William Douglas Barney

A postal worker in the Metroplex 1936-71, Barney first gained wide recognition as a poet in 1952, with his publication of Kneel from the Stone (awarded a Texas Institute of Letters Award), his election as president of the Poetry Society of Texas and his winning of the Borestone Mountain Poetry Prize. He then continued to write for decades, publishing Permitted Proof (1955), The Killdeer are Crying (1977), and Words from a Wide Land (1994), with his work receiving strong plaudits, including his receipt of the Robert Frost Memorial Award (1961-62) and his selection as Texas Poet Laureate (1982-83). Throughout, his poetry was celebrated as plain-spoken and grounded in detailed observation of Texas animals and landscapes, with a mournful sense of the “vanishing wild” cut up by the fences, grids and property lines of urbanization – please see Long Gone to Texas (1986).