The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Literature,
#3251
Edward Wasiolek
#50272
Overall Influence
1924 - 2018 (94 years)
Edward Wasiolek was an American literary scholar. Born in Camden, New Jersey on April 27, 1924, Wasiolek served in the United States Navy Reserve between 1943 and 1946, after which he enrolled at Rutgers University, where he obtained a bachelor's degree. Wasiolek completed his master's degree and doctorate at Harvard University, then joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1955. In 1983, Wasiolek was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was later appointed Avalon Foundation Distinguished Service Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and granted emeritus status in 1996. He died on ...
Go to Profile#3252
Rienzi Crusz
#30742
Overall Influence
1925 - 2017 (92 years)
Rienzi Crusz was a Canadian poet. Born in Galle, Ceylon , Crusz immigrated to Toronto, Canada in 1965 and soon after began publishing poetry. Though his poetry deals with a wide variety of human experience, Crusz is best known for his poetry that illuminates his experience of immigration, migrancy and the alienation of exile.
Go to Profile#3253
Suzanne Martel
#66629
Overall Influence
1924 - 2012 (88 years)
Suzanne Chouinard Martel was a French Canadian journalist, novelist and children's writer. Life Suzanne Chouinard was the daughter of Francis Xavier Chouinard, clerk of Quebec City between 1927 and 1961 and Lady Couillard, who resided at rue de Bernières in Quebec City until 1963. Her younger sister Monique became well known in Quebec as Monique Corriveau, the author of more than twenty novels for teenagers.
Go to Profile#3254
Mary Harron
#55767
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Mary Harron is a Canadian film director and screenwriter. She wrote and directed American Psycho, Charlie Says,The Notorious Bettie Page, and I Shot Andy Warhol. Early life Born in Bracebridge, Ontario, Canada, Harron grew up with a family that was entrenched in the world of film and theatre. She is the daughter of Gloria Fisher and Don Harron, a Canadian actor, comedian, author, and director. Her parents divorced when she was six years old. Harron spent her early life residing between Toronto and Los Angeles. Harron's first stepmother, Virginia Leith, was discovered by Stanley Kubrick and ac...
Go to Profile#3255
Shin Kyeong-nim
#54433
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Shin Kyeong-nim is a South Korean writer who is known as a "poet of the people" Life Shin Kyeong-nim was born on April 6, 1936 in North Chungcheong Province, South Korea. When he was young, Shin Kyong-rim frequented the people of Korea's rural villages and collected the traditional songs they sang. Much of his poetry represents a modernization of things he heard then Shin Kyeong-nim graduated in English Literature from Dongguk University, from which time he strove to become a creative writer. In 1955 and 1956, he made his formal literary debut with the publication of poems "Day Moon" , "Reeds" and "Statue of Stone" .
Go to Profile#3256
Anatoly Aleksin
#102216
Overall Influence
1924 - 2017 (93 years)
Anatoly Georgievich Aleksin , was a Soviet, Russian and Israeli writer and poet. In the late thirties Aleksin's poems were published in a children's newspaper, Pionerskaya Pravda. In 1950 he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies and his first novel Thirty one day was published. He was a chairman of the Russian Federation Union of Writers from 1970 to 1989 and a member of the editorial board in of the literature journal Yunost. He also wrote the book titled "Secret of the Yellow House". Aleksin lived in Israel from 1993 until 2012. Then he moved to Luxembourg, where he lived ...
Go to Profile#3257
Peter Orner
#63607
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Peter Orner is an American writer. He is the author of two novels, two story collections and a book of essays. Orner holds the Professorship of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and was formerly a professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University. He spent 2016 and 2017 on a Fulbright in Namibia teaching at the University of Namibia.
Go to Profile#3258
Cesare Garboli
#106340
Overall Influence
1928 - 2004 (76 years)
Cesare Garboli was an Italian literary and theater critic, translator, writer and academic. Early life and career A native of Viareggio, at the age of 16 he moved to Rome where he graduated from the "Dante Alighieri" state high school. A pupil of Natalino Sapegno at Sapienza - University of Rome, he graduated with a thesis on Dante's Comedy; at the age of twenty-four he published in "Società" an essay on contemporary Dante criticism, which was followed in 1954 by a volume on Dante considered by specialists to be a remarkable work.
Go to Profile#3259
Linda Gregerson
#59563
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Linda Gregerson is an American poet and member of faculty at the University of Michigan. In 2014, she was named as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Life Linda Gregerson received a B.A. from Oberlin College in 1971, an M.A. from Northwestern University, an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, and her Ph.D. from Stanford University. She teaches American poetry and Renaissance literature at the University of Michigan, where she has also directed the M.F.A. program in creative writing. She took up an appointment as the Lois and Willard Mackey Chair in Creative Writ...
Go to Profile#3260
Osonye Tess Onwueme
#36266
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Osonye Tess Onwueme, also known as T. Akaeke Onwueme is a Nigerian playwright, scholar and poet, who rose to prominence writing plays with themes of social justice, culture, and the environment. In 2010, she became the university Professor of Global Letters, following her exceptional service as Distinguished Professor of Cultural Diversity and English at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire. Through her plays, she is able to use the theatre as a medium to showcase historically silenced views such as African women, and shedding more light on African life. She sustains her advocacy for the gl...
Go to Profile#3261
Douglas LePan
#30120
Overall Influence
1914 - 1998 (84 years)
Douglas Valentine LePan was a Canadian diplomat, poet, novelist and professor of literature. Born in Toronto, Ontario, LePan was educated at the University of Toronto, at Harvard , and at Merton College, Oxford. During the Second World War, he was on staff at the Canadian High Commission in London and then served in the Canadian Army as an artilleryman during the Italian campaign. He joined the Canadian diplomatic service in 1946, and during his years as a diplomat served in London and in Washington, as well as in Ottawa. He was formally in the employ of the Department of External Affairs u...
Go to Profile#3262
Alan Isler
#74135
Overall Influence
1934 - 2010 (76 years)
Alan Isler was an English-American novelist and professor. He left his native England for the United States at age 18, served in the US Army from 1954 to 1956, received a doctorate in English Literature from Columbia University and taught Renaissance Literature at Queens College, City University of New York from 1967 to 1995. In 1994 he won the National Jewish Book Award and the JQ Wingate Prize for his first novel “The Prince of West End Avenue”, which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has subsequently published four other works: “Kraven Images” ; “The Bacon ...
Go to Profile#3263
William Berg
#90203
Overall Influence
1938 - 2021 (83 years)
William Berg, aka Bill Berg or William Berg III , was a classicist and historian of Gearhart, Oregon. On his mother’s side he was a descendant of pioneers who had migrated from Indiana to Oregon in 1852. Berg grew up in Boulder, Colorado, where his father taught Constitutional Law at the University of Colorado, and in Washington, D.C., where he witnessed the McCarthy era in the shadow of his father’s boss and mentor, Oregon Senator Wayne Morse.
Go to Profile#3264
José Rubia Barcia
#59793
Overall Influence
1914 - 1997 (83 years)
José Rubia Barcia was born in Ferrol , where a cultural center dedicated to him now houses his library and a collection of his papers. He studied Arabic and Hispano-Arabic literature at the University of Granada. After completing his degree he held important positions in the Spanish Republican Army during the Spanish Civil War and as a consequence he went into exile, first to France and then to Cuba and then to the United States. Here he worked in Hollywood with the Spanish film director Luis Buñuel. Rubia Barcia published a great number of books and articles on Valle Inclán, Unamuno, Federico García Lorca and other writers of the 20th century.
