The Kool Kids and the Land of the Giants

James Vincent Tate was born in Kansas City on December 8, 1943 and erupted upon the poetry scene when, in 1967, at the age of 23, he received the Yale Series of Young Poets award for The Lost Pilot. Within two years of his stunning debut, Tate had another dozen collections in print or accepted for publication. Tate's work earned him the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He was a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Dudley Fitts selected Tate's first book of poems, The Lost Pilot (1967), for the Yale Series of Younger Poets while Tate was still a student at the Writers' Workshop; Fitts praised Tate's writing for its "natural grace." Tate's first volume of poetry, Cages, was published by Shepherd's Press, Iowa City, 1966. Tate won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize and the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award in 1991 for his Selected Poems. In 1994, he won the National Book Award for his poetry collection Worshipful Company of Fletchers. In addition to many books of poetry, he published two books of prose, Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee (2001) and The Route as Briefed (1999).

Tate received his B.A. in 1965, going on to earn his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa's famed Writer's Workshop. He died on July 8, 2015 at the age of 71.

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