Howard Moss (January 22, 1922 – September 16, 1987) was an

American poet The poets listed below were either born in the United States or else published much of their poetry while living in that country. A B C D E F G H I–J K L M N O P Q * George Quasha (born 1942) R S T U–V ...

dramatist A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...

and

critic A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or gover ...

. He was poetry editor of ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' magazine from 1948 until his death and he won the

National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The Nat ...

in 1972 for ''Selected Poems''.

Biography

Moss was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. He attended the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, where he won a

Hopwood Award The Hopwood Awards are a major scholarship program at the University of Michigan, founded by Avery Hopwood. Under the terms of the will of Avery Hopwood, a prominent American dramatist and member of the class of 1905 of the University of Michigan, ...

. He is credited with discovering a number of major American poets, including

Anne Sexton Anne Sexton (born Anne Gray Harvey; November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) was an American poet known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book '' Live or Die''. Her poetry details ...

and

Amy Clampitt Amy Clampitt (June 15, 1920 – September 10, 1994) was an American poet and author. Life Clampitt was born on June 15, 1920, of Quaker parents, and brought up in New Providence, Iowa. In the American Academy of Arts and Letters and at nearby Gr ...

W. H. Auden Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...

and

Chester Kallman Chester Simon Kallman (January 7, 1921 – January 18, 1975) was an American poet, librettist, and translator, best known for collaborating with W. H. Auden on opera librettos for Igor Stravinsky and other composers. Life Kallman was born in ...

co-wrote a famously concise

clerihew A clerihew () is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem of a type invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The first line is the name of the poem's subject, usually a famous person, and the remainder puts the subject in an absurd light or reveals som ...

in his honor: ;TO THE POETRY EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER :Is

Robert Lowell Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (; March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the '' Mayflower''. His family, past and present, were important subjects ...

:Better than Noël :

Coward Cowardice is a trait wherein excessive fear prevents an individual from taking a risk or facing danger. It is the opposite of courage. As a label, "cowardice" indicates a failure of character in the face of a challenge. One who succumbs to cowa ...

, :Howard? According to Edmund White, Moss was a

closeted ''Closeted'' and ''in the closet'' are metaphors for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and other (LGBTQ+) people who have not disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity and aspects thereof, including sexual identity and huma ...

homosexual, a notion exploited in White's thinly disguised

roman à clef ''Roman à clef'' (, anglicised as ), French for ''novel with a key'', is a novel about real-life events that is overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship be ...

, ''The Farewell Symphony'', in which the character "Tom" is a prominent New York poetry editor; the "closet" characterization is at odds with the memory of literary friends who remember Moss as openly gay. Moss died of a heart attack.

Bibliography

Poetry

*''The Wound and the Weather'' (1946) *''The Toy Fair'' (1954) *''A Swimmer in the Air'' (1957) *''A Winter Come, A Summer Gone: Poems, 1946–1960'' (1960) *''Finding Them Lost and Other Poems'' (1965) *''Second Nature'' (1968) *''Selected Poems'' (1971) —shared the National Book Award for Poetry with

Frank O'Hara Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara (March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet, and art critic. A curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure i ...

, ''The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara''"National Book Awards – 1972"

National Book Foundation The National Book Foundation (NBF) is an American nonprofit organization established, "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America". Established in 1989 by National Book Awards, Inc.,Edwin McDowell. "Book Notes: 'The Joy Luc ...

. Retrieved 2012-04-07.
(With acceptance speech by Moss and essay by Scott Challener from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.) *''Buried City: Poems'' (1975) *''A Swim Off the Rocks -Light verse'' (1976) *''Rules of Sleep'' (1984)

Plays

*''The Folding Green'' (1958) *''The Oedipus Mah-Jongg Scandal'' (1968) *''The Palace at 4 A.M.'' (1972)

Other

*''The Magic Lantern of Marcel Proust'' (1963) *''Instant Lives & More'' (1972) *''Whatever is Moving'' (1981)

Musical settings

Ned Rorem Ned Rorem (October 23, 1923 – November 18, 2022) was an American composer of contemporary classical music and writer. Best known for his art songs, which number over 500, Rorem was the leading American of his time writing in the genre. Althoug ...

's ''King Midas: a cantata for voice(s) and piano on ten poems of Howard Moss'' (1961) is one of several settings of Moss's poetry by American composers.

Allen Shearer Allen Raymond Shearer (born October 5, 1943 in Seattle, Washington) is an American composer and baritone. Life Shearer’s early musical experiences were as a singer; the majority of his works are for the voice or voices, with a later emphasis ...

composed his cantata ''King Midas'' (1990) on the same set of poems with addition of ancient texts.

Morten Lauridsen Morten Johannes Lauridsen (born February 27, 1943) is an American composer. A National Medal of Arts recipient (2007), he was composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale from 1994 to 2001, and is the Distinguished Professor Emeritus o ...

's ''A Winter Come'' (1967) is a setting of six poems of Howard Moss for high voice and piano, while Francis Thorne's ''Nature Studies: Three Poems of Howard Moss''Francis Thorne, ''Nature Studies'', Composers Recordings, CD 586 (1981) is for mezzo-soprano, flute and harp.

References

1922 births 1987 deaths American magazine editors American gay writers National Book Award winners Writers from New York City University of Michigan alumni 20th-century American poets 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights American male dramatists and playwrights American male poets LGBT people from New York (state) 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers American male non-fiction writers Hopwood Award winners AIDS-related deaths in the United States 20th-century LGBT people Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters {{US-poet-1920s-stub