Clampitt, Amy (1920–1994)

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Clampitt, Amy (1920–1994)

American poet. Born in New Providence, Iowa, on June 15, 1920; died of ovarian cancer at her home in Lenox, Massachusetts, on September 10, 1994; oldest of five children of Pauline (Felt) and Ray Justin Clampitt; graduated from Grinnell College, B.A. with honors, 1941; studied at Columbia University on a graduate fellowship, and at the New School for Social Research.

Awards:

Guggenheim Fellowship, 1982; honorary doctorate from Grinnell College; award in literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Writer-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee), the College of William and Mary, and Amherst College.

Selected publications:

Multitudes, Multitudes (self-published, 1974); The Isthmus (Coalition of Publishers for Employment, 1981); The Kingfisher (Alfred A. Knopf, 1983); What the Light Was Like (Knopf, 1985); Archaic Figure (Alfred A. Knopf, 1987); Westward (Alfred A. Knopf, 1990).

Often compared to Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore and Gerard Manley Hopkins, Amy Clampitt published her first major collection of poetry, The Kingfisher, when she was 63. Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, this work was an auspicious debut. She "immediately merits consideration as one of our most distinguished contemporary poets," wrote Richard Tillinghast in The New York Times Book Review. Clampitt treated her themes of travel, science, psychology, art, and metaphysics in a style that offered long strings of dependent clauses, rich but often obscure vocabulary, and esoteric allusions. These elements combined in what poet Alfred Corn termed a "baroque profusion, the romance of the adjective, labyrinthine syntax, a festival lexicon."

Clampitt's preoccupation with the natural world echoed a childhood spent growing up in the Midwest on a 125-acre farm. "I was always aware that my parents were unhappy," she recalled. "So I grew up with all these layers and interminglings. There was the natural world that was frightening and beautiful, and the adult world that was frightening and painful."

After college, she worked as a secretary and writer at Oxford University Press in New York (1943–51) and then as a reference librarian at the National Audubon Society (1952–59). Unhappy with this job, she returned to Iowa in 1959 to live with her parents and worked in a contractor's office. In the early 1960s, she gave New York another try. Through the 1960s to 1970s, she earned a living as a freelance writer, editor, and researcher, while taking part in the Vietnam protests and writing a series of unpublished novels. In 1977, she returned to the world of nine-to-five, becoming an editor at E.P. Dutton, a post she would hold until 1982.

Though Clampitt fell in love with poetry in college, reading especially the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins, it was not until the 1960s that she began to write poetry herself. At her own expense, she published a chapbook Multitudes, Multitudes in 1974. When Howard Moss, poetry editor of The New Yorker, became aware of the chapbook, he began to publish her poetry regularly, as did the Atlantic Monthly, the Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, and the Yale Review. In 1981, a second small collection, The Isthmus, was published.

Clampitt's 1987 collection, Archaic Figure, explores "the ancient consciousness of women" and contains a series of biographical poems on Dorothy Wordsworth , George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans ) and Margaret Fuller . "A central concern," wrote Clampitt, "is with the experience of women, as individuals and as a part of history." Despite this, the poet was accused of lacking an interest in people. "The truth is I don't write so much about human relations," replied Clampitt. "I don't think that's my primary subject. When I write about the emotional experience of people, it's more about the sense of deprivation."

Though she had residences in New York and Lenox, Massachusetts, Clampitt preferred the life of a nomad, remarking, "I don't want to be locked in. I want to be able to roam around and be part of a landscape." She died in her 70s at the Lenox home on September 10, 1994.