Personal Life
Born to poor Jewish parents, Howard (whose last name at birth is unknown) was adopted as an infant by Emma Joseph and Harry Orwitz, a middle-class Cleveland couple, who were also Jewish; his mother changed their last names to "Howard" when he was an infant, after she divorced Orwitz. Howard never met his birth parents, nor his sister, who was adopted by another local family. Howard is gay, a fact that comes up frequently in his more recent work. He has been out to some degree since at least the 1960s, when he remarked to friend W. H. Auden that he was offended by a fellow poet's use of Jewish and gay epithets, "since both these things," to which Auden replied, "My dear, I never knew you were Jewish!"
Read more about this topic: Richard Howard
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“The historian must have ... some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Accept life, take it as it is? Stupid. The means of doing otherwise? Far from our having to take it, it is life that possesses us and on occasion shuts our mouths.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)