Ben Belitt was born in New York City. He was educated at the University of Virginia, receiving a B.A. in 1932 and an M.A. in 1934, and he was a doctoral student at that university from 1934 to 1936. Belitt was assistant literary editor for the Nation in 1936-1937 and since 1938 has been a member of the English Department and a professor of literature and languages at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont. He served in the U.S. Army in 1943-1944 and was an editor-scenarist for the Signal Corps Photographic Center Combat Film Section in 1945-1946. Belitt has received the Shelley Memorial Award (1937), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1945), Poetry magazine's Oscar Blumenthal and Union League Civic and Arts Foundation prizes (1957, 1960), a Brandeis University Creative Arts Citation (1961-1962), and a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award (1965). He received a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in 1967-1968.

Although Belitt is well respected...