Edsel Ford (poet)

Ford received the 1966 Alice Fay di Castagnola Award of the Poetry Society of America for his work in progress A Landscape for Dante. He also received a Distinguished Alumni Citation from the University of Arkansas (1966) and the Devins Memorial Award, which included the publication of his volume Looking for Shiloh, by the University of Missouri Press.

In 1961 he met the artist Hank Spruce, who soon became his close friend and patron. Beginning in 1962 they shared a house in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

In February 1957, he became a full-time writer, and a year later went back to his family's farm as writing was not producing enough income for him to live independently. His poems appeared in a wide variety of publications, among the best-known of which were the Saturday Review, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Ladies' Home Journal, and McCall's. He also reviewed books for the Tulsa World and wrote a column, "The Golden Country", for the Ozarks Mountaineer.

After receiving a degree in journalism in 1952, he was drafted and served in the Army in Hanau, Germany. During his service he refused officer training because he felt that no one should have that kind of authority over others. He also continued writing (contributing so many poems to the "Pup Tent Poets" column of Stars and Stripes that a reader wrote, "I am getting bored/ with the works of Edsel Ford"). After his enlistment ended, he worked for a few years in Texas and in Hobbs, New Mexico as a clerk for Phillips Petroleum.

He began writing early and published his first poem in the Kansas City Star at the age of 14. In 1948 he won an Poets Roundtable of Arkansas Award and matriculated at the University of Arkansas.

Ford was born on a farm in Eva, Alabama. According to one source, he was named after the doctor who delivered him; according to another, the doctor suggested the name to Ford's mother, who thought it would "in a wistful sort of way tie the two families together". In 1939 his family moved to near Avoca, Arkansas, where his father had a chicken farm. Edsel attended high school in Rogers, Arkansas.

Edsel Ford (December 30, 1928 – February 19, 1970) was a poet who lived most of his life in Arkansas. He had the same name as Henry Ford's son.