Tennessee Williams

1911 –
1983
Read poems by this poet

Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams, III on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi. He received a BA from the University of Iowa in 1938. He is the author of three collections of poetry including, Androgyne, Mon Amour (New Directions Publishing, 1977).

Williams is best known as one of the most influential American playwrights of the 20th century. He received the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1948 for his play “A Streetcar Named Desire” and in 1955 for “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” His more than twenty other full-length plays include “The Glass Menagerie” and “The Night of the Iguana.”

Hilton Als, writing in the New Yorker, said of Williams, “His work spoke to those who could not fit within the parameters of all those neat lawns and white picket fences and solid heterosexual values.”

Williams died on February 25, 1983, in New York City.

Poetry

In the Winter of Cities (New Directions Publishing,1956)
Androgyne, Mon Amour (New Directions Publishing, 1977)
The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams (New Directions Publishing, 2002)