John Frederick Nims

John Frederick Nims (November 20, 1913 - January 13, 1999) was an American poet and academic.

He graduated from DePaul University, University of Notre Dame with an M.A., and from the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. in 1945. He published reviews of the works by Robert Lowell and W. S. Merwin. He taught English at Harvard University, the University of Florence, the University of Toronto, Williams College, University of Missouri, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He was editor of Poetry magazine from 1978 to 1984. The John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize, for poetry translation, is awarded by the Poetry Foundation.

His other books of poetry include ''Knowledge of the Evening, Poems 1950-1960,'' nominated for a National Book Award; ''A Fountain in Kentucky and Other Poems,'' ''The Kiss: A Jambalaya,'' ''Of Flesh and Bone,'' ''Zany in Denim'' and ''The Six-Cornered Snowflake.'' In the introduction to his ''Selected Poems,'' published in 1982, he wrote: ''From the time I was 5 or 6, I thought poems were a part of the natural world, as real certainly as the rabbits and collies we kept.''

Mr. Nims's books of translations included ''Sappho to Valery: Poems in Translation,'' ''The Poems of St. John of the Cross'' and, last year, ''The Complete Poems of Michelangelo.'' He was editor of Poetry magazine from 1978 to 1985 and editor of ''The Harper Anthology of Poetry'' (1981).

Awards

• American Academy of Arts and Letters grant
• National Foundation for the Arts and Humanities grant
• Institute of the Humanities fellowship
• 1982 Academy of American Poets fellowship
• 1986 Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1991 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry.
• 1993 O.B. Hardison Prize