Pulitzer Prize Poetry Winner

Untitled Subjects

by Richard Howard

Summary

Fifteen dramatic monologues channel nineteenth-century artists, writers, and acquaintances, building a chorus of Victorian voices on art, desire, and mortality. Howard writes with an erudite ear for period diction, sustaining long syntactic arcs that recall Browning while sounding distinctly contemporary. The book brought new life to a genre many had assumed exhausted by its great Victorian masters.

Historical Context & Significance

Howard was also a legendary translator; his win recognized his ability to inhabit the voices of the past.