Major Works
- Four Poems (posthumous) (2009)
- Devils & Islands: Poems (2007)
- No Second Eden (2002)
- Between the Chains (Phoenix Poets Series) (1991)
- The Destructive Element: New and Selected Poems (1998)
- To the Lost City, or, The Sins of Nineveh (1989)
- Lessons (1987)
- Hurricane Lamp (1986)
- The Book of Alna (1985)
- Keys to Mayerling (1983)
- The Defense of the Sugar Islands: A Recruiting Poster (1979)
- Phaethon unter den Linden (1979)
- Yellow for Peril, Black for Beautiful (1975)
- Steeplejacks in Babel (1973)
- Silver Out of Shanghai (1973) verse play
- Airship Boys in Africa (in POETRY, CXVI:4 (July, 1970)
- Watchboy, What of the Night? (1966)
Biography
Poet, playwright, and author Turner Cassity was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1929. He spent his youth in Jackson and Forest, Mississippi, and began writing poetry at fifteen.
He attended Millsaps College where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1951. He obtained his master’s degree in English at Standford University in 1952.
No Second Eden
In 1952, Cassity was drafted into the army and spent two years stationed in Puerto Rico. In 1954, he attended Columbia University (on the GI bill) where he earned a master’s degree in library science in 1956.
He worked as a librarian at the Jackson Municipal Library for two years. For two years, he worked as a librarian in Pretoria, South Africa.
In 1962, he became the librarian at the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where he worked and wrote poetry for twenty-nine years. He retired in 1991. He lived in Decatur, Georgia, for several years.
In 1993, Turner was awarded the Michael Braude Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2007, Turner was awarded the Georgia Author of the Year Award by the Georgia Writer’s Association for his poetry collection, Devils and Islands.
In all, he has written over seventeen works. Douglasville, Georgia, holds an annual Turner Cassity Literary Festival in July.
Turner Cassity died in Atlanta in 2009 and is buried in Forest, Mississippi.
Related Websites
- Biography of Turner Cassity on Poetry Foundation website
- Turner Cassity’s papers are stored at Emory University
- Obituary for Turner Cassity
- Press Release from Emory University: Award-Winning Poet Turner Cassity Dies at 80