Life
A.M. Sullivan grew up in the northern New Jersey mining town of Oxford. His formal education ended with his graduation from St. Benedict’s Prep School in Newark in 1913. In 1919, he married Catherine Veronica McNamee and remained with her until her death in 1968. She bore him two daughters, Catherine and Mary Rose. The couple lived in St. Albans, New York until moving to Montclair, New Jersey in 1953. Throughout this time, they summered in an 1840s house on the Musconetcong River near Hackettstown, New Jersey. This river and the wooded hills of northern New Jersey provided much of the inspiration for his poetry, which drew heavily on themes of nature.
Proud of his Irish heritage, Mr. Sullivan was a board member of the Irish-American Historical Society. He made several trips to Ireland throughout his later life and became proficient in Gaelic. In recognition of his literary achievement, A.M. Sullivan received honorary doctorates from Montclair State College and St. Edward’s University. Many of his papers and a collection of his poetry books are held at Syracuse University. He died in Montclair on June 10, 1980.
Read more about this topic: Aloysius Michael Sullivan
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Pessimism ... is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child’s play.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“For the soldier of time, it breathes a summer sleep,
In which his wound is good because life was.
No part of him was ever part of death.
A woman smoothes her forehead with her hand
And the soldier of time lies calm beneath that stroke.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)