George Starbuck
George Starbuck was an American poet born on June 15, 1931, in Columbus, Ohio. He underwent a legal name change to Starbuck and had a varied educational background, attending institutions such as the California Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago, though he did not complete a degree. His career included a stint as an editor at Houghton Mifflin and a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. Starbuck published his first poetry collection, "Bone Thoughts," in 1960, and went on to teach at several institutions, including the Iowa Writers Workshop and Boston University. Notably, he was known for his formal poetic style, often adhering to strict structural rules, which set him apart from many of his contemporaries who favored free verse. His innovative approaches included "concrete" poems and a unique format he termed "SLABS" for sonnets. Despite receiving various accolades, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Prix de Rome, Starbuck's work was not widely recognized during his lifetime. However, there has been a resurgence of interest in his poetry in the twenty-first century, culminating in the republication of selected works in 2003, suggesting a continuing legacy. Starbuck passed away in August 1996 after a prolonged battle with Parkinson's disease.
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George Starbuck
Poet
- Born: June 15, 1931
- Birthplace: Columbus, Ohio
- Died: August 15, 1996
- Place of death: Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Biography
Poet George Starbuck was born on June 15, 1931, in Columbus, Ohio, the son of George W. and Margaret Beiswanger; he legally changed his name to Starbuck. From 1947 until 1949, he attended the California Institute of Technology, transferring to the University of California for the 1950-1951 academic year. Starbuck served in the army from 1952 until 1954, serving in the Military Police Corps. He attended the University of Chicago from 1954 until 1957 and Harvard University from 1957 until 1958, but he did not receive a degree. After working as an editor for Houghton Mifflin in Boston from 1958 until 1961, he became a fellow at the American Academy in Rome from 1961 until 1963.
Starbuck’s first collection of poems,Bone Thoughts, was published by Yale University Press in 1960. In 1963, he accepted a position as a librarian and lecturer at the State University of New York in Buffalo, but he was fired for refusing to sign a loyalty oath. He mounted a legal challenge, and the U.S. Supreme Court eventually overturned the law requiring the oath.
In 1964, Starbuck moved to Iowa City, Iowa, where he began teaching at the Iowa Writers Workshop. He continued in this position, eventually becoming director in 1967 and remaining in this position through 1970. In 1971, he returned to Boston to become a professor of creative writing and director of the graduate program at Boston University. In later years, he moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, first as poet-in-residence at the University of Alabama and later as a faculty member.
Although he published six books of poetry in his lifetime and contributed to prestigious journals and magazines, including The New Yorker, Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, and Yale Review, Starbuck’s work was not generally well known by his contemporaries. At a time when most poets were writing free verse, Starbuck’s work was formal, written according to strict rules he set forth for its construction. Some of his poems, such as “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” were “concrete” poems, following strict requirements of word and line length to assume a concrete shape on the page. Within these parameters, Starbuck created witty statements and interesting rhymes. He invented what he called “SLABS” for Standard Length and Breadth Sonnets, a peculiar re- creation of the standard sonnet format.
Starbuck died in August, 1996, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, at the age of sixty-five after a more than twenty year battle with Parkinson’s disease. He received a number of important awards for his poetry, including the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award in 1960. He also received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1961 and an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Literature in 1983. In addition, he was awarded the Prix de Rome of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Although not in the poetic mainstream during his lifetime, there has been a resurgence of interest in his work in the early twenty-first century, leading to the republication of his poems in The Works: Poems Selected from Five Decades. This collection was published by the University of Alabama Press in 2003 and edited by his widow, Kathryn Starbuck, and Elizabeth Meese. It is likely that interest in Starbuck’s work will continue to grow.