1946–52). He taught at Dartmouth (1956–70) and was a consultant in poetry, Library of Congress (1959–61). His poems in volumes such as Undercliff (1953) and Shifts of Being (1968) are distinguished by his direct yet occasionally unexpected responses to the basic experiences of human life. He also published his Collected Verse Plays (1962).