born May 6, 1914, Nashville, Tenn., U.S.
died Oct. 14, 1965, Chapel Hill, N.C.
U.S. poet and critic.
He taught at the University of North Carolina (Greensboro) from 1947 until his death. As a critic, he revitalized the reputations of Robert Frost , Walt Whitman , and William Carlos Williams in the 1950s; his criticism is collected in Poetry and the Age (1953), A Sad Heart at the Supermarket (1962), and the posthumous Third Book of Criticism (1969). His poems appeared in Little Friend, Little Friend (1945) and Losses (1948), both drawing on his wartime experiences, and such later collections as The Seven-League Crutches (1951) and The Woman at the Washington Zoo (1960). He was killed when he stepped in front of a moving car.