Joseph Langland

Joseph Langland was born in Spring Grove, Minnesota, to Norwegian American parents. Raised in northeastern Iowa, Langland attended Santa Ana College in California and the University of Iowa, where he earned both his BA and MA. He served in the US Infantry during World War II and spent several months in Bavaria with the military government after VE Day. Langland’s first collection of poetry, For Harold (1945), came out of his war experiences, including the loss of his brother during fighting in the Philippines. Other collections include The Green Town (1956); The Wheel of Summer (1963), which won a Melville Cane Award; Any Body’s Song (1980), a National Poetry series selection; Twelve Poems with Preludes and Postludes (1988); and Selected Poems (1991). With Paul Engle, Langland coedited the anthology Poet’s Choice (1962) and co-translated, with Tamás Aczél and Laszlo Tikos, the anthology Poetry from the Russian Underground (1973).
 
Langland taught at various institutions, including Dana College in Nebraska, the University of Iowa, and the University of Wyoming. From 1959 to 1979, he was professor of English at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, where he also founded the MFA program for Poets and Writers. Langland’s honors and awards included a Ford Fellowship in humanities and an Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship. Langland was named a Living Art Treasure in Literature for the New England Arts Biennial in 1985. His papers are housed at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa.