Amy Clampitt
From Philosopedia
Amy Clampitt (15 June 1920 - Sepember 1994)
Clampitt, who became a poet and recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, was brought up by Quaker parents in New Providence, Iowa.
She graduated from Grinnell College in Iowa, then secured jobs in New York City as secretary at Oxford Univesity Press and reference librarian at the Audubon Society.
In 1978, her first poem was published by The New Yorker, and at the age of 63 she published her first full-length work, The Kingfisher (1983). This was followed by
- The Summer Solstice (1983).
- The Kingfisher (1983).
- What the Light Was Like (1983).
- Archaic Figure (1987).
- Westward (1990).
- Manhattan: An Elegy, and Other Poems (1990).
- A Silence Opens (1994).
- The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt (1997).
In a 1989 letter to Warren Allen Smith concerning humanism (in which Lionel Trilling responded that "humanism" can mean all things to all people), she responded:
