High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Saint-John Perse (first Saint-Leger Leger, pseudonyms of Alexis Leger) (31 May 1887–20 September 1975) was a French poet, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1960 "for the soaring flight and evocative imagery of his poetry." He was also a major French diplomat from 1914 to 1940, after which he lived primarily in the USA until 1967.