Go to Profile#3265
Peter Kruschwitz
#93155
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Peter Kruschwitz FHEA FRHistS M.A.E. is Professor of Ancient Cultural History at the University of Vienna. He specialises in Roman poetic culture and song culture with a particular focus on Latin verse inscriptions and non-elite cultural practice. He has published widely on Roman comedy , Latin linguistics and Roman linguistic discourse, the wall inscriptions of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and Roman metre.
Go to Profile#3266
Leonard Pronko
#52061
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
Leonard Cabell Pronko was an American theatre scholar best known for introducing the Japanese dance drama kabuki to the West, beginning in the 1960s. He was a professor of theatre at Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he taught from 1957 to 2014.
Go to Profile#3267
Sarah B. Pomeroy
#20699
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Sarah B. Pomeroy is an American Professor of Classics. Early life and education Sarah Pomeroy was born in New York City in 1938. She attended the Birch Wathen School, taking Latin and ancient history among other subjects. She graduated high school at age 16, and began a degree course at Barnard College in Classics, taking courses at Columbia University alongside those at Barnard, due to the small size of the Barnard department at the time. Pomeroy graduated in 1957, at the age of nineteen, and began a course of graduate study at Columbia, under the supervision of Eve Harrison and Otto Brendel....
Go to Profile#3268
Beverly Lowry
#94357
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Beverly Lowry is an American educator, novelist and short story writer. Biography The daughter of David Leonard Fey and Dora Smith, both natives of Arkansas, she was born Beverly Fey in Memphis, Tennessee and grew up in Greenville, Mississippi. She was educated at the University of Mississippi and Memphis State University, receiving a BA from the latter institution in 1960. In 1960, she married Glenn Lowry and moved to Manhattan. In 1965, the family moved to Houston and she began writing. In 1976, Lowry began teaching fiction writing at the University of Houston.
Go to Profile#3269
Meira Delmar
#80325
Overall Influence
1922 - 2009 (87 years)
Olga Isabel Chams Eljach , better known by her pseudonym Meira Delmar, was a Colombian poet of Lebanese descent. She is considered one of the most famous Colombian poets of the 20th century and published seven books of poetry in her lifetime.
Go to Profile#3270
Donald Russell
#41076
Overall Influence
1920 - 2020 (100 years)
Donald Andrew Frank Moore Russell, was a British classicist and academic. He was Professor of Classical Literature at the University of Oxford between 1985 and 1988, and a fellow and tutor of classics at St John's College, Oxford, from 1948 to 1988: he was an emeritus professor and emeritus fellow. Russell died in February 2020 at the age of 99.
Go to Profile#3271
Veturi
#35078
Overall Influence
1936 - 2010 (74 years)
Veturi Sundararama Murthy , known mononymously by his surname Veturi, was an Indian poet, lyricist and journalist who is popular for writing Telugu songs. His career in Telugu cinema spanned more than four decades. He was highly admired and cherished for his deep and thoughtful lyrics in Telugu songs.
Go to Profile#3272
Srikanth Reddy
#97832
Overall Influence
Srikanth Reddy is an Indian American writer, scholar, and author of three full-length volumes of poetry. His awards include a 2013 NEA fellowship, a 2013 Creative Capital Award, and a 2018 Guggenheim fellowship. Reddy delivered the Bagley Wright Lectures in Poetry in fall 2015, and served as a judge for the 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize.
Go to Profile#3273
Roy Miki
#56866
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Roy Akira Miki, is a Canadian poet, scholar, editor, and activist most known for his social and literary work. Born in Ste. Agathe, Manitoba to second generation Japanese-Canadian parents, Miki grew up on a sugar beet farm before moving to Winnipeg. His family was forcibly relocated West to Manitoba where he was born in 1942 on said sugar beet farm, and interned during the Second World War. He earned his B.A. from the University of Manitoba, M.A. from the Simon Fraser University, and Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia. Miki taught contemporary literature at Simon Fraser University before retiring and holds the title of professor emeritus.
