Howard, Richard (1929-2022), was an American poet and translator. He won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for Untitled Subjects (1969). The book consists of 15 dramatic monologues, imagined by the poet, that might have been delivered by actual historical artists, composers, and writers of the 1800’s. Howard also explored the monologue and dialogue forms of verse in the collections Two-Part Inventions (1974), Fellow Feelings (1976), Misgivings (1979), and Lining Up (1984). Like his best-known earlier work, Howard’s Trappings (1999) and Without Saying (2008) include dramatic monologues of historical characters. His books Inner Voices: Selected Poems, 1963-2003 and Paper Trail: Selected Prose, 1965-2003 were both published in 2004.
Howard ranked among the most important translators of his time. He gained recognition from his translations of modern French poetry and experimental French novels. Howard translated such modern French writers as Claude Simon, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Butor, and Alain Robbe-Grillet. He also translated Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal in an edition published in 1982.
Howard analyzed a number of American poets in the critical work Alone with America: Essays on the Art of Poetry in the United States Since 1950 (1969, revised edition 1980). Howard edited Preferences (1974), an anthology of American poetry with his critical commentary.
Howard was born on Oct. 13, 1929, in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned B.A. and M.A. degrees at Columbia University and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris in the early 1950’s. Howard died on March 31, 2022.
