He was raised in Wisconsin and Vermont. In 1936, the twenty-year-old Edward Weismiller became the youngest poet to win the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets prize.
He graduated from Cornell College in 1938, from Harvard University with a master’s in 1942, and from Oxford University, with a D.Phil. in 1950, where he was a Rhodes scholar.
Professor Weismiller, an eminent scholar of John Milton’s poetry, came toWashington, DC in 1968 to study original source materials in the FolgerLibrary, and stayed on to teach in the English department of the GeorgeWashington University. After his retirement in 1980 he remained there,reveling in the city’s beauty, variety, and cultural ferment. He was inlove with words and stories and had a gift for making and keeping friends.An inspiring teacher, he worked to instill the love of beautiful andprecise language in his students, and many of them went on to success aswriters, artists, actors, teachers.
Weismiller was proud of what he called a nice American success story. Hisfather, Jacob Weismiller, came of German-Swiss stock; his mother, GeorgiaWilson, was of Scottish descent. Young Edward grew up inventing word gamesand creating crossword puzzles for his sister Jean. The family lived on atiny farm in rural Wisconsin and the children went to a small countryschool where Edward won good grades from his teachers and attacks from abully. His mother died when he was 11, shattering the family. Two yearslater, taken in by his older sister Luverne, he began doing better in highschool and writing songs and poetry. Gently guided by his brother-in-law,paper chemist Westbrook Steele, he won scholarships to Swarthmore and thento Cornell College in Iowa, where he fell in love with Milton’s poetry andbegan to publish his own. At age 20 he became the youngest Yale YoungerPoet when his first book of poems, The Deer Come Down, was selected forpublication by series editor Stephen Vincent Benet.
In 1936 he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, soon interruptedwhen England and Germany declared war. Repatriated with the other U.S.students, he earned his Masters degree and taught at Harvard, where hefounded lifelong friendships with some of the best poets and writers of hisgeneration. A sojourn at Yaddo nourished his talent. He also met andmarried Frances Merewether Power of Redlands, California, a budding poetand journalist; their first child was born in 1942. He translateda prize-winning French novel, The Young Concubine, and began his secondbook of poems, The Faultless Shore, published after the war, in 1946.
When the U.S. joined the European war, Weismiller’s life took anastonishing twist. In a midnight phone call from the new Office ofStrategic Services (OSS), he was recruited for counterespionage. (He neverknew who had recommended him.) He chose to earn his required commission andstartle his friends--and the Commandant--by joining the Marine Corps. Ondetached service in Europe, he was trained by the British secret servicesMI5 and MI6 and watched the terrible beauty of firebombs falling on theroofs of London. Deployed to Cherbourg, France, after D-Day, he became thefirst American officer to run a captured enemy agent back against theGermans. Eventually he was put in charge of counterespionage in theAmerican Zone in occupied Germany. He was awarded a Bronze Star and theMedaille de la Reconnaissance Francaise. When he turned in his finalreport, he was told that it was so highly classified that he would neversee it again. (He later heard that the British, apparently less secretive,were using their copy in counterespionage training.)
After the war Weismiller declined an invitation to join the newly formedCIA, which succeeded the OSS; instead he went home to his family inSouthern California and commenced work on his novel, The Serpent Sleeping,sustained by a Guggenheim writing fellowship. In 1948 the Rhodes Trustinvited back the scholars whose time had been cut short by the war,allowing them to bring their new families, so he earned his doctorate fromOxford. He went on to teach poetry, creative writing, and Milton at PomonaCollege. Over the years four more children were born.
In 1968, now divorced, he came to Washington and began a new phase of life.His third book of poems, The Branch of Fire, was published in 1970, and hewas invited to give a reading of his poems at the Library of Congress in1979. After retiring in 1980 he continued to write and reap honors. Hecontributed to the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry, was an editor of theVariorum Milton series (a compendium of the best modern scholarship), andreceived the 2001 Robert Fitzgerald Award for lifetime contribution to thestudy of metrics and versification. In 2002, at age 87, he became theoldest Yale Younger Poet when the press published Walking Toward the Sun,with a foreword by W. S. Merwin (now U.S. poet laureate).
Weismiller always saw himself as a citizen soldier, not professionalmilitary, but his service affected him deeply. The war’s ambience and humanlessons permeated his 1962 novel, The Serpent Sleeping, recentlyrepublished in a British series of classic spy novels. FOIA requests byhistorian Tim Naftali got his final OSS report declassified, setting off amuch-enjoyed series of interviews with historians and popular writers onwhat his war was really like. Weismiller had been one of the few Marinesstationed in Europe; most were in the South Pacific. His unusual situationeventually yielded a bonus: a White House invitation to attend the 50thanniversary celebrations of V.E. Day, traveling to England, France, Prague,and all the way to Russia in a special tour with distinguished veteransfrom all the services, then-Vice President Gore, and then-Secretary of theArmy Togo West.
His work has appeared in Kenyon Review and The Atlantic.
In 1941, Random House hired Weismiller, then a 26 year-old student, to translate the first award-winning novel of Franco-Khmer poet Makhali-Phal into English. La Favorite de dix ans was published in New York in 1942 as The Young Concubine. In 2008, Professor Weismiller began advising a literary team working to produce an updated version of his original translation incorporating cultural background material unavailable in 1941.
He lived in Washington, D.C. until his passing on August 25, 2010, at 95.
