Edward Weismiller

American counterintelligence agent, professor, and poet Edward Weismiller was born in Monticello, Wisconsin and raised in Vermont. He became the youngest poet to receive the Yale Younger Poets prize, for his book The Deer Come Down (1936). Weismiller earned a BA from Cornell College, an MA from Harvard University, and a DPhil from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes scholar. He served in counterespionage during World War II, and afterward declined to join the newly formed CIA. He opted to teach poetry and creative writing at Pomona College.

During his lifetime, Weismiller published five books of poetry, as well as the novel The Serpent Sleeping (1998), before retiring in 1980. Poet W.S. Merwin has praised Weismiller for his “full front self-appraisal, neither mocking for whining” and the “nakedness, humor” of his verse. He died in 2010.