From a New York Times obit by Clay Risen headlined “David Ferry, Poet and Translator Who Won Acclaim Late in Life, Dies at 99″:

David Ferry, a poet and translator whose direct, emotionally resonant work plumbing the chasms between the knowable and the unknowable won him broad praise and honors late in his career, including the National Book Award when he was 86, died on Sunday in Lexington, Mass.

Mr. Ferry spent nearly 40 years teaching literature at Wellesley College, and during that time he published just two books, both of poetry, with 23 years between them. He was admired as a critic and a teacher, but not as a poet, except within a small circle of admirers.