J. D. McClatchy (1945-2018) was considered one of the nation’s great men of letters. McClatchy, who was in residence in 1991, often wrote about the body, its joys and sorrows, including its decay from cancer, the illness that eventually caused his death. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and a Ph.D. in English literature from Yale. He taught at Yale and Princeton, wrote eight volumes of poetry, and also edited, organized anthologies, was a translator, and wrote opera librettos, including Our Town for Ned Rorem’s (58, 70) take on the play by Thornton Wilder (9x 24-53) and the Metropolitan Opera’s English-language production of Mozart’s Magic Flute, designed by Julie Taymor. According to The New York Times, “McClatchy’s work was esteemed for its elegance, erudition and impeccable technique.” His work often appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. He was a Thornton Wilder scholar and was well-known for the 1978 essay collection he edited, Anne Sexton: The Artist and Her Critics. He also edited collections of Edna St. Vincent Millay and James Merrill. McClatchy won many awards, including two Lambda Literary Awards and Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize, was a past chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and a past president of American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Portrait by James Keyser
