The Bollingen Prize for Poetry is a special award given to an American poet. It is given every two years to honor a poet for their best new book of poems or for their lifetime accomplishments. The award is given by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, and it does not require nominations or submissions from poets.

Inception and controversy

The prize was created in 1948 by Paul Mellon, funded with a $10,000 grant from the Bollingen Foundation to the Library of Congress. The prize and the foundation are named after the village of Bollingen, Switzerland, and the Bollingen Tower, where Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung lived. The first prize was selected by a group of experts from the Library of Congress and given to Ezra Pound for his collection of poems, The Pisan Cantos.

The decision to award a work by Ezra Pound, who had supported fascism and was being charged with treason in World War II for making anti-Semitic radio broadcasts, made many people angry. There was a lot of controversy in the newspapers, and a committee in Congress asked the Library of Congress to stop being connected to the award. The money that wasn't used was sent back to the Bollingen Foundation in 1949.

Continuance through the Yale University Library

The Bollingen Foundation continued the program, with the Yale University Library managing the administrative tasks. The prize was given each year from 1948 to 1963. In 1963, the prize amount was raised to $5,000. After 1963, the prize was awarded every other year. The Bollingen Foundation was dissolved in 1968, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation began providing funding. In 1973, the Mellon Foundation created a $100,000 endowment to allow the Yale Library to continue giving the prize forever.

In 1961, the Bollingen Foundation also established a prize for the best translation. This prize was awarded between 1961 and 1968. The first winner was Robert Fitzgerald for his translation of the Odyssey. Other winners included Walter W. Arndt for his translation of Eugene Onegin and Richard Wilbur and Mona Van Duyn, who shared the prize in 1963.