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David Gewanter

American poet

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ5234101 ↗
Source-derived summary

David Gewanter is an American poet.

Life

He teaches at Georgetown University, and lives in Washington, D. C., with his wife, writer Joy Young Gewanter, and son James.

His work has appeared in Ploughshares.

Awards

1980: Hopwood Award, University of Michigan

1989: Eisner Prize, University of California, Berkeley

1990: Academy of American Poets Prize, University of California, Berkeley

1994: Levinson Award, Harvard University

1998: John C. Zacharis First Book Award for In the Belly

1999: Witter Bynner Fellowship, Library of Congress

2002: Whiting Award

2003: James Laughlin Award - finalist for The Sleep of Reason

2004: Ambassador Book Award for Robert Lowell: Collected Poems

2004: Book of the Year for Robert Lowell: Collected Poems

Works

"GAG"; "ENGLISH 1"; "SEE SAW"; "CONVULVOLUS, A LULLABY"; "CONDUCT OF OUR LOVES", Beltway Poetry Quarterly

"Against the Grain", Slate

"Traffic of Creations", Slate, July 23, 2002 Archived June 6, 2011, at the Wayback Machine

"Boy's Poem". Boston Review. Archived from the original on May 13, 2008.

In the Belly. University of Chicago Press. 1997. ISBN 978-0-226-28873-4.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “David Gewanter” is american poet. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through David, Gewanter and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1980, 1989, 1990, 1994—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1950. For this dossier, David, Gewanter and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american poet” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5234101. VIAF identifies the subject as 37148350. The Library of Congress control number is n96037032. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1980, 1989, 1990 and 1994.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “David Gewanter”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow David Gewanter primary sources, David Gewanter archive and David research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “David Gewanter”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “David Gewanter” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.