Lewis Putnam Turco was a Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Poetry Fellow.
DRESDEN, ME, December 02, 2019 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Marquis Who's Who, the world's premier publisher of biographical profiles, is proud to present Lewis Putnam Turco with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. An accomplished listee, Mr. Turco celebrates many years of experience in his professional network, and has been noted for achievements, leadership qualities, and the credentials and successes he has accrued in his field. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
Mr. Turco enlisted in the U.S. Navy upon graduating from Meriden, CT, High School in 1952. He served aboard an aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. HORNET (CVA12), during its World Cruise from 1953 to 1955 and began publishing professionally during the same period. Upon his honorable discharge in 1956, he enrolled in the University of Connecticut, receiving two undergraduate scholarships from the Meriden Record-Journal Publishing Company. He began his teaching career there as a graduate student and part-time assistant immediately upon receiving his Bachelor of Arts in mid-year 1959. That fall he transferred to the Writers' Workshop of the University of Iowa as a graduate fellow and editorial assistant. There, he won the Academy of American Poets Prize for 1959 and 1960 and received a Master of Arts in 1962.
Mr. Turco was an Instructor of English at Fenn College, now the Cleveland State University from 1960 to 1964, where he was founding Director of the Poetry Center of Cleveland. He spent 1964 and 1965 at Hillsdale College in Michigan where he directed the first Conference of Midwestern Poets. He was visiting professor at Ashland University, the State University of New York College at Potsdam, and poet-in-residence at the University of Louisville. After more than 36 years of professional teaching experience, Mr. Turco retired as professor emeritus of English from the State University College at Oswego in 1996 where, in 1968, he had been founding director of the creative writing department. Since his retirement, he has received honorary doctorates from Ashland University, the University of Maine at Fort Kent, and Unity College in Maine.
Mr. Turco's First Poems was published in 1960 as a selection of the Book Club for Poetry. The Sketches won the American Weave Press Chapbook Award in 1962. While the Spider Slept, a ballet based on and titles from lines in his poem "November 22, 1963," had its world premiere performed by the Royal Swedish Ballet in the Royal Opera House, Stockholm, in 1965. In 1968, Mr. Turco's The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics was published and, in its fourth edition, continues in print fifty years later.
Poetry: An Introduction through Writing, 1973, was chosen for inclusion in the Educational Resources Information Center of the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education. The Compleat Melancholik received an Exhibit Certificate of Award in 1986 and was selected for inclusion in the National Endowment for the Arts' New American Writing Exhibits at the International Book Fairs of Frankfurt and Liber. Mr. Turco won the 1986 Melville Cane Award of the Poetry Society of America for Visions and Revisions of American Poetry.
A collaboration with the Dutch composer Walter Hekster resulted in the commissioning by the Twents Conservatorium of Enschede, Holland, of a chamber opera, The Fog, with a score by Hekster whch was published in Amsterdam in 1987. A lifelong collaboration with the printmaker George O'Connell resulted in Bordello, A Portfolio of PoemPrints in 1996 and in a Christmas card collection that is included in the Smithsonian Institution's Archive of American Art.
A Book of Fears with Italian translations by Joseph Alessia was winner of the first annual Bordighera Bilingual Poetry Prize in 1998. The Book of Literary Terms was a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2000. Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems appeared in 2007, and Satan's Scourge, a history of the Salem witchcrafts, won an award from the New England Book Festival in 2010. The Hero Enkidu: An Epic was published in 2015, and The Sonnetarium appeared in 2018.
Throughout his career, Mr. Turco has been recognized for his contributions to literature and education. The Alumni Association of the University of Connecticut gave him a Distinguished Alumnus Award, he was a Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Poetry Fellow and, later, a member of the faculty. He held two resident fellowships from the Yaddo Foundation; he was honored with the John Ciardi Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry by the Italian-American Foundation and the Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award by the West Chester University Poetry Conference. Moreover, he was honored with five faculty fellowships from the Research Foundation of the State University of New York, and he was inducted into the Meriden, CT, and the SUNY Oswego Faculty Halls of Fame. Mr. Turco has been featured in numerous honors publications, including multiple editions of Who's Who in American Education and Who's Who in the East.
In recognition of outstanding contributions to his profession and the Marquis Who's Who community, Lewis Putnam Turco has been featured on the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement website. Please visit www.ltachievers.com for more information about this honor.
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