| Timeline |
| 1921 |
Born 1 March in New York City |
| 1938 |
Enters Amherst College |
| 1942 |
Graduates with a B.A. from Amherst |
| 1942 |
Marries Charlotte Ward Wilbur |
| 1942 |
Serves in army during World War II |
| 1947 |
The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems published |
| 1947 |
Receives an M.A from Harvard |
| 1950 |
Ceremony and Other Poems published |
| 1950 |
Joins Harvard faculty |
| 1952 |
Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship |
| 1952 |
Wins a Guggenheim Fellowship |
| 1954 |
Receives the Prix de Rome Fellowship |
| 1956 |
Things of This World published |
| 1957 |
Accepts a professorship at Wesleyan University |
| 1957 |
Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for Things of This World |
| 1961 |
Advice to a Prophet and Other Poems published |
| 1961 |
Appointed Chancellor Emeritus of The Academy of American Poets |
| 1963 |
Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship |
| 1969 |
Walking to Sleep: New Poems and Translations published |
| 1970 |
Awarded the Bollingen Prize |
| 1972 |
The Shelley Memorial Award |
| 1976 |
The Mind-Reader: New Poems published |
| 1977 |
Named writer-in-residence at Smith College |
| 1987 |
Named Poet Laureate of the U.S |
| 1988 |
New and Collected Poems published |
| 1990 |
Wins Pulitzer Prize for New and Collected Poems |
| 1996 |
Awarded T.S. Eliot Award for Creative Writing |
| 1996 |
Awarded the Frost Medal |
| 1997 |
Elected a chevalier of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques |
