Katherine de Montalant Hoskins (May 25, 1909 – May 26, 1988) was an American poet, short story writer, and playwright.

Life

Born in

Indian Head, Maryland Indian Head is a town in Charles County, Maryland, United States. The population was 3,894 at the 2020 U.S. Census. It has been the site of a naval base specializing in gun and rocket propellants since 1890. Production of nitrocellulose and smoke ...

to Katherine Peck Lackey and

U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage of ...

Rear-Admiral Rear admiral is a senior naval flag officer rank, equivalent to a major general and air vice marshal and above that of a commodore and captain, but below that of a vice admiral. It is regarded as a two star "admiral" rank. It is often regarded ...

Henry Ellis Lackey, Katherine was

home-schooled Homeschooling or home schooling, also known as home education or elective home education (EHE), is the education of school-aged children at home or a variety of places other than a school. Usually conducted by a parent, tutor, or an onlin ...

until she was eleven. She attended

Smith College Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith (Smith College ...

, graduating with honors in 1931. In 1935, she married Albert L. Hoskins, Jr., a

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

veteran who worked as a probation officer in Boston; together they had one daughter, Camilla. Although Hoskins did not publicize herself or her work, she corresponded with many prominent contemporaries (including

Robert Lowell Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (; March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the ''Mayflower''. His family, past and present, were important subjects i ...

John Crowe Ransom John Crowe Ransom (April 30, 1888 – July 3, 1974) was an American educator, scholar, literary critic, poet, essayist and editor. He is considered to be a founder of the New Criticism school of literary criticism. As a faculty member at Kenyon ...

, and

Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...

), all of whom regarded her work highly.

Louis Simpson Louis Aston Marantz Simpson (March 27, 1923 – September 14, 2012) was an American poet born in Jamaica. He won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his work ''At the End of the Open Road''. Life and career Simpson was born in Jamaica ...

called her carefully crafted verse "superb." Robert Lowell was effusive in his jacket-cover praise for ''Excursions'' (1967), exclaiming "How much better she is than so many poets very much more famous!" Writing in ''The New York Times Book Review'', William Meredith sounded a somewhat prophetic note with the remark that "Katherine Hoskins' poems are so austerely excellent—and this is said without cynicism—that there is danger of their not being noticed at all."

Louise Bogan Louise Bogan (August 11, 1897 – February 4, 1970) was an American poet. She was appointed the fourth Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945, and was the first woman to hold this title. Throughout her life she wrote poetry, fiction, ...

, fourth

United States Poet Laureate The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—commonly referred to as the United States Poet Laureate—serves as the official poet of the United States. During their term, the poet laureate seeks to raise the national cons ...

, however, was a severe critic of her work, stating, "As for style, she dispenses at will with that accepted rule of modern prosody-natural words in the natural order. Syntactical inversions abound; impenetrable and peculiar modifiers accompany equally odd nouns and verbs." Despite her low public profile, Hoskins contributed during her lifetime to ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...

'', ''

The New Republic ''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hum ...

'', ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'', ''

Poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

'', ''

The Sewanee Review ''The Sewanee Review'' is an American literary magazine established in 1892. It is the oldest continuously published quarterly in the United States. It publishes original fiction and poetry, essays, reviews, and literary criticism. History ''Th ...

'' and ''

The Yale Review ''The Yale Review'' is the oldest literary journal in the United States. It is published by Johns Hopkins University Press. It was founded in 1819 as ''The Christian Spectator'' to support Evangelicalism. Over time it began to publish more on hi ...

''.

Awards

Hoskins' honors include a 1957

Brandeis University , mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = NECHE , president = Ronald D. Liebowitz , pro ...

Creative Writing Award and a 1958

Guggenheim fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

. Her papers are housed at the

University of Delaware The University of Delaware (colloquially UD or Delaware) is a public land-grant research university located in Newark, Delaware. UD is the largest university in Delaware. It offers three associate's programs, 148 bachelor's programs, 121 mas ...

Poetry collections

*''A Penitential Primer'' (1945) *''Villa Narcisse'' (1956) *''Out in the Open'' (1959) *''Excursions'' (1967)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hoskins, Katherine 1909 births 1988 deaths American women poets American women short story writers People from Charles County, Maryland Writers from Maryland Smith College alumni 20th-century American poets American women dramatists and playwrights 20th-century American women writers 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights 20th-century American short story writers