A strictly contemporary American poet, Alan Dugan (born 1923) was noted for his intelligent, unsentimental, and humorously mocking examination of life's mundane realities.

Alan Dugan was born on February 12, 1923, in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Queens College and Olivet College, served in the Air Force during World War II, won an award from Poetry Magazine in 1946, and received a B.A. in English from Mexico City College in 1951. His first publication, General Prothalamion in Populous Times, was privately printed in 1961.

Dugan's early works are generally relegated to obscurity, but his Poems (1961) was greeted with enthusiasm and led to much recognition for its poet, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and a Prix de Rome.

In addition to his career as a poet, Alan Dugan worked in advertising and publishing and, oddly enough, as a model maker for a medical supply house in New York. He taught...