J. D. "Sandy" McClatchy (August 12, 1945 – April 10, 2018)[1] was an American poet, opera librettist and literary critic.
[5] He wrote texts for musical settings, including ten opera libretti, for such composers as Michael Dellaira, Elliot Goldenthal, Daron Hagen, Lowell Liebermann, Lorin Maazel, Tobias Picker, Bernard Rands, Ned Rorem, Bruce Saylor, William Schuman and Francis Thorne.
When he was given an Award in Literature by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1991, the citation read: J. D. McClatchy is a poet who has emerged into highly distinctive achievement in his third collection, The Rest of the Way.
Formally a master, with enormous technical skills, McClatchy writes with an authentic blend of cognitive force and a savage emotional intensity, brilliantly restrained by his care for firm rhetorical control.
His increasingly complex sense of our historical overdeterminations is complemented by his concern for adjusting the balance between his own poems and tradition.