Norman Rosten (January 1, 1913 – March 7, 1995) was an American

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

, playwright, and

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others asp ...

Life

Rosten was born to a

Polish Jewish The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the lon ...

family in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

and grew up in Hurleyville, New York. He was graduated from Brooklyn College and

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

, and 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 met

Arthur Miller Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are ''All My Sons'' (1947), '' Death of a Salesman'' (1 ...

. Each won the Avery Hopwood Award. In 1979, Brooklyn's borough president

Howard Golden Howard Golden (born November 6, 1925) is an American lawyer and Democratic politician who served as the Borough President of Brooklyn from January 3, 1977 to December 31, 2001. He concurrently served as chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic Pa ...

named Rosten as the poet laureate of

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

. Among Rosten's work outside the field of poetry, he wrote the libretto for

Ezra Laderman Ezra Laderman (29 June 1924 – 28 February 2015) was an American composer of classical music. He was born in Brooklyn. Biography Laderman was of Jewish heritage. His parents, Isidor and Leah, both emigrated to the United States from Poland. Thou ...

's opera ''Marilyn''. He also wrote the screenplay for Sidney Lumet's film '' Vu du Pont'', adapting Miller's '' A View from the Bridge''. He visited

Mickey Knox Abraham Knox (December 24, 1921 − November 15, 2013) was an American actor with nearly 80 films to his credit. Knox was also a screenwriter, film producer, and novelist. Knox was blacklisted during the McCarthy era, and he subsequently moved to ...

in Rome. Rosten was a poetry consultant for Simon and Schuster Publishers. It was through that role that he came to know fellow poet Andrew Glaze. The two became friends and Glaze later dedicated his book ''I am the Jefferson County Courthouse'' to Rosten. His work appeared in ''The New Yorker''. Rosten died in New York City from congestive heart failure on March 7, 1995, at the age of 81.

Awards

* 1940

Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition The Yale Series of Younger Poets is an annual event of Yale University Press aiming to publish the debut collection of a promising American poet. Established in 1918, the Younger Poets Prize is the longest-running annual literary award in the Uni ...

* 1941 Guggenheim Fellowship

Works

Poetry

* ''Return Again, Traveler,'' Yale University Press, 1940 * ''The big road: a narrative poem'', Rinehart & Company, Inc., 1946 * ''Imagine Seeing You Here: a world of poetry, lively and lyrical'' * ''Thrive Upon the Rock'', Trident Press, 1965 * * * In Guernica

Plays

* ''First Stop to Heaven,'' 1941 * (premiere 1956) * ''Mardi Gras'' * ''The Golden Door'' *

Novels

* ''Under the Boardwalk'', Prentice-Hall, 1968 * ''Over and Out'', G. Braziller, 1972 * *

Non-fiction

* ''Marilyn: An Untold Story,'' New American Library, 1973 * ''Marilyn among Friends'', with photographer Sam Shaw. UK: Bloomsbury (1987)

Anthologies

References

External links

"Audio Interview with Norman Rosten", ''Wired for Books''
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rosten, Norman 1913 births 1995 deaths American opera librettists Jewish American writers Brooklyn College alumni New York University alumni Writers from Brooklyn University of Michigan alumni Yale Younger Poets winners American people of Polish descent 20th-century American poets 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights Hopwood Award winners American male poets American male dramatists and playwrights Poets from New York (state) 20th-century American Jews