DUGAN, ALAN

born Feb. 12, 1923, New York, N.Y., U.S. American poet who wrote with bemused sarcasm about mundane topics, infusing them with an ironic depth. A fully developed style is evident in his first verse collection, Poems (1961), which in 1962 won a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. Dugan served in World War II and attended Queens College, City University of New York, and Olivet (Michigan) College before graduating from Mexico City College (B.A., 1949). Propelled by the success of Poems, he accepted grants to travel and to continue publishing. He taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, from 1967 until 1971, when he joined the faculty at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Among his later books are Poems 2 (1963), Poems 3 (1967), Poems 4 (1974), Sequence (1976), and Poems Six (1989). Dugan examines the triviality of war, the bleakness of ordinary life, the ignorance of humanity, and the nature of beauty and love. His terse cadences, ironic detachment, and colloquial style give his works an understated humour. His poetry is compiled in Collected Poems (1969), New and Collected Poems 19611983 (1983), and Ten Years of Poems (1987).