Hilda Morley (September 19, 1916 – March 23, 1998) was an American
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...
associated with the
Black Mountain movement.
Biography
She was born Hilda Auerbach in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
to
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...
n parents. Her father, Rachmiel Auerbach, was a
doctor
Doctor or The Doctor may refer to:
Personal titles
* Doctor (title), the holder of an accredited academic degree
* A medical practitioner, including:
** Physician
** Surgeon
** Dentist
** Veterinary physician
** Optometrist
*Other roles
** ...
, and her mother, Sonia Lubove Kamenetsky, was a
feminist and
Labor Zionist
Labor Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת סוֹצְיָאלִיסְטִית, ) or socialist Zionism ( he, תְּנוּעָת הָעַבוֹדָה, label=none, translit=Tnuʽat haʽavoda) refers to the left-wing, socialist variation of Zionism. ...
. Her mother was born in
Baku, and her father, born in
Riga, was descended from
Hasidic rabbis. She was a cousin of
Isaiah Berlin through her father. As a child she wrote amazingly precocious work, and corresponded with
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...
. At the age of fifteen she moved to
Haifa
Haifa ( he, חֵיפָה ' ; ar, حَيْفَا ') is the third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropol ...
,
Palestine, with her mother, and later to
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
to study at the
University of London
The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...
. She was briefly married during her time in London, and divorced. She met and corresponded later with the poet
H.D., who would influence her work. At their first meeting Hilda Morley questioned H.D. about her friendship with
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English writer, novelist, poet and essayist. His works reflect on modernity, industrialization, sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity and instinct. His best-k ...
and H.D. said, "You make me feel so historical."
When
the Blitz
The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'.
The Germa ...
began in London she moved back to the United States. In 1945, she married the
painter Eugene Morley. They divorced in 1949, but his connection to
abstract expressionism and to the
New York School of painting was a lasting influence on her poetry. She wrote major poems that are inspired by individual works of visual art. Through Eugene Morley she became friends with
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...
,
Franz Kline
Franz Kline (May 23, 1910 – May 13, 1962) was an American painter. He is associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1940s and 1950s. Kline, along with other action painters like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Mot ...
,
David Smith,
Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko (), born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz (russian: Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич, link=no, lv, Markuss Rotkovičs, link=no; name not Anglicized until 1940; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was a Lat ...
and
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning (; ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter El ...
and
Elaine de Kooning
Elaine Marie Catherine de Kooning (, née Fried; March 12, 1918 – February 1, 1989) was an Abstract Expressionist and Figurative Expressionist painter in the post-World War II era. She wrote extensively on the art of the period and was an edit ...
.
Philip Guston
Philip Guston (born Phillip Goldstein, June 27, 1913 – June 7, 1980), was a Canadian American painter, printmaker, muralist and draftsman. Early in his five decade career, muralist David Siquieros described him as one of "the most promising ...
would watch her from his studio window, and declared that she was his muse.
In 1952, she married the
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
composer,
Stefan Wolpe, who through Morley was introduced to the abstract expressionist art scene. Wolpe taught at
Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College was a private liberal arts college in Black Mountain, North Carolina. It was founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, and several others. The college was ideologically organized around John Dewey's educational ...
, where Morley taught as well. Morley maintained that the atmosphere at Black Mountain was not favorable to women, although she enjoyed her time there. At Black Mountain, Wolpe and Morley became close friends with
John Cage,
David Tudor
David Eugene Tudor (January 20, 1926 – August 13, 1996) was an American pianist and composer of experimental music.
Life and career
Tudor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied piano with Irma Wolpe and composition with Stefan W ...
,
Merce Cunningham
Mercier Philip "Merce" Cunningham (April 16, 1919 – July 26, 2009) was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of American modern dance for more than 50 years. He frequently collaborated with artists of other discipl ...
,
Dorothea Rockburne
Dorothea Rockburne DFA (born c. 1932) is an abstract painter, drawing inspiration primarily from her deep interest in mathematics and astronomy. Her work is geometric and abstract, seemingly simple but very precise to reflect the mathematical co ...
and
Robert Rauschenberg, in addition to poets
Charles Olson
Charles Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) was a second generation modern American poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York ...
and
Robert Creeley
Robert White Creeley (May 21, 1926 – March 30, 2005) was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school. He was close with Char ...
. Wolpe and Morley traveled widely in Europe as Wolpe taught at
Darmstadt and had a residency in Rome. Wolpe developed
Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...
in 1964, and Morley's life was greatly affected by her need to care for him until his death in 1972. Morley's understanding of her own art was greatly influenced by her life with Wolpe and he and his music are a major theme of her work.
The influence on the open construction of the poetry of Hilda Morley was not
Charles Olson
Charles Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) was a second generation modern American poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York ...
