Biographical notes

Born Edward Charles O'Gorman to Annette de Bouthillier-Chavigny and Samuel Franklin Engs O'Gorman in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, Ned O'Gorman spent most of his early life in Southport, Connecticut

Connecticut

Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

, and Bradford, Vermont

Vermont

Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...

. In 1950, he graduated from St. Michael's College in Vermont and later received an M.A. from Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

. While at Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 in 1957, O'Gorman rented a room in the house of Caroline Gordon

Caroline Gordon

Caroline Ferguson Gordon was a notable American novelist and literary critic who, while still in her thirties, was the recipient of two prestigious literary awards, a 1932 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 1934 O...

 Tate. His poetry earned him Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...

s in 1956 and 1962. He won the Lamont Poetry Award in 1958 for his collection of poems, The Night of the Hammer.

O'Gorman was the literary editor of the Catholic magazine Jubilee from 1962 to 1965. He was appointed by the U.S. State Department to be the American studies specialist in Chile

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

, Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

 and Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

 in 1965. He is the recipient of the Rothko Chapel Award for Commitment to Truth and Freedom.

He arrived in Harlem

Harlem

Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...

 in July 1966 and worked as a volunteer teacher in a Head Start summer program. The children's library he started two months later, named after Addie Mae Collins, one of the four children killed in the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham

Birmingham

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

 church, gradually became a tuition-free school known as the Children's Storefront, welcoming all children living in the area. Today, the school thrives with an annual budget of $2.5 million and a waiting list of 800 children.

After losing a dispute over succession, Ned O’Gorman founded the Ricardo O'Gorman Garden and Center for Resources in the Humanities which opened in 1998 with the collaboration of two teachers from the original school. The Center, which O'Gorman continues to direct, is located on West 129th Street in New York City. The tuition-free school has an annual budget of $300,000 and is supported by Mr. O'Gorman's fund-raising efforts.

In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.

O'Gorman has also taught at Brooklyn College, the New School and Manhattan College. He is the author of six books of poetry, five books of prose, and numerous articles and poetry published in various magazines.

Among the numerous correspondents of the poet, some are among the most renowned personalities of the twentieth century: Peter Levi

Peter Levi

Peter Chad Tigar Levi, FSA, FRSL, , Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford was a poet, archaeologist, sometime Jesuit priest, travel writer, biographer, academic and prolific reviewer and critic.-Early life and education:Levi was born in Ruislip, Middlesex of parents with Mediterranean...

, Henry Miller

Henry Miller

Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...

, Huston Smith

Huston Smith

Huston Cummings Smith is a religious studies scholar in the United States. His book The World's Religions remains a popular introduction to comparative religion.-Education:...

, Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...

, Mark Van Doren

Mark Van Doren

Mark Van Doren was an American poet, writer and a critic, apart from being a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, and Beat Generation...

, Daniel Berrigan

Daniel Berrigan

Daniel Berrigan, SJ is an American Catholic priest, peace activist, and poet. Daniel and his brother Philip were for a time on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for their involvement in antiwar protests during the Vietnam war....

, Louise Bogan

Louise Bogan

Louise Bogan was an American poet. She was appointed the fourth Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945.-Early years:...

, Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an American poet. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.-Biography:...

, Richard Eberhart

Richard Eberhart

Richard Ghormley Eberhart was an American poet who published more than a dozen books of poetry and approximately twenty works in total...

, Paul Goodman

Paul Goodman (writer)

Paul Goodman was an American sociologist, poet, writer, anarchist, and public intellectual. Goodman is now mainly remembered as the author of Growing Up Absurd and an activist on the pacifist Left in the 1960s and an inspiration to that era's student movement...

, Suzanne Hiltermann, Galway Kinnell

Galway Kinnell

Galway Kinnell is an American poet. He was Poet Laureate of Vermont from 1989 to 1993. An admitted follower of Walt Whitman, Kinnell rejects the idea of seeking fulfillment by escaping into the imaginary world. His best-loved and most anthologized poems are "St...

, Denise Levertov

Denise Levertov

-Early life and influences:Levertov was born and grew up in Ilford, Essex.Couzyn, Jeni Contemporary Women Poets. Bloodaxe, p74 Her mother, Beatrice Spooner-Jones Levertoff, came from a small mining village in North Wales...

, Archibald MacLeish

Archibald MacLeish

Archibald MacLeish was an American poet, writer, and the Librarian of Congress. He is associated with the Modernist school of poetry. He received three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.-Early years:...

, Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore was an American Modernist poet and writer noted for her irony and wit.- Life :Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, in the manse of the Presbyterian church where her maternal grandfather, John Riddle Warner, served as pastor. She was the daughter of mechanical engineer and inventor...

, Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin was a French-Cuban author, based at first in France and later in the United States, who published her journals, which span more than 60 years, beginning when she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death, her erotic literature, and short stories...

, 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....

, Robert Bly

Robert Bly

Robert Bly is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement.-Life:Bly was born in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota, to Jacob and Alice Bly, who were of Norwegian ancestry. Following graduation from high school in 1944, he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving...

, Rafael Squirru

Rafael Squirru

Rafael Squirru , is an Argentine poet, lecturer, art critic and essayist.- Biographical notes :Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Squirru was educated at Saint Andrew's Scot School and at the Jesuit El Salvador Secondary School...

, Laura Riding

Laura Riding

Laura Jackson was an American poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer.- Early life :...

 Jackson, Lincoln Kirstein

Lincoln Kirstein

Lincoln Edward Kirstein was an American writer, impresario, art connoisseur, and cultural figure in New York City...

, Kathleen Raine

Kathleen Raine

Kathleen Jessie Raine was a British poet, critic, and scholar writing in particular on William Blake, W. B. Yeats and Thomas Taylor. Known for her interest in various forms of spirituality, most prominently Platonism and Neoplatonism, she was a founder member of the Temenos Academy.-Life:Raine was...

, Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...

, Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day was an American journalist, social activist and devout Catholic convert; she advocated the Catholic economic theory of Distributism. She was also considered to be an anarchist, and did not hesitate to use the term...

 and Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton, O.C.S.O. was a 20th century Anglo-American Catholic writer and mystic. A Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, he was a poet, social activist, and student of comparative religion...

.

Books

Poetry

• The Night of the Hammer (1958)
• Adam Before the Mirror (1961)
• The Harvesters' Vase (1968)
• The Flag the Hawk Flies (1972)
• Five Seasons of Obsession: New and Selected Poems (2001)

Non-Fiction

• Children Are Dying (1978)
• The Storefront: A Community of Children on 129th Street and Madison Avenue (1970)
• The Wilderness and the Laurel Tree: A Guide for Teachers and Parents on the Observation of Children (1972)
• Prophetic Voices: Ideas and Words on Revolution (1969)
• The other side of loneliness (2006)

External links

• http://www.library.georgetown.edu/dept/speccoll/cl328.htm
• http://www.ogormanschool.org
• http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/676
• http://www.nybooks.com/authors/4520
• http://www.merton.org/Research/Correspondence/z.asp?id=1521
• http://www.drunkenboat.com/db1/poems/Ogorman/menu.html