CORN, ALFRED

born Aug. 14, 1943, Bainbridge, Ga., U.S. in full Alfred Dewitt Corn III American poet whose mild-mannered, meditative lyrics belie an underlying sophistication. Corn was raised in Valdosta, Georgia, and attended Emory University (B.A., 1965) and Columbia University (M.A., 1970). In the 1970s he traveled throughout Europe and then returned to the United States to teach at various universities. He earned critical acclaim for his first volume of verse, All Roads at Once (1976). The poems in A Call in the Midst of the Crowd (1978) are all about New York City, notably the lengthy title poem. Notes from a Child of Paradise (1984), one of Corn's best-known works, is a long semi-autobiographical poem modeled after the Paradiso in Dante's La divina commedia. Corn's other verse collections include The Various Light (1980), An Xmas Murder (1987), The West Door (1988), and Stake (1999). The Pith Helmet (1992) is a book of aphorisms. The Poem's Heartbeat: A Manual of Prosody was published in 1997.