, but
Wong May
Wong May is a poet who grew up in Singapore, studied and worked in the United States, and now lives in Ireland. She won the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for 2022
Life
She was born in Chongqing, China in 1944 and moved to Singapore with he ...
. Wong May was a young poet originally from China via
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...
. Wong May met Hilda Morley at the
MacDowell Colony
MacDowell is an artist's residency program in Peterborough, New Hampshire, United States, founded in 1907 by composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, pianist and philanthropist Marian MacDowell. Prior to July 2020, it was known as the MacDowel ...
in
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the nor ...
during a residency there in 1969. She persuaded Morley to change her poetry using spacing and breaks for expressive effect. Morley revised her earlier poetry as well, using open construction. Morley wrote, “The poem of organic form molds its phrasing and spacing to conform to the pressures of the poetic content.”
It was not until 1976 (at the age of 60) that her first collection, ''A Blessing Outside Us'', was published through the efforts of
Denise Levertov
Priscilla Denise Levertov (24 October 1923 – 20 December 1997) was a British-born naturalised American poet. She was a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.
Early life and influences
Levertov was born and grew up in Ilford, Ess ...
. Levertov and Morley became friends in the late 1950s, and they had an extensive correspondence. Morley greatly respected Levertov as a poet, and valued her advice. Levertov wrote on Morley, “The lucid, the illuminated quality of poem after poem is given them by the precision of their structure…the sum of the parts is, as in all the open ‘secrets’ of nature and of art, beyond accounting: the duende is dark within transparence.” Morley had five volumes of poetry published within her lifetime, and another after her death. Her poetry is involved with life and living, as well as a powerful collection dealing with the death and mourning of Wolpe, "What Are Winds and What Are Waters". Morley's work has been compared to
Ezra Pound and
T. S. Eliot, and it has won critical praise and numerous prizes.
Part of the force of Morley’s work is a boldness to go as far as she can within her medium. In her hands it is always an expressive personal means. In writing on Morley’s long poem “The Shutter Clangs”
Stanley Kunitz
Stanley Jasspon Kunitz (; July 29, 1905May 14, 2006) was an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress twice, first in 1974 and then again in 2000.
Biography
Kunitz was born in Worcester, Massach ...
comments, “In the poem from which the passage is taken she meditates on John Donne’s ‘Goodfriday, Riding Westward' and mounts on that meditation an oceanic spate of images pertaining to the death of her beloved – a montage with a span of three centuries, so rich and eloquent, even in its extravagance, that it constitutes a daring tour de force. It is a vehicle that threatens on almost every page to fall apart, but in the end, out of the ‘clair bones’ and the dark years, the imagination seems to spread its sails and fly, ever westward, to the open water.”
Hayden Carruth
Hayden Carruth (August 3, 1921 – September 29, 2008) was an American poet, literary critic and anthologist. He taught at Syracuse University.
Life
Hayden Carruth was born in Waterbury, Connecticut and grew up in Woodbury, Connecticut. He gra ...
has written of Morley’s work, “"How simple the language is, not a rhetorical gesture, not an unnecessary adjective, yet heightened by interweaving lines, cadences, and tones, by urgency of feeling and fineness of perception. We have these expressive works, indispensable to what we call American literature.”
"Morley manages to speak clearly and sparely of what is least sayable: the sense that we inhabit a living web, not as separate beings but as molecules of a larger and elastic whole," wrote
Geoffrey O'Brien
Geoffrey O'Brien (born 1948 New York City, New York) is an American poet, editor, book and film critic, translator, and cultural historian. In 1992, he joined the staff of the Library of America as executive editor, becoming editor-in-chief in 19 ...
in ''
The Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, th ...
''.
After living in New York for three decades Morley moved to
Sag Harbor
Sag Harbor is an incorporated village in Suffolk County, New York, United States, in the towns of Southampton and East Hampton on eastern Long Island. The village developed as a working port on Gardiner's Bay. The population was 2,772 at the 2 ...
on
Long Island for most of her last decade. In 1997, she returned to London, which had been a longtime wish, where she died on March 23, 1998 after a fall.
Publications
Poetry
*''A Blessing Outside Us'' (1976)
*''To Hold in my Hand'' (1983)
*''What Are Winds and What Are Waters'' (1983)
*''Cloudless at First'' (1988)
*''Between the Rocks'' (1992)
*''The Turning'' (1998)
External links
An Essay on Hilda Morley's Poetry(pdf)
Article: Brian Conniff, 'Reconsidering Black Mountain: The Poetry of Hilda Morley', American Literature, 65 (1993), pp. 117-130. (Link to Jstor Database: Needs Login information)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morley, Hilda
1916 births
1998 deaths
Writers from New York City
American people of Latvian-Jewish descent
20th-century American poets
American women poets
Black Mountain poets
Jewish American poets
Modernist women writers
People from Sag Harbor, New York
20th-century American women writers
Burials at Green River Cemetery
20th-century American Jews