William Heyen

American poet William Heyen (1940- ) is known for such works as Crazy Horse in Stillness: Poems, Pig Notes and Dumb Music: Prose on Poetry, September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond, and works reminiscent of those of Walt Whitman, including Long Island Light: Poems and a Memoir and Eight Poems for Saint Walt. Heyen’s interest in his German heritage and the Holocaust is evident in The Swastika Poems.

Heyen went to State University of New York College at Brockport for his undergraduate education, and pursued his graduate education and Ph.D. at Ohio University.

Heyen was an English teacher at a junior high school in New York, professor and poet-in-residence at the State University of New York College at Brockport, and a poetry leader at the Chautauqua Institution.

Heyen was awarded the Borestone Mountain poetry award in 1966, the Ontario Review award in 1977, the Witter Bynner Prize, American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1982, and the Farichild Award and Small Press Book Award in 1997 for Crazy Horse in Stillness: Poems.

Source citation:

Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2004. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2004.