Nims, John Frederick

Nims, John Frederick (1913–  ) poet; born in Muskegon, Mich. He studied at the University of Notre Dame (B.A. 1937; M.A. 1939) and University of Chicago (Ph.D. 1945). He taught at numerous institutions, including Notre Dame (1939–45; 1946–62), the University of Illinois: Urbana (1961–64), and at the Chicago branch (1965–73; 1977–85). The editor of Poetry magazine (1978–84), he also served as a poetry judge for the National Book Awards (1969), the American Book Awards (1970; 1971), and the Bollingen Prize (1987). He has been praised for his translations of the Greek tragedies, and for his intelligent, witty poetry, as in Of Flesh and Bone (1967) and Selected Poems (1982).