dumbfoundry

Peter Viereck, a noted historian, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and a founder of the mid-20th-century American conservative movement who later denounced what he saw as its late-20th-century excesses, died on Saturday at his home in South Hadley, Mass. He was 89. [...]

A specialist in Russian history, Professor Viereck was an emeritus professor at Mount Holyoke College, where he had taught since 1948. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1949 for his first collection of poems, "Terror and Decorum" (Scribner, 1948).

Professor Viereck is also widely credited with helping to bring conservatism out of the margins and into the mainstream as an intellectual movement. [...]

Because Viereck wrote rhymed verse, Andrew Glaze, in a review of "New and Selected Poems 1932-1967," wrote that it was "hard to imagine a poet more out of style at this moment than Peter Viereck." Yet, he noted, "no one has created more wonderful poems out of near-doggerel rhythms and unlikely rhymes, as though from the pure pleasure of barely skirting disaster."

This entry was posted by eeksypeeksy on Saturday, May 20, 2006 at 12:47 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.