AWP regrets the loss of James Tate, masterful poet and former board member. He passed away Wednesday, July 8, according to the Recorder. He was 71.

Tate won the National Book Award for Worshipful Company of Fletchers and a Pulitzer Prize for his Selected Poems, among many other honors. His first book, The Lost Pilot, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets award in 1967 when he was 23. Tate taught for many years at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and served as a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007. He was a featured presenter at AWP’s 2008 conference in New York.

Read some of Tate’s poetry at the Poetry Foundation and an interview by Charles Simic at the Paris Review.