R. S. Gwynn
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R.S. Gwynn is an American poet and anthologist associated with New Formalism.
He has received the Michael Braude Award for Light Verse of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, served as an original faculty member of the West Chester University Conference on Form and Narrative in Poetry, and was included in the first significant anthology of New Formalism, Rebel Angels: Twenty-five Poets of the New Formalism (Story Line Press 1995). In 1997 he was selected as a University Professor at Lamar University and he has been honored by Phi Kappa Phi.
Gwynn was born in Eden, North Carolina in 1948. He graduated from Davidson College in 1969, where he won the Vereen Bell Award for creative writing twice, played varsity football on a dubious knee, and was a member of the school's championship team on the General Electric College Bowl. He did graduate work at Middlebury College's Breadloaf School of English and later earned an M.A. and an M.F.A. from the University of Arkansas.
His first collection of poetry, Bearing & Distance, was published by Cedar Rock Press in 1977 and was followed by a long satirical poem, The Narcissiad, in 1982. His book, The Drive-in, won the Breakthrough Award of the University of Missouri Press in 1986. A collection of poetry from throughout his career was published as No Word of Farewell: Poems 1970-2000 (Story Line Press 2001), about which Richard Wilbur said, "His poems are based in the vernacular, yet haunted by the whole tradition of verse. This is a richly varied, highly accomplished collection from one of our best."[citations needed]
