At Columbia, Thompson studied poetry and literature and received his Ph.D. in 1957 under the mentorship of Lionel Trilling. He taught as an English instructor at Bard College (1946–1947), Sarah Lawrence College (1947–1949), as well as at Columbia University (1949–1956) while doing graduate studies. His dissertation, an analysis of the origins of poetic metre, was published in 1961 as The Founding of English Metre by Columbia University Press (New York) and Routledge and Kegan Paul (London). It was reprinted in 1966 by Columbia with an introduction by John Hollander.
