It’s the birthday of Richard Eberhart, born in Austin, Minnesota, in 1904, the most prominent poet you’ve never heard of. (You’ve heard of him? Good for you. Pat on the back.) Eberhart wrote lyric poetry with the sensibilities of a Romantic but in a modern style (short lines, irregular rhythms, and maybe he rhymes and maybe he doesn’t—so back off), and he won all of the major awards an American poet can win. He was a cheerful man but wrote a great deal about death, and one of his most famous poems is “The Groundhog” (1934), in which the narrator observes the decay of a dead groundhog over a period of three years. It begins:

In June, amid the golden fields, / I saw a groundhog lying dead. / Dead lay he; my senses shook, / And mind outshot our naked frailty. / There lowly in the vigorous summer / His form began its senseless change, / And made my senses waver dim / Seeing nature ferocious in him…

(My own personal theory is that this poem was inspired by Eberhart seeing a dead groundhog. But you never know, with poets. It could have been a prairie dog. See entire poem here.)

Eberhart grew up on a 40-acre estate called Burr Oaks, later the title of one of his collections of poetry (1947). His daddy was rich and his mama supportive (maybe good-looking, I don’t know), but when Eberhart was a teenager, someone at the Hormel meatpacking company where his father was a VP embezzled a great deal of money, and his father lost a fortune. Then his mother died of cancer when he was just 18, a tragic loss that spurred Eberhart’s interest in poetry. Eberhart transferred from the U of Minnesota to Dartmouth and graduated in 1926, and then lived a Life of Adventure while traveling the world on a tramp freighter. He ended up at Cambridge University (like hardscrabble sailors do) and earned a second bachelor’s degree. While there he was buds with T.H. White, making him officially cool by association. (T.H. White, born May 29th! Stay tuned.)

Upon returning to the U.S. he tutored the King of Siam’s son (1930), used the earnings to go to Berlin for a year, and returned to study at Harvard but dropped out (this was during the Great Depression) and taught in Massachusetts. He married Helen Butcher in 1941 and then was an officer in the Naval Reserve during WWII. After several years working at the Butcher Polish Company, he settled into academic life as a poet and professor, which he evidently found enormously satisfying. He taught at a number of universities but landed back at Dartmouth in 1956 and stayed. He died in 2005 at the age of 101, helping balance out the vast numbers of poets who die in their thirties. He was predeceased by his wife and survived by a son, daughter, and grandchildren.

Have a splendid Thursday (it’s snowing here, of all things), and stay scrupulously honest to the data.