Louis Dudek, (February 6, 1918 – March 23, 2001) was a Canadian poet, academic, and publisher known for his role in defining Modernism in poetry, and for his literary criticism. He was the author of over two dozen books. In A Digital History of Canadian Poetry, writer Heather Prycz said that "As a critic, teacher and theoretician, Dudek influenced the teaching of Canadian poetry in most [Canadian] schools and universities". Life Dudek was born in Montreal, Quebec, the son of Vincent and Stanislawa Dudek, part of an extended Catholic family which had emigrated from Poland, and was raised in that city's East End. He was lean and sickly as a child, which made him introverted and hypersensitive. His mother died at 31, when he was eight. Due to the family's financial limitations, Dudek dropped out of the High School of Montreal and went to work in a warehouse until, in 1936, his father was able to send him to college. He entered McGill University in Montreal, where he became a reporter and associate editor for the McGill Daily. He received his BA degree there in 1939. 1940s After graduating, Dudek briefly freelanced in journalism and advertising. He married Stephanie Zuperko on September 16, 1941, with whom he had one son, Gregory Dudek (a professor of computer science and former director of the McGill University School of Computer Science). During this time Louis Dudek "was prominent among the poets who participated in First Statement (1942-1945), a seminal 'little magazine' in the development of modern Canadian literature." With John Sutherland, the magazine's editor, and poet Irving Layton, he "fought hard to foster a native tradition in poetry and establish new ways of writing in Canada, pioneering a direct style that articulated experience in plain language." The Dudeks moved to New York City in 1943, where he began graduate studies in journalism and history at Columbia University, and soon changed his major to literature. His doctoral dissertation, Literature and the Press, was published in 1960. After receiving his PhD, he taught at New York's City College. In New York, Dudek continued to contribute poems to First Statement and its successor, Northern Review. In 1944, some of his poems appeared in the anthology Unit of Five, alongside poetry by Ronald Hambleton, P. K. Page, Raymond Souster and James Wreford. His own first book of poetry, East of the City, was issued by Toronto's Ryerson