Amy Clampitt

She shared an apartment on the Upper East Side with Harold Korn, a professor at Columbia University Law School, for the last 25 years of her life. She married him in June 1994, three months before her death.

She died on 10 September 1994, in Lenox, Massachusetts, due to ovarian cancer.

She was born on 15 June 1920 to Quaker Parents in New Providence, Iowa on a three-hundred-acre farm belonging to her paternal grandfather.

She was the first of five children and she lived on the farm until she was ten, when her parents moved to a new house.

She originally began writing poetry at the age of nine. She turned to fiction in high school. After 12 years in the local public schools, where she felt out of place, she moved on to Grinnell College.

In 1941, she graduated with a B.A. degree in English and from that time on lived mainly in New York City.

She began graduate studies at Columbia University and the New School for Social Research but left to work as a secretary for the Oxford University Press.

During the 1940s and early 1950s, she held numerous jobs while attempting to write novels.

She worked at the National Audubon Society as a reference librarian from 1952 to 1959, and was a freelance writer, researcher and editor from 1960 till 1977.

At the same time, she was drawn into political action and joined the 1971 demonstrations outside the White House in protest of the bombing of North Vietnam.

Her first two books of poetry, ‘Multitudes, Multitudes’ (1974) and ‘The Isthmus’ (1981), both printed by small presses, attracted little attention.

Her poetry is remembered for its use of elaborate syntax and vocabulary and metaphors. Her 1983 collection of poems, ‘The Kingfisher’, which was organized around the four elements of earth, water, fire and air, brought her instant critical acclaim.

Her 1985 book of poetry, ‘What the Light Was Like’, is considered one of her seminal works. It was devoted to nature and confirmed her reputation as a gifted contemporary poet.

Her 1987 poetry collection, ‘Archaic Figure’, drew upon her European travels and ancient Greek myths. The poetry collection was acclaimed for Amy’s narrative skills.