Paul Engle (1908 - 1991)

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"Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words."*

Engle was a faculty member of the English Department at the University of Iowa from 1937 to 1991. During his career at Iowa, he taught scores of writers including Donald Justice, Philip Levine, W.D. Snodgrass, and Wallace Stegner.

Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Engle attended Coe College in Cedar Rapids, receiving a B.A. degree in 1931. The following year, he earned an M.A. degree at the UI. He completed advanced studies at Columbia University and Merton College at Oxford. From 1937 to 1965, he served as the director of the UI Creative Writing Program. Engle and his wife, writer Hualing Nieh, founded the UI International Writing Program in 1966.

Engle pursued his own literary career, becoming a three-time recipient of Guggenheim fellowships in poetry. His poetry collections include Worn Earth (1932), American Child: Sonnets for My Daughter (1956), Embrace: Selected Love Poems (1969), and Images of China: Poems Written in China, April-June, 1980 (1981) and the novels Always the Land (1941) and Golden Child (1962).

* "Poetry is Ordinary Language Raised to the Nth Power" in The New York Times Book Review (Feb. 17, 1957)