- Received four Pulitzer Prizes for volumes of poetry -- 1924, 1931, 1937, 1943.
- Recited his celebrated poem, The Gift Outright, at John F. Kennedy's presidential inauguration in 1961. He had planned to also read a dedicatory preface to the poem but couldn't read the text in that afternoon's bright sunlight.
- Pictured on a 10¢ US commemorative postage stamp issued on the 100th anniversary of his birth, March 23, 1974.
- Was the 1959 recipient of the prestigious Connor Award given by the brothers of the Phi Alpha Tau fraternity based out of Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also an honorary brother of the fraternity.
- Used his influence with the Eisenhower Administration to get the poet Ezra Pound, who had been arrested for treason for making radio broadcasts for Mussolini during World War II, released from the mental ward of St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C. in 1958. Pound was declared mentally unfit to stand trial for treason in 1946, and had been committed to St. Elizabeth's.
- Member of the Theta Delta Chi Fraternity. He was initiated at the Dartmouth Charge.
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