David Young

David Pollock Young (December 14, 1936 – May 3, 2025) was an American poet, translator, editor, literary critic and academic. His work includes 11 volumes of poetry, translations from Italian, Chinese, German, Czech, Dutch, and Spanish, critical work on Shakespeare, Yeats, and modernist poets, and landmark anthologies of prose poetry and magical realism. He co-founded and edited the magazine FIELD: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics for its 50 years of publication. Young was Longman Professor Emeritus of English at Oberlin College, and was the recipient of awards including NEA and Guggenheim fellowships.

Early life Young was born on December 14, 1936, in Davenport, Iowa, and grew up in Minneapolis and Omaha, where he graduated from Central High School in 1954. He received his BA from Carleton College in 1958 and his MA (1961) and Ph.D. (1965) from Yale University. His students included Pulitzer Prize recipients Franz Wright (2004) and Vijay Seshadri (2014)

Personal life and death Young married Chloe Hamilton in 1963.

Young died of Parkinson's disease on May 3, 2025, at the age of 88.

Works David Young was one of eight poets featured in Al Lee’s anthology The Major Young Poets, published in 1971. His 11 volumes of poetry and a book of prose poems reflect a career of more than 50 years. His poetry is generally felt to be deeply grounded in the landscape and weather of the American Midwest. Young's critical works include studies of Shakespeare, Yeats, and modernism.

Young also translated widely, from Italian (Petrarch and Montale), Chinese (Wang Wei, Li Po, Tu Fu, Li Ho, Li Shang-yin, Yu Xuanji, Du Mu, Qin Guan, Su Dongpo), Japanese (Bashō), Dutch (Vasalis), German (Rilke, Eich, Celan), Czech (Holub), and Spanish (Neruda).

FIELD Magazine and other editorial work In 1969, Young and five Oberlin colleagues founded the magazine FIELD: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics. Published twice annually for 50 years, FIELD featured the poetry of hundreds of writers, both celebrated and emerging, including Charles Wright, Sandra McPherson, Mark Strand, Adrienne Rich, Jean Valentine, Charles Simic, Philip Levine, William Stafford, Thomas Lux, Arthur Sze, Carol Potter, and Bob Hicok.

Under Young's editorial leadership, Oberlin College Press expanded in 1978 to publish books of translation in the FIELD Translation Series, including volumes by Anna Akhmatova, Vasko Popa, Yannis Ritsos, Max Jacob, and Dino Campana, and then in 1993 to publish contemporary poets in the FIELD Poetry Series, including Marianne Boruch, Russell Edson, Angie Estes, Jon Loomis, and Dennis Schmitz.

Young advanced interest in the prose poem and in magical realism with two anthologies. Models of the Universe: An Anthology of the Prose Poem (1995, co-edited with Stuart Friebert), featured prose poets such as Rimbaud, Kafka, Toomer, and the father of the prose poem, Aloysius Bertrand. Magical Realist Fiction: An Anthology (1984, co-edited with Keith Hollaman) included writers from Gogol to Borges to Kundera. He also co-edited (with Stuart Friebert and David Walker) A FIELD Guide to Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, and (with Stuart Friebert) The Longman Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. 1968: United States Award of the International Poetry Forum 1981: Huntington Library Fellowship 1981–82: National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry 1982, 2008: Ohioana Award for Editorial Excellence 1999: Cleveland Arts Prize for Literature 2001: Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship 2002: Witter Bynner Translation Residency, Santa Fe Art Institute 2002: Pushcart Prize 2011: Ohioana Book Award in Poetry 2018: Distinguished Achievement Award, Carleton College Alumni Association