birth_place training nationality field birth_date article_title name
dublin , ireland university college , dublin harvard irish poetry 1941 eamon grennan
 eamon grennan
eamon grennan

eamon grennan -lrb- born 1941 -rrb- is an irish poet born in dublin .
he has lived in the united states , except for brief periods , since 1964 .
he was the dexter m. ferry jr. .
professor of english at vassar college until his retirement in 2004 .
though his irish roots are clear in his poetry , grennan has an international sense of literary tradition .
he has cited as influences american poets including robert frost and elizabeth bishop -lrb- herself an international poet with ties to the u.s. , canada , and brazil -rrb- .
in addition to writing poetry , he has translated giacomo leopardi and -- with his wife , vassar classicist rachel kitzinger -- sophocles 's oedipus at colonus .
grennan studied at university college , dublin , where he met poets derek mahon and eavan boland , and at harvard university , and began teaching at vassar in 1974 .
he returned to ireland fairly briefly , first in 1977 and later in 1981 , and began writing poetry there .
his first book , `` wildly for days '' , was published in 1983 .
gaelic poetry became an important influence , particularly , he has said , on the sound of his poems .
at the same time , he is interested in the sentence as a poetic unit as well as a prose unit .
in an interview with timothy cahill , grennan said : i have , it 's a toothache quality , a kind of pain -- the ambition to make a sentence that is full , that has not gone limp , has n't stopped while it still has some elasticity in it .
grennan 's career has been long , productive and distinguished , and he has earned from fellow poets a reputation for lyrical skill and psychological intensity .
former u.s. poet laureate billy collins said of grennan : few poets are as generous as eamon grennan in the sheer volume of delight his poems convey , and fewer still are as attentive to the marvels of the earth .
to read him is to be led on a walk through the natural world of clover and cricket and , most of all , light , and to face with an open heart the complexity of being human .
he received the pen award for poetry in translation in 1998 .
grennan was nominated for the 2008 poetry now award for his collection , `` out of breath '' .