Go to Profile#3274
Dennis Cooley
#80564
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Dennis Cooley is a Canadian writer of poetry and criticism, a retired university professor, and a vital figure in the evolution of the prairie long poem. He was raised on a farm near the small city of Estevan, Saskatchewan in Canada, and currently resides in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Go to Profile#3275
David Turashvili
#84333
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
David "Dato" Turashvili is a Georgian fiction writer. Biography In 1989, Turashvili was one of the leaders of the student protest action taking place at the Davidgareja monasteries in eastern Georgia, whose territory was exploited by the Soviet Union military as a training ground. His first novels, published in 1988, are based on the turmoil of those events. The premier of his play Jeans Generation was held in May 2001. Turashvili's other publications include the travelogues Known and Unknown America and Kathmandu , and two collections of short fiction and movie scripts; his first collectio...
Go to Profile#3276
Bernard O'Donoghue
#49867
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Bernard O'Donoghue FRSL is a contemporary Irish poet and academic. Early life and education Bernard O'Donoghue was born on 14 December 1945 in Cullen, County Cork, Ireland, where he lived on a farm. “My father was a terrible and reluctant farmer, though my mother was very good, she got stuck into it.” he recalled in an interview with Shevaun Wilder. He learnt Irish from the age of five in the local school, and served Mass from when he was about ten, “just parroting the Latin answers,” an experience which “inclined him towards the medieval.”
Go to Profile#3277
Pete Fromm
#64216
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Pete Fromm is an American novelist, short story writer, and memoir writer. Biography Fromm was born in Shorewood, Wisconsin, and holds a B.S. in wildlife biology from the University of Montana where he graduated with honors in 1981. A five-time winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Literary Award, he is the author of five short story collections, five novels, and two memoirs. In 2007 he wrote the screenplay for the short film DRY RAIN , based on his story of the same name, and in 2013 the film of his novel, AS COOL AS I AM , was released, starring Claire Danes, James Marsden, and Sarah Bolger.
Go to Profile#3278
Susan Stewart
#40156
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Susan Stewart is an American poet and literary critic. She is the Avalon Foundation University Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English, emerita, at Princeton University. In 2023, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Go to Profile#3279
Leah Price
#64614
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Leah Price is an American literary critic who specializes in the British novel and in the history of the book. She is Henry Rutgers Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at Rutgers University and founding director of the Rutgers Initiative for the Book. Prior to moving to Rutgers, Price was Professor of English and American Literature at Harvard University, where at the age of 31 she became one of the youngest assistant professors ever to be promoted to tenure at Harvard. She has written essays on old and new media for The New York Times Book Review, London Review of Books, The...
Go to Profile#3280
Léo Ferré
#19332
Overall Influence
1916 - 1993 (77 years)
Léo Ferré was a French-born Monégasque poet and composer, and a dynamic and controversial live performer. He released some forty albums over this period, composing the music and the majority of the lyrics. He released many hit singles, particularly between 1960 and the mid-seventies. Some of his songs have become classics of the French chanson repertoire, including "Avec le temps", "C'est extra", "Jolie Môme" and "Paris canaille".
Go to Profile#3281
Steve Erickson
#65200
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Stephen Michael Erickson is an American novelist. The author of influential works such as Days Between Stations, Tours of the Black Clock and Zeroville, he is the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award and a Guggenheim fellowship.
Go to Profile#3282
Marta Portal
#90035
Overall Influence
1930 - 2016 (86 years)
Marta Portal Nicolás was a Spanish writer, critic, journalist, and professor associated with the Generation of '50. She was a recipient of the Premio Planeta de Novela. Career Portal held a degree in philosophy and literature and a PhD in Information Sciences, and taught Hispano-American literature at the Complutense University of Madrid. In her work as a journalist she wrote news articles and literary criticism, as well as opinion columns in media such as ABC, El Alcázar, and .
