[Deathwatch] Alan Dugan, poet, 80

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Pulitzer Poet Alan Dugan Dies at 80
Fri Sep 5, 1:42 PM ET
	
HYANNIS, Mass. - Alan Dugan, a poet who won the Pulitzer Prize and two
National Book Awards, died Wednesday at Cape Cod Hospital. He was 80.

Judith Shahn, his wife and only immediate survivor, told The New York
Times he had died of pneumonia after many health problems in recent
years.

Dugan's first book of poetry, "Poems" in 1962, won the Pulitzer Prize
and the National Book Award. His ninth and last book of poems, "Poems
Seven: New and Complete Poetry," won another National Book Award in
2001.

Dugan told the Cape Cod Times in 2001 his poetry happens
"automatically."

"They are given to me by an unconscious series of voices ? I guess what
you used to call inspiration. They are a furious monologue that comes
from inside me," he said.

Writing in no-nonsense language close to everyday speech about
commonplace subject matter, Dugan employed low-key humor and, as poet
Robert Pinsky put it, "set a glittering barb into every phrase."

"With equal parts humor and anger, wisdom and skepticism, he has
rejected our defenses and excuses, embracing what is right and real in
our culture and ourselves," book award judges wrote of Dugan.

Dugan's work displays a "caustic intelligence" and a "bitter
eloquence," according to Contemporary Poets, a standard reference work.


Dugan was born Feb. 12, 1923, in Brooklyn, N.Y. He enrolled in Queens
College, publishing his first poems in the college literary magazine
and winning the Queens College Poetry Prize in 1943.

He was drafted into the Army and served in World War II in the Pacific
as an aircraft mechanic. After the war, he went to Olivet College in
Michigan on the GI Bill. He left Olivet and went to what was then
Mexico City College, where he graduated in 1951.

Dugan worked in a staple factory and in advertising and publishing and
as a model maker for a medical supply house in New York.

In 1960, he won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, which led to
Yale University printing his book, which then won the Pulitzer and the
National Book Award.

Dugan held numerous teaching positions, including stints at Sarah
Lawrence College, Connecticut College and the University of Colorado.
He traveled on fellowships to live and work in Rome, Paris and South
America.

A resident of Truro, Mass., he taught poetry at the Truro Center for
the Arts and was a founder of the Fine Arts Work Center in
Provincetown.