J.D. McClatchy was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, in 1945. His passion for the arts developed at a very early age, including his tuning in to radio broadcasts of the New York City's Metropolitan Opera, listening to La Boheme in his bedroom, and regularly attending performances of the Philadelphia Orchestra. While he adored the opera, McClatchy first found success in writing poetry. He is
a former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, editor of The Yale Review, and editor
of the acclaimed "Voice of the Poet" series for Random House AudioBooks. Despite his successes in poetry, McClatchy eventually wrote libretti for Francis Thorne's Mario and the Magician, Bruce Saylor's Orpheus Descending, and Tobias Picker's Emmeline. He's currently working on opera adaptations of George Orwell's novel 1984, Thornton Wilder's play Our Town, Nathanael West's novel Miss Lonelyhearts, and the opera Grendel, with Julie Taymor, based on Beowulf. McClatchy's honors include an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has also been one of the New York Public Literary Lions, and received the 2000 Connecticut Governor’s Arts Award. He received the 1991 fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, and served as an Academy Chancellor from 1996 until 2003. He is a lecturer in English at Yale University and lives in Stonington, Connecticut.
• Scenes From Another Life (1981)
• Stars Principal (1986)
• White Paper: On Contemporary American Poetry (1989)
• Poets on Painters: Essays on the Art of Painting by Twentieth
Century Poets (editor, 1989)
• The Rest of the Way (1990)
• Ten Commandments (1998)
• Twenty Questions (1998)
• Poems of the Sea (editor, 2001)
• Hazmat (2002)
• Division of Spoils: Selected Poems (2003)
• Vintage Book of Contemporary Poetry (editor, 2003)