Go to Profile#3283
Michael O'Neill
#64984
Overall Influence
1953 - 2018 (65 years)
Michael O'Neill was an English poet and scholar, specialising in the Romantic period and post-war poetry. He published four volumes of original poetry; his academic writing was praised as "beautifully and lucidly written".
Go to Profile#3284
Susanna Roxman
#35966
Overall Influence
1946 - 2015 (69 years)
Susanna Roxman was an Anglophone writer, poet and critic born in Stockholm; her father’s family is Scottish. She was considered a gifted child. Her first few books were written in Swedish, but she switched over to English as her professional language. After having worked for some years as a secretary, a ballet teacher, and a fashion model, Roxman studied at Stockholm University, King’s College at London University, Lund University, and Gothenburg University, where she earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. From 1996 to 2005 she headed the Centre of Classical Mythology at Lund University. She had several collections of poetry published, as well as literary criticism.
Go to Profile#3285
Robert Hunter
#37728
Overall Influence
1941 - 2019 (78 years)
Robert C. Christie Hunter was an American lyricist, singer-songwriter, translator and poet, best known for his work with the Grateful Dead. Born near San Luis Obispo, California, Hunter spent some time during his childhood in foster homes as a result of his father's abandoning his family, and took refuge in reading and writing. He attended the University of Connecticut for a year before returning to Palo Alto, where he became friends with Jerry Garcia. Garcia and Hunter began a collaboration that lasted through the remainder of Garcia's life.
Go to Profile#3286
Ariano Suassuna
#31772
Overall Influence
1927 - 2014 (87 years)
Ariano Vilar Suassuna was a Brazilian playwright and author. He was the driving force behind the creation of the Movimento Armorial. He founded the Student Theater at Federal University of Pernambuco. Four of his plays have been filmed, and he was considered one of Brazil's greatest living playwrights of his time. He was also an important regional writer, doing various novels set in the Northeast of Brazil. He received an honorary doctorate at a ceremony performed at a circus. He was the author of, among other works, the Auto da Compadecida and A Pedra do Reino. He was a staunch defender of ...
Go to Profile#3287
Seo Jeong-ju
#59460
Overall Influence
1915 - 2000 (85 years)
Seo Jeong-ju was a Korean poet and academic who wrote under the art name Midang . He is widely considered one of the best poets in twentieth-century Korean literature and was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in literature.
Go to Profile#3288
Akira Toriyama
#23163
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
is a Japanese manga artist and character designer. He first achieved mainstream recognition for his highly successful manga series Dr. Slump, before going on to create Dragon Ball and acting as a character designer for several popular video games such as the Dragon Quest series, Chrono Trigger, and Blue Dragon. Toriyama is regarded as one of the authors who changed the history of manga, as his works are highly influential and popular, particularly Dragon Ball, which many manga artists cite as a source of inspiration.
Go to Profile#3289
Jeffrey Sweet
#67281
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Jeffrey Sweet is an American writer, journalist, songwriter and theatre historian. Personal life Sweet's father was James Sweet, a science writer for the University of Chicago who aided Supreme Court chief justice Earl Warren in drafting two anti-McCarthy speeches; his mother was violinist Vivian Sweet. He is married to actor-producer-writer, Kristine Niven, a founder of AND Theater Company, a small non-profit company in New York.
Go to Profile#3290
Jesse Lee Kercheval
#43674
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Jesse Lee Kercheval is an American poet, memoirist, translator and fiction writer. She is an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the author of numerous books, notably Building Fiction, The Museum of Happiness, Space and Underground Women.
Go to Profile#3291
Uglješa Šajtinac
#70588
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Uglješa Šajtinac is a Serbian writer and playwright. Biography Šajtinac grew up in an artistic parents home, his mother Mirjana is an actress, his father is the poet, writer and playwright Radivoj Šajtinac, he studied Dramaturgy at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts of Belgrade’s University of Arts and graduated in 1999. He worked as a dramaturge at the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad from 2003 to 2005, then he became professor of dramaturgy at the Academy of Arts of the University of Novi Sad. He lives in his native place.
