Mark Van Doren

Mark Van Doren was an American poet, writer and critic, apart from being a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearlyyears, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, Whittaker Chambers, and Beat Generation writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He was literary editor of The Nation, in New York City , and its film critic, 1935 to 1938.

Van Doren was born in Vermilion County, Illinois, the fourth of five sons of the countys doctor, Charles Lucius Van Doren, of remote Dutch ancestry, and wife Eudora Ann Butz. He was raised on his familys farm in eastern Illinois, before his father decided to move to the neighboring town of Urbana, to be closer to good schools.

Source: Wikipedia