Gerald Stern, prize-winning and lyrical US poet, dies at 97

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Stern, New Jersey’s first poet laureate, died on Thursday at Calvary Hospice in New York City. RIP.

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Stern, one of America's most loved and respected poets who wrote with spirited melancholy and earthly humour about his childhood, Judaism, mortality and the wonders of the contemplative life, has died. He was 97. Photo: AP

Stern was shaped by the rough, urban surroundings of his native Pittsburgh, but he also identified strongly with nature and animals, marvelling at the"power” of a maple tree, likening himself to a hummingbird or a squirrel, or finding the"secret of life” in a dead animal on the road. and praised him as"one of America’s great poet-proclaimers in the Whitmanic tradition: With moments of humour and whimsy, and an enduring generosity, his work celebrates the mythologising power of the art.”

Stern lived in Europe and New York during the 1950s and eventually settled in a 19th century home near the Delaware River in Lambertville. His creative development came slowly. Only during free moments in the Army, in which he served for a brief time after World War II, did he conceive the"sweet idea” of writing for a living.

Stern mostly avoided topical poems, but he was a longtime political activist whose causes included desegregating a swimming pool in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and organizing an anti-apartheid reading at the University of Iowa. He taught at several schools, but had great skepticism about writing programmes and the academic life.

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