Timothy Murphy (poet)
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Timothy Iver Murphy (January 10, 1951 – June 30, 2018) was an American poet and businessman. Reviewing Timothy Murphy's second collection in ''
Contemporary Poetry Review Garrick Davis (born 1971 in Los Angeles) is an American poet and critic. He was Poetry Editor of ''First Things'' magazine from 2020 until 2021. Career Davis is the founding editor of the ''Contemporary Poetry Review'', the largest online arch ...
'' in 2002, Paul Lake observed that "What Virgil was to the Italian peninsula and Homer to the Greek Mediterranean, Murphy is to the swatch of plains stretching from the Upper Midwest to the Rockies like a grassy inland sea."


Life

Murphy was the son of Vincent and Katherine Bye Murphy. He was raised in
Moorhead, Minnesota Moorhead () is a city in and county seat of Clay County, Minnesota, United States, on the banks of the Red River of the North. Located in the Red River Valley, an extremely fertile and active agricultural region, Moorhead is also home to several ...
. Murphy was admitted to
Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
as an undergraduate. He was mentored there by
Robert Penn Warren Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the liter ...
, the renowned poet and novelist. In 1972, he graduated with a B.A. degree and was designated Scholar of the House in Poetry. However, Warren declined to recommend Murphy for an academic position. Warren urged him instead to return to the "rich soil" of his rural roots. Murphy returned to Minnesota, where he joined his father in an insurance and estate planning business. He subsequently became involved in several farming and manufacturing enterprises in North Dakota. Waywiser Press published Murphy's second collection of poetry. In this webpage they include otherwise unpublished quotations from Dick Davis,
Michael Donaghy Michael Donaghy (May 24, 1954 – September 16, 2004) was a New York City poet and musician, who lived in London from 1985. Life and career Donaghy was born into an Irish family and grew up with his sister Patricia in the Bronx, New York, lo ...
, and
Richard Wilbur Richard Purdy Wilbur (March 1, 1921 – October 14, 2017) was an American poet and literary translator. One of the foremost poets of his generation, Wilbur's work, composed primarily in traditional forms, was marked by its wit, charm, and gentle ...
, as well as excerpts from published reviews.
He died at the age of 67.


Poetry

Murphy published his first collection of poetry, ''The Deed of Gift'', in 1998; the collection represents all of Murphy's work as a poet through about 1996. In a contemporary review of the volume, Gerry Cambridge summarized Murphy's accomplishment: "There are outstanding poems here, including 'Harvest of Sorrows', 'Sunset at the Getty', and 'The Quarrel', as well as a great number of very likeable, individual, and tautly-made pieces. It would be hard to confuse Murphy with any other contemporary poet. No one else writing poetry in English sounds quite like him." Gerry Cambridge founded the Scottish literary journal ''The Dark Horse''. As poet Dick Davis has noted, this distinctive style owes much to Murphy's use of traditional meter and rhyme, unusual among poets today: "His poems are wholly his own, and yet the voice in them lives in and through his mastery of traditional metre, which is so thorough as to seem indivisible from the poems' sensibility and meaning." This focus on rhyme and meter is exemplified in the following excerpt from "Harvest of Sorrows": In a 2001 interview, Murphy cited C.P. Cavafy and
Homer Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
as influences, noting that they, like himself, were gay. In 2011, The Dakota Institute published two collections of Murphy's poetry, ''Mortal Stakes and Faint Thunder'' and ''Hunter's Log''. Murphy joked in an interview that year that "I've got more inventory than Ford Motor Co." After 2011, Murphy's poetry has been published by The North Dakota State University Press. ''Devotions'' (2017) is a substantial (160-page) collection that gathers poems from his return to the Catholic Church after 2005.
Dana Gioia Michael Dana Gioia (; born December 24, 1950) is an American poet, literary critic, literary translator, and essayist. Since the early 1980s, Gioia has been considered part of the literary movements within American poetry known as New Formalis ...
concludes his introduction: "These are genuine poems rooted in a passionate encounter with the divine. I predict they will find many devoted readers." In 2019, ''Hunter's Log: Volumes II & III'' appeared posthumously.


Bibliography

* A collection of Murphy's poetry. * Reviewed by David Solheim. * Murphy's second collection of poetry. * Verse translation of ''
Beowulf ''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The ...
''. Alan Sullivan (1948–2010) was Murphy's
partner Partner, Partners, The Partner, or, The Partners may refer to: Books * ''The Partner'' (Grisham novel), by John Grisham, 1997 * ''The Partner'' (Jenaro Prieto novel), 1928 * ''The Partners'' (book), a 1983 book by James B. Stewart * ''Partner'' (m ...
. * * * *


References


Further reading


Links to 20 of Murphy's poems
at the poemtree.com website; ''The Poem Tree'' is an online anthology of metrical poetry. * Murphy's poem that won the 1996
Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award The Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award was established in 1994 by ''The Formalist.'' The award, honoring the poet Howard Nemerov (1920–1991), was an open competition for sonnets in English that drew about 3000 entries annually. Essay by three-time Nemer ...
.
Webcast of Murphy reading at Bookfest 2004
at
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
website; RealPlayer format, 24 minutes.
February 2010 podcast
of Murphy reading recent poems as part of "Distinguished Performance" series on Eratosphere Poetry board; MP3 format, approximately 40 minutes.
"Tim Murphy in His Own Words"
Interview with Rob Godfrey, recorded for localradio.fr, February 2010; MP3 format, approximately 35 minutes. * Biography and links to about a dozen of Murphy's poems. * *
Poems
in various issues of ''
Shit Creek Review ''The Shit Creek Review'' is an online literary and art magazine (webzine or e-zine). Its content is mostly related to poetry, and includes work belonging the differing styles of formalism and free verse by established authors and new writers. It ...
''.
Poem sequence in ''The Flea''
* Interview with Murphy; see also
Audio interview of Murphy at Prairie Public
with Doug Hamilton.
Video interview of Murphy for Prairie Public Television
with John Harris. {{DEFAULTSORT:Murphy, Timothy 1951 births 2018 deaths People from Hibbing, Minnesota American male poets Yale University alumni Poets from Minnesota American gay writers American LGBT poets LGBT people from Minnesota 20th-century American poets 20th-century American male writers 21st-century American poets 21st-century American male writers Gay poets