Michael S. Harper, American poet, Died at 78

  Writers

Michael Steven Harper was born on March 18, 1938, and died on May 7, 2016.

He was an American poet from Brooklyn.

He was the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island from 1988 to 1993.

Harper published ten books of poetry, two of which – Dear John, Dear Coltrane (1970) and Images of Kin (1977) – were nominated for the National Book Award.

He did a lot of his poetry that was influenced by jazz and history.

Various selection from his poems has been included as important examples of African-American literature and jazz poetry in various anthologies.

Michael S. Harper often wrote about his wife, Shirley (commonly referred to as “Shirl”), their children, and their ancestors, as well as friends and various black historical and cultural figures.

During 1993, Nathan A. Scott in the “Afro-American Poetry” article of the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics wrote, “Harper has created a body of work which, though it has won much respect and admiration, deserves to be far more widely known than it was.

Michael S. Harper passed away at 78 yrs old.