Writer-Artist 10: William Jay Smith

97 years old when he died, William Jay Smith apparently wasted not a minute of them.

U.S. Poet Laureate

Achieving national publication of a poem at 14, it was probably unsurprising that Smith would end up Poet Laureate of the United States, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the author of more than 50 books of poetry, literary criticism, and translation, with multiple nominations for the National Book Award.  A Rhodes Scholar at Oxford following bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Washington University in St. Louis, honored by the French Academy, the Swedish Academy, and the government of Hungary for his translations, he was not only literary lion and an academic who held positions at Williams College and Columbia University. he served two terms in the Vermont House of Representatives.

An Artist Too

And he found time to paint.

Here is an oil on wood from his own collection that he lent to the 2007 Writer’s Brush exhibitions held at Anita Shapolsky (NY) and Pierre Menard (Cambridge) Galleries.

To find out more, check out The Writer’s Brush: Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture by Writers for more than 400 plates of artwork by great writers and the stories behind them.

Connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Medium, YouTube, Goodreads, and please sign up for my blog! You can purchase The Writer’s Brush and other books on Amazon here.