The Cognac

James Tate (1943–2015) was the author of over twenty poetry collections, including the posthumously published The Government Lake (Ecco, 2019). His earlier collections include The Ghost Soldiers (Ecco, 2008); Worshipful Company of Fletchers (Ecco, 1994), which won the National Book Award; Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1991), which won the Pulitzer Prize and the William Carlos Williams Award; Distance from Loved Ones (Wesleyan University Press, 1991); Constant Defender (Ecco, 1986); Viper Jazz (Wesleyan University Press, 1976); and The Oblivion Ha-Ha (Little, Brown & Co., 1970). His first major collection, The Lost Pilot (Yale University Press, 1967), was selected by Dudley Fitts for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Tate’s other honors include an Academy of American Poets chancellorship, a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Poetry, the Wallace Stevens Award, the Tanning Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He taught at the University of California Berkeley, Columbia University, Emerson College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.