Born in Georgia in 1924, Edgar Bowers served during World War II in Bavaria with the counterintelligence corps of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division. After the war he completed his undergraduate degree at the University of North Carolina, earned his doctorate at Stanford University under the tutelage of the eminent poet and critic Yvor Winters, and went on to write some of the most hauntingly beautiful poems of his generation. Mr. Bowers published five collections of poetry and taught for thirty-three years at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His poetry earned him several distinctions, including two Guggenheim fellowships and the Bollingen Prize, an honor that placed him in the company of W. H. Auden, Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, and Wallace Stevens. Mr. Bowers died in San Francisco in 2000, and in his honor the executors of his estate established the Edgar Bowers Estate Endowed Fund for Special Collections for support of poetry acquisitions and readings.
