Michael Paul Goldman *62
Denise Applewhite / Princeton University; courtesy Goldman family

Michael Paul Goldman *62, an acclaimed poet, scholar of drama, and longtime English professor, died Aug. 17 at age 87. Goldman first came to Princeton as a Ph.D. student, writing his dissertation about the plays of William Butler Yeats, and returned to join the faculty in 1975. He transferred to emeritus status in 2001. Goldman published poems in The New Yorker, beginning as a 19-year-old in 1955, and in two collections of his own, but his scholarship focused on the stage, with books that included Shakespeare and the Energies of Drama, a National Book Award nominee. He also earned a pop-culture footnote as the author of the “Kellerman’s Anthem” in Dirty Dancing, a movie written and co-produced by his wife, Eleanor Bergstein.