Background

Theodore Russell Weiss was born on December 16, 1916, in Reading, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of Nathan and Mollie T. Weiss.

Education

In 1938 Theodore Russell Weiss received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Muhlenberg College. In 1940 he earned his Master of Arts degree from Columbia University.

Career

In 1941 Theodore Russell Weiss was an instructor in English at the University of Maryland. From 1942 to 1944 he worked as an instructor in English at the University of North Carolina. From 1944 to 1946 Weiss worked as an instructor in English at Yale University. In 1946, he was appointed a professor of English at Bard College, where he taught until 1966.

From 1961 to 1962 he was a visiting professor of poetry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He came to Princeton University in 1966 as a poet-in-residence. He was appointed professor of English and creative writing at Princeton in 1968 and in 1977 was named the William and Anne S. Paton Foundation Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature. He retired from the University in 1987 but continued to publish poems, articles, and the QRL Poetry Book Series.

In addition to teaching, Weiss ran the Quarterly Review of Literature with his wife from 1943 until they decided to cease the journal’s publication in 2000. During its run, it was widely viewed as an important literary periodical and was notable for publishing the poetry of writers such as E. E. Cummings and Ezra Pound and regenerating interest in poets who had fallen into neglect by the academic community.

As for his own writing, Weiss penned a number of poetry collections, including Gunsight (1962), The World before Us: Poems 1950-1970 (1970), A Slow Fuse: New Poems (1984), and Selected Poems (1995), as well as writing and editing essay collections and literary studies and criticism.

Weiss was the focus of the documentary "Living Poetry: A Year in the Life of a Poem," made by Harvey Edwards in 1987. It traced the creation and revision of "Fractions," one of Mr. Weiss' works. After the poem was revised further in 1995, Edwards made a sequel to the film.

Achievements

• Theodore Russell Weiss is best remembered as the editor and publisher of the Quarterly Review of Literature (QRL) as well as a faculty member of Princeton University for more than 20 years. His best-known poetic work was Gunsight. Among his many honors, Weiss was the recipient of a Wallace Stevens Award, a Shelley Memorial Award, and, in 1997, a PEN Club Special Achievement Award, bestowed on both Weiss and his wife for their work on the Quarterly Review of Literature. In 1973 he was awarded the honorary Doctor of Letters degree by Bard College.

Works

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  • Fireweeds

    (Connected by the pervasive theme of the havoc and overwhe...)

    1976
  • The Man from Porlock: Engagements, 1944-1981

    (These essays by the poet and critic Theodore Weiss explor...)

    1982
  • Gunsight

    (One of 500 signed and numbered copies bound in the publis...)

    1962
  • A Sum of Destructions: Poems

    (The title of Theodore Weiss's thirteenth book of poetry, ...)

    1994
  • World Before Us: Poems 1950-1970 1970
  • The Breath of Clowns and Kings 1971
  • A Slow Fuse: New Poems 1984
  • From Princeton One Autumn Afternoon 1987
  • Recoveries 1982

Connections

On July 6, 1941, Theodore Russell Weiss married Renée Karol.

Father:

Nathan Weiss

Mother:

Mollie T. Weiss

Spouse:

Renée Karol

References

• Contemporary Authors
  2011