Go to Profile#3292
Elizabeth Graver
#76492
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Elizabeth Graver is an American writer and academic. Early life and education Graver was born in Los Angeles on July 2, 1964, and grew up in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She received her B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1986, and her M.F.A. from the Washington University in St. Louis in 1999. She also did graduate work at Cornell University.
Go to Profile#3293
Irena Klepfisz
#75553
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Irena Klepfisz is a Jewish lesbian author, academic and activist. Early life Klepfisz was born in the Warsaw Ghetto on April 17, 1941, the daughter of Michał Klepfisz, a member of the Jewish Labour Bund , and his wife, Rose Klepfisz . In late April 1943, when she had just turned two years old, her father was killed on the second day of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising .
Go to Profile#3294
Gwyn Thomas
#46441
Overall Influence
1936 - 2016 (80 years)
Gwyn Thomas, FLSW was a Welsh poet and academic. He was the second National Poet of Wales, holding the role between 2006 and 2008. Early life and education Born in Tanygrisiau, Gwynedd, and brought up there and in Blaenau Ffestiniog, Thomas was educated at Ysgol Sir Ffestiniog, University of Wales, Bangor and Jesus College, Oxford; Prof Thomas was Emeritus Professor of Welsh at the University of Wales, Bangor.
Go to Profile#3295
Lynn Freed
#64061
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Lynn Freed is a writer known for her work as a novelist, essayist, and writer of short stories. Life Lynn Freed was born and grew up in Durban, South Africa. She came to New York City as a graduate student, receiving her M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature from Columbia University.
Go to Profile#3296
Carol Lee Sanchez
#65325
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Carol Lee Sanchez was a Native American poet, visual artist, essayist, and teacher. Biography Carol Lee Sanchez was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She describes her cultural heritage as Lebanese-American and Laguna Pueblo. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Art Administration from San Francisco State University in 1978.
Go to Profile#3297
Colin Teevan
#47260
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Colin Teevan is an Irish playwright, translator and writer for screen. Teevan has written for multiple critically acclaimed shows including Das Boot , Silk Vera and Single Handed . He also created, wrote and was co-executive producer of Rebellion and Charlie . Both Rebellion and Charlie won multiple IFTAs including Best Actor for Aidan Gillen as Charlie Haughey in Charlie.
Go to Profile#3298
J. B. Jackson
#25366
Overall Influence
1909 - 1996 (87 years)
John Brinckerhoff "Brinck" Jackson was a writer, publisher, instructor, and sketch artist in landscape design. Herbert Muschamp, architecture critic of the New York Times, stated that J. B. Jackson was "America's greatest living writer on the forces that have shaped the land this nation occupies." He was influential in broadening the perspective on the "vernacular" landscape.
Go to Profile#3299
Samuel Menashe
#69770
Overall Influence
1925 - 2011 (86 years)
Samuel Menashe was an American poet. Biography Born in New York City as Samuel Menashe Weisberg, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Menashe grew up in Elmhurst, Queens, and graduated from Townsend Harris High School and Queens College where he majored in biochemistry. During World War II he served in the US Army infantry, and in 1944 fought in the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he used his GI Bill money to study at the Sorbonne where he received a Ph.D. for the thesis Un essai sur l'expérience poétique in 1950.
Go to Profile#3300
Richard Blevins
#81589
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Richard Lowell Blevins is a poet writing in the tradition of Ezra Pound, H.D., and Robert Duncan, an editor of the Charles Olson-Robert Creeley correspondence, and an award-winning teacher. He was born in Wadsworth, Ohio, in 1950. His undergraduate career was halved by the May 4, 1970, Kent State shootings. He was declared a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. At Kent State, he studied poetry and the imagination with Duncan and literature of the American West with Edward Dorn. But he has often said that Cleveland book dealer James Lowell was his most formative early influence. ...
Go to Profile