The creative arts were important to William Bronk: the visual arts, music, writing. Throughout his life, he maintained a commitment to the community of artists and those who cared about the arts. But it was language that mattered most to him: poetry was his unique gift to the world.
William Bronk was born on February 17, 1918 in Fort Edward, NY; by 1920 his family had moved to Hudson Falls. He graduated from Hudson Falls Senior High School in 1934, highly influenced by a young English teacher, Elizabeth Clark, who recognized and encouraged his talent.
He attended Dartmouth College where he studied with the poet/professor Sidney Cox. He spent two summers at Cummington School of the Arts in western Massachusetts, where he began life–time friendships with the artists Herman Maril and Shirley Clark. These early experiences confirmed the journey he would take as one of America’s gifted poets.
He spent a year at Harvard Graduate School, 1938-39, before leaving in order to write. His first important publication included two poems in Five Cummington Poets, in 1939; this was followed by his poems in Four Dartmouth Poets, edited by Sidney Cox in 1940.
He served in the U.S. Army during World War II. While stationed at Governor‘s Island, he wrote the history of the Eastern Coastal Defense. During this time he became friends with another soldier, Eugene Canade, and met his father, the artist Vincent Canade in NYC.
After the war, Bronk taught literature at Union College in Schenectady, but by 1946 he had started to manage the William M. Bronk Coal and Lumber Company in Hudson Falls, a business his father had begun in 1918. He managed this business for 32 years. During these years he traveled extensively until the early 1970s: to England, Spain, Italy, Greece, Peru, Mexico, Columbia. Reference to these travels are found throughout his writings.
Bronk’s poetry gained recognition. In 1951 Cid Corman selected several poems for publication in Origin; he continued to publish Bronk’s poems for two decades. In 1953 Robert Creeley included Bronk‘s poems in The Black Mountain Review. These publications opened relationships with some other great poets in America, including Charles Olson, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Denise Levertov, Gary Snyder and John Taggart.
More than 20 books of Bronk’s poetry have been published. It is of note that at the time of his death, all of his poems were in print through Talisman House, Publishers.
Recognition for his work came in the successful publication of his poetry and in other ways. He read his poem “Waterland” at the Inauguration of Governor Mario Cuomo in 1980. He received two prestigious awards: The American Book Award for Life Supports in 1982 and the Lannon Prize in 1992.
Bronk’s correspondence and manuscripts are in the archives at Columbia University, Dartmouth College, SUNY Buffalo, University of New Hampshire, University of Connecticut and University of California San Diego. His art collection is at Adirondack Community College, where he held his last public reading in the Visual Arts Gallery on November 2, 1997.
Submitted by W. Sheldon Hurst. Dates and facts are confirmed in the following sources: It Becomes Our Life by Sheldon Hurst and The “Winter Mind” by Burt Kimmelman.