Louis O. Coxe

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Louis Osborne Coxe (April 15, 1918 - May 25, 1993) was an American poet, playwright, essayist, and professor who was recognized by the Academy of American Poets for his "long, powerful, quiet accomplishment, largely unrecognized, in lyric poetry." He was probably best known for his dramatic adaptation of Herman Melville's Billy Budd, which opened on Broadway in 1951. Born in Manchester, New Hampshire in 1918, Coxe was educated at St. Paul's School in Concord. He graduated from Princeton University in 1940, writing his senior thesis on Edwin Arlington Robinson. During World War II Coxe served in the United States Navy, commanding PC boats in the South Pacific, an experience that would shape much of his poetry. After receiving his honorable discharge in 1946, he married Edith Winsor, granddaughter of Boston financier Robert Winsor, and began teaching at Princeton. He was Briggs-Copeland Fellow at Harvard from 1948-1949, and from 1949-1955, he taught at the University of Minnesota.