Turner Cassity (January 12, 1929, Jackson, Mississippi - July 26, 2009 Atlanta) was an American poet, playwright, and short story writer.
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He was the son of Dorothy and Allen Cassity. He grew up in Jackson and Forest, Mississippi. He graduated from Millsaps College and Stanford University with a master's degree.[1]
From 1952 to 1954, he was drafted and stationed in Puerto Rico. He attended Columbia University on the GI Bill, and received a master's degree in library science in 1955.
and then moved to South Africa. He worked at the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University, from 1962 to 1991,[2] and also taught poetry there. He also cofounded the Callanwolde Readings Program, which highlights poets and writers, with poet Michael Mott.
He is buried in Forest, Mississippi.[3] His papers are at Emory University.[4]
Devils & Islands, Cassity’s 10th collection, reinforces the image of the dapper Southerner as a satirist, and, in the words of National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia, ’73, MBA ’77, perhaps “the most brilliantly eccentric poet in America.” [5]