Carolyn Kizer

Carolyn Ashley Kizer (December 10, 1925 – October 9, 2014) was an American poet of the Pacific Northwest whose works reflect her feminism. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985.

Kizer was born in Spokane, Washington, the daughter of a socially prominent Spokane couple.

Her father, Benjamin Hamilton Kizer (1878–1978), who was 45 when she was born, was a successful attorney. Her mother, Mabel Ashley Kizer, was a professor of biology who had received her doctorate from Stanford University.

Kizer was married to the architect-historian, John Marshall Woodbridge. When she was not teaching and lecturing, she divided her time between their home in Sonoma, California and their apartment in Paris.

Carolyn Kizer is the author of eight books of poetry including Cool Calm & Collected (2000), Harping On: Poems 1985-1995 (1996), The Nearness of You: Poems for Men (1986), and Yin (1984), which won a Pulitzer Prize. She is a former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and she served as the first director of the Literature Program at the National Endowment for the Arts from 1966-1970.

Poetry

• Cool, Calm, and Collected: Poems 1960-2000. Copper Canyon Press. 2001. ISBN 978-1-55659-181-5.
• Pro Femina: A Poem BkMk Press, University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2000, ISBN 9781886157309
• Harping On: Poems 1985-1995, Copper Canyon Press, 1996, ISBN 9781556591150
• The Nearness of You, Copper Canyon Press, 1986, ISBN 9780914742968
• Yin, BOA Editions, 1984, ISBN 9780918526441 — Pulitzer Prize winner
• Mermaids in the basement: poems for women, Copper Canyon Press, 1984, ISBN 9780914742807
• Midnight Was My Cry: New and Selected Poems, Doubleday, 1971
  Knock Upon Silence, Doubleday, 1965
• The Ungrateful Garden, 1961; Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1999, ISBN 9780887482762

Prose

• Picking and Choosing: Prose on Prose, Eastern Washington University Press, 1995, ISBN 9780910055253
• Proses: Essays on Poets and Poetry, Copper Canyon Press, 1993, ISBN 9781556590450

Translations

• Carrying Over: Translations from Chinese, Urdu, Macedonian, Hebrew and French-African (Copper Canyon Press, 1986)

As editor

• 100 Great Poems by Women HarperCollins, 1995, ISBN 9780880015813
• The Essential Clare (1992)

Awards

• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1985), for Yin
• Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize (1988)
• American Academy of Arts and Letters award
• Award of Honor of the San Francisco Arts Commission
• Borestone Award (six times)
• Pushcart Prize (three times)
• Frost Medal
• John Masefield Memorial Award
• Governor's Award for the best book of the year, State of Washington (1965, 1985)