Although Frederic Prokosch is best known as a novelist, having published sixteen novels between 1935 and 1972, he also produced, from the late 1920s to the mid-1940s, a distinctive body of poetry that drew favorable comments from, among others, T.S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, and Edwin Muir. His poems appeared frequently in the literary journals and anthologies of this period, and during the 1930s and 1940s, he published four volumes of poetry. Despite considerable recognition of his skills as a poet, including his reception of the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize for lyric poetry in 1941, his poetic output waned following World War II, and he directed his literary energies more and more single-mindedly to the production of novels.

Frederic Prokosch was born in Madison, Wisconsin, into a family whose members distinguished themselves through their professional activities. His father, Eduard, was one of this century's finest linguists, serving for several...