Turner Cassity

He was the son of Dorothy and Allen Cassity, and grew up in Jackson and Forest, Mississippi. He graduated from Millsaps College and Stanford University with a master's degree.[2]

Cassity was drafted into the United States Army and stationed in Puerto Rico from 1952 to 1954.[3] He attended Columbia University on the GI Bill, and received a master's degree in library science in 1955 and then moved to South Africa. He worked at the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University, from 1962 to 1991,[4] and also taught poetry there. He also cofounded the Callanwolde Readings Program, which highlights poets and writers, with poet Michael Mott.

He is buried in Forest, Mississippi.[3] His papers are at Emory University.[5]

• Georgia Author of the Year Award from the Georgia Writers Association.
• Levinson Prize for Poetry, for Devils and Islands
• Michael Braude Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• Ingram Merrill Foundation Award
• National Endowment for the Arts Grant

• Watchboy, What of the Night?. Wesleyan University Press. 1966.
• Steeplejacks in Babel. D. R. Godine. 1973. ISBN 978-0-87923-070-8.
• Yellow for Peril, Black for Beautiful. G. Braziller. 1975. ISBN 978-0-8076-0775-6.
• The Defense of the Sugar Islands: a recruiting poster. Symposium Press. 1979.
• Phaëthon unter den Linden. Iris Press. 1979.
• Keys to Mayerling. Robert L. Barth. 1983. ISBN 978-0-941150-14-9.
• The Airship Boys in Africa. Hendricks. 1984. ISBN 978-0-943764-01-6.
• Hurricane Lamp. University of Chicago Press. 1986. ISBN 978-0-226-09615-5.
• Lessons. Para Press. 1987. ISBN 978-0-941150-57-6.
• To the Lost City, or, the Sins of Nineveh. R.L. Barth. 1989. ISBN 978-0-941150-74-3.
• Between the Chains. University of Chicago Press. 1991. ISBN 978-0-226-09617-9. Turner Cassity.
• The Destructive Element: New and Selected Poems. Ohio University Press. 1998. ISBN 978-0-8214-1221-3.
• No Second Eden. Ohio University Press. 2002. ISBN 978-0-8040-1050-4.
• "Crystal but not crystal ball". The New Criterion. November 2006.
• Devils & islands: poems. Ohio University Press. 2007. ISBN 978-0-8040-1102-0.
• "Four poems (published posthumously)". Able Muse, Tribute Issue. December 2009.
• "Turner Cassity Reads at the Huntington Library, April 12, 2003 (video)". Able Muse, Tribute Issue. December 2009.

Devils & Islands, Cassity's 10th collection, reinforces the image of the dapper Southerner as a satirist, and, in the words of National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia, '73, MBA '77, perhaps "the most brilliantly eccentric poet in America." [6]

• "Turner Cassity Tribute (Guest Features Editor - Suzanne J. Doyle)", Able Muse, December, 2009
• "Remembering Turner Cassity (by David Yezzi)", Best American Poetry, August 13, 2009