J. V. Cunningham
Encyclopedia
James Vincent Cunningham (August 23, 1911 – March 30, 1985) was an American poet, literary critic, and teacher. Sometimes described as a neo-classicist or anti-modernist, his poetry was distinguished by its clarity, its brevity, and its traditional formality of rhyme and rhythm at a time when many American poets were breaking away from traditional fixed meters. His finely crafted epigrams in the style of Latin poets were much praised and frequently anthologized. But he also wrote spare, mature poems about love and estrangement, most notably the 15-poem sequence entitled To What Strangers, What Welcome (1964).
, who was then a graduate student at Stanford University
, and who later became an influential poet and critic. But the death of Cunningham's father in an accident and the family's resulting financial hardship prevented Cunningham from continuing immediately to college. He worked for a while as a "runner" for a brokerage house on the Denver Stock Exchange, where he personally witnessed two suicides in the days immediately following the October 29, 1929, stock market crash. With the onset of the Great Depression
, he rode the rails from odd job to odd job, throughout the Western United States, including stints as a local newspaper reporter and a writer for trade publications such as Dry Goods Economist. In 1931, Cunningham again struck up a correspondence with Winters, who offered him the opportunity to stay in a shed on Winters' property and to attend classes at Stanford University
where Winters was teaching. Cunningham earned an A.B. in classics in 1934 and a Ph.D. in English in 1945 -- both from Stanford.
During World War II, Cunningham taught mathematics to Air Force pilots. He later earned his living primarily by teaching English and writing at the University of Chicago
, the University of Hawaii
, Harvard University
, the University of Virginia
, and Washington University. He took a position at Brandeis University
in 1953, soon after the school was founded, and taught there until he retired in 1980. As a teacher and critic, Cunningham often concentrated on Shakespeare and the English Renaissance, authoring works such as Woe or Wonder: The Emotional Effect of Shakespearean Tragedy
Cunningham was married three times including to the poet Barbara Gibbs in 1937 (divorced 1945), with whom he had a daughter, Cunningham's only child. He died in Marlborough, Massachusetts
, in 1985.
His epigrams (including his translations of the Latin poet Martial
) and short poems were often witty and sometimes ribald (see, e.g., "It Was in Vegas, Celibate and Able"). “I like the trivial, vulgar and exalted,” he once said. Richard Wilbur
labeled him our best epigrammatic poet.
Cunningham was one of a small number of modern writers to treat the epigram in its full, classical sense: a short, direct poem dealing with subjects from the whole range of personal experience, not necessarily satirical.
And there was also work that was not epigrammatical. His plain-spoken lyrics about love, sex, loss, and the American West were especially haunting and original (e.g., "Maples in the slant sun/The gay color of decay/Was it unforgivable,/My darling, that you loved me?").
Critics often yoked him to his early influence, Yvor Winters
, but his verse actually bears only a formalistic similarity to Winters's work. The poet Thom Gunn
, in reviewing The Exclusions of a Rhyme in the 1960s, commented that Cunningham "must be one of the most accomplished poets alive, and one of the few of whom it can be said that he will still be worth reading in fifty years' time." Though his style and reserve were very much at odds with fashions of the period in which he wrote, they are all the more striking for that fact.
Cunningham was awarded Guggenheim fellowships in 1959-60 and 1966-67 and received a Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets in 1976. He won grants from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1965 and the National Endowment for the Arts in 1966. Some of his poems have been set to music by the English composer Robin Holloway
.
Prose
Other
Life
Cunningham was born in Cumberland, Maryland, in 1911. His father, James Joseph Cunningham, was a steam-shovel operator for a railroad who moved the family to Billings, Montana, and Denver, Colorado, where Cunningham spent his youth. His mother was Anna Finan Cunningham. Cunningham graduated from Regis High School in Denver 1927 at age fifteen, showing great skills in Latin and Greek. In high school, he first corresponded with Yvor WintersYvor Winters
Arthur Yvor Winters was an American poet and literary critic.-As modernist:Winters's early poetry, which appeared in small avant-garde magazines alongside work by writers like James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, was written in the modernist idiom, and was heavily influenced both by Native American...
