Ashbery, Dove Receive Major Awards

When it comes to winning major poetry awards, some poets are just killing it. Rita Dove racks up a National Medal of the Arts, while John Ashbery takes home a National Humanities Medal, per this LA Times blog article.

From said article:

The White House announced the recipients of the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medals today. Poet Rita Dove is the leading literary figure among the seven who will receive the National Medal of Arts, joining actor Al Pacino, singer Mel Tillis, painter Will Barnet, sculptor Martin Puryear, pianist André Watts, and creative arts patron Emily Rauh Pulitzer.

Rita Dove served as the U.S. Poet Laureate from 1993 to '95. Dove, born in 1952 in Ohio, received an MFA from the University of Iowa and published her first poetry collection in 1980. She won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for the collection "Thomas and Beulah." She teaches at the University of Virginia; her many accolades include a National Humanities Medal.

National Humanities Medals will be awarded to eight writers, including another poet, John Ashbery. The other winners are Kwame Anthony Appiah, critic Andrew Delbanco, historian Robert Darnton, musical scholar Charles Rosen, historian Teofilo Ruiz, literary scholar Ramón Saldívar, and Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate in economics.

The ceremony takes place today at 1:45 eastern and can be watched here.