William Watterson was born on June 7, 1949, to Charles H. and Nellie Collins Watterson. He attended the Peddie School in Hightstown, New Jersey, where he was class president. After earning an AB degree, cum laude and with high honors in English, at Kenyon College, he earned a PhD in English at Brown University in 1976. He was hired at Bowdoin as an assistant professor in the English department in 1976. Over the years, he taught courses on Shakespeare, pastoral literature of the English Renaissance, contemporary American poetry, film, and poetry writing. Bill was promoted to associate professor in 1983, full professor in 1992, and in 1999 was named the Edward Little Professor of the English Language and Literature.
Bill’s poetry appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Sewanee Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Warren Wilson Review. For a number of years, Bill was a judge for the Longfellow Prize for poetry in Maine. He was the author of two books of poetry, numerous reviews, and articles in edited volumes and journals, including Milton Quarterly, Hamlet Studies, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Upstart Crow, Nineteenth Century Studies, and the Bowdoin alumni magazine. A member of the Shakespeare Association of America, he was also associate editor of Shakespeare and the Classroom newsletter. He participated in a program sponsored by The Maine Humanities Council, the Maine Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Humanities that exposed his understanding of literature to a broader audience through lectures, seminars, and summer programs.
A polymath, Bill brought his knowledge and appreciation of art, classical music, antiques, and antiquarian books to bear in his teaching and in his personal life. He was a trustee of the New York School of Interior Design from 1983 to 1990. His students and colleagues found him to be an engaging conversationalist. Two of his former students established a summer internship in the creative arts at Bowdoin in honor of Bill and his mother.
Bill was predeceased by his parents and by his sister, Melody Watterson Mancuso. He is survived by a brother, Charles A. Watterson, and by several nieces and nephews.
Bill insisted on no funeral or memorial services. Remembrances can be made through contributions to the William C. Watterson Scholarship Fund at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.
Arrangements by The Fortin Group Funeral Home, 217 Turner Street, Auburn, Maine 207-783-8545. Online condolences and sharing of memories may be expressed at www.thefortingroupauburn.com .
Nightscape With Doves
New snow in the clearing.
Black as a page,
the field remains unmarred,
obscure cuneiform of doves' feet
as yet unprinted,
though you hear the cry of birds,
the clay-colored mourners,
in a nearby margin of tree.
Because it is dusk
you cannot see their shapes
in the enveloping blackness.
The great night falls
and you are nearer wherever the end is,
but right now meaning is a sound
inexpressibly itself,
a trick much like the trick of happiness,
a completeness which knows
that the end of the book
is the last white page you go on revising forever.
--------William Collins Watterson
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