J. V. Cunningham

Who was J. V. Cunningham?

James Vincent Cunningham was an American poet, literary critic and teacher. Sometimes described as a neo-classicist or anti-modernist, his poetry was distinguished by its clarity, brevity and traditional formality of rhyme and rhythm at a time when many American poets were breaking away from traditional fixed meters. His finely crafted epigrams in the style of Latin poets were much praised and frequently anthologized. But he also wrote spare, mature poems about love and estrangement, most notably the 15-poem sequence entitled To What Strangers, What Welcome.