Edgar Bowers (/ˈbaʊ.ərz/; March 2, 1924 – February 4, 2000) was an American poet who won the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1989 and two Guggenheim fellowships.
During World War II, he joined the military and worked in counter-intelligence against Germany, which would later inform much of his writing.
[1] In Bowers's obituary, the English poet Clive Wilmer wrote, "The title poem of his 1990 collection, For Louis Pasteur, announces his key loyalties.
He confessed to celebrating every year the birthdays of three heroes: Pasteur, Mozart and Paul Valéry, all of whom suggest admiration for the life of the mind lived at its highest pitch—a concern for science and its social uses, and a love of art that is elegant, cerebral and orderly."
The poetry of his first two volumes reflects the austere dedication to formal precision that marked the thinking of Winters and J. V.