, who was then a graduate student at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, and who later became an influential poet and critic. But the death of Cunningham's father in an accident and the family's resulting financial hardship prevented Cunningham from continuing immediately to college. He worked for a while as a "runner" for a brokerage house on the Denver Stock Exchange, where he personally witnessed two suicides in the days immediately following the October 29, 1929, stock market crash. With the onset of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, he rode the rails from odd job to odd job, throughout the Western United States, including stints as a local newspaper reporter and a writer for trade publications such as Dry Goods Economist. In 1931, Cunningham again struck up a correspondence with Winters, who offered him the opportunity to stay in a shed on Winters' property and to attend classes at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
where Winters was teaching. Cunningham earned an A.B. in classics in 1934 and a Ph.D. in English in 1945 -- both from Stanford.
During World War II, Cunningham taught mathematics to Air Force pilots. He later earned his living primarily by teaching English and writing at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, the University of Hawaii
University of Hawaii
The University of Hawaii System, formally the University of Hawaii and popularly known as UH, is a public, co-educational college and university system that confers associate, bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees through three university campuses, seven community college campuses, an employment...
, Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
, and Washington University. He took a position at Brandeis University
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
in 1953, soon after the school was founded, and taught there until he retired in 1980. As a teacher and critic, Cunningham often concentrated on Shakespeare and the English Renaissance, authoring works such as Woe or Wonder: The Emotional Effect of Shakespearean Tragedy
Cunningham was married three times including to the poet Barbara Gibbs in 1937 (divorced 1945), with whom he had a daughter, Cunningham's only child. He died in Marlborough, Massachusetts
Marlborough, Massachusetts
Marlborough is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 38,499 at the 2010 census. Marlborough became a prosperous industrial town in the 19th century and made the transition to high technology industry in the late 20th century after the construction of the...
, in 1985.
Poetry
Cunningham's output was as spare as his style. He published only a few hundred carefully wrought poems over his relatively long career. Many were just a few lines long.His epigrams (including his translations of the Latin poet Martial
Martial
Marcus Valerius Martialis , was a Latin poet from Hispania best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan...
) and short poems were often witty and sometimes ribald (see, e.g., "It Was in Vegas, Celibate and Able"). “I like the trivial, vulgar and exalted,” he once said. Richard Wilbur
Richard Wilbur
Richard Purdy Wilbur is an American poet and literary translator. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987, and twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1957 and again in 1989....
labeled him our best epigrammatic poet.
Cunningham was one of a small number of modern writers to treat the epigram in its full, classical sense: a short, direct poem dealing with subjects from the whole range of personal experience, not necessarily satirical.
And there was also work that was not epigrammatical. His plain-spoken lyrics about love, sex, loss, and the American West were especially haunting and original (e.g., "Maples in the slant sun/The gay color of decay/Was it unforgivable,/My darling, that you loved me?").
Critics often yoked him to his early influence, Yvor Winters
Yvor Winters
Arthur Yvor Winters was an American poet and literary critic.-As modernist:Winters's early poetry, which appeared in small avant-garde magazines alongside work by writers like James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, was written in the modernist idiom, and was heavily influenced both by Native American...
, but his verse actually bears only a formalistic similarity to Winters's work. The poet Thom Gunn
Thom Gunn
Thom Gunn, born Thomson William Gunn , was an Anglo-American poet who was praised both for his early verses in England, where he was associated with The Movement and his later poetry in America, even after moving toward a looser, free-verse style...
, in reviewing The Exclusions of a Rhyme in the 1960s, commented that Cunningham "must be one of the most accomplished poets alive, and one of the few of whom it can be said that he will still be worth reading in fifty years' time." Though his style and reserve were very much at odds with fashions of the period in which he wrote, they are all the more striking for that fact.
Cunningham was awarded Guggenheim fellowships in 1959-60 and 1966-67 and received a Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets in 1976. He won grants from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1965 and the National Endowment for the Arts in 1966. Some of his poems have been set to music by the English composer Robin Holloway
Robin Holloway
Robin Greville Holloway is an English composer.-Early life:From 1952 to 1957, he was a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral...
.
Works
Poetry- The Helmsman (1942)
- The Judge Is Fury (1947)
- Doctor Drink (1950)
- Trivial, Vulgar, and Exulted: Epigrams (1957)
- The Exclusions of a Rhyme (1960)
- To What Strangers, What Welcome (1964)
- Some Salt: Poems and Epigrams (1967)
- Let Thy Words Be Few (1986)
- The Poems of J. V. Cunningham (1997) ISBN 978-0804009980
Prose
- Tradition and Poetic Structure (1960)
- The Journal of John Cardan, [with] The Quest of the Opal [and] The Problem of Form (1964)
- The Collected Essays of J. V. Cunningham (1976)
Other
- A Bibliography of the Published Works of J. V. Cunningham, Charles B. Gullans (1973)