Hilda Morley
Encyclopedia
Hilda Morley was an American
poet
associated with the Black Mountain movement
.
to Russia
n parents. Her father, Rachmiel Auerbach, was a doctor
, and her mother, Sonia Lubove Kamenetsky, was a feminist
and Labor Zionist
. 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
. At the age of fifteen she moved to Haifa
, Palestine, with her mother, and later to London
to study at the University of London
. 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
and H.D. said, "You make me feel so historical."
When the Blitz
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
, Franz Kline
, David Smith
, Mark Rothko
and Willem de Kooning
and Elaine de Kooning
. Philip Guston
would watch her from his studio window, and declared that she was his muse.
In 1952, she married the German
composer
, Stefan Wolpe
, who through Morley was introduced to the abstract expressionist art scene. Wolpe taught at Black Mountain College
, 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
, Merce Cunningham
, Dorothea Rockburne
and Robert Rauschenberg
, in addition to poets Charles Olson
and Robert Creeley
. Wolpe and Morley traveled widely in Europe as Wolpe taught at Darmstadt
and had a residency in Rome. Wolpe developed Parkinson's Disease
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
, but Wong May
. Wong May was a young poet originally from China via Singapore
. Wong May met Hilda Morley at the MacDowell Colony
in New Hampshire
during a residency there in the late 1960s. 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
. 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
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
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
in The Village Voice
.
After living in New York for three decades Morley moved to Sag Harbor
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.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
poet
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
associated with the Black Mountain movement
Black Mountain poets
The Black Mountain poets, sometimes called projectivist poets, were a group of mid 20th century American avant-garde or postmodern poets centered on Black Mountain College.-Background:...
.
Biography
She was born Hilda Auerbach in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
to Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n parents. Her father, Rachmiel Auerbach, was a doctor
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
, and her mother, Sonia Lubove Kamenetsky, was a feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
and Labor Zionist
Labor Zionism
Labor Zionism can be described as the major stream of the left wing of the Zionist movement. It was, for many years, the most significant tendency among Zionists and Zionist organizational structure...
. Her mother was born in Baku
Baku
Baku , sometimes spelled as Baki or Bakou, is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. It is located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, which projects into the Caspian Sea. The city consists of two principal...
, and her father, born in Riga
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
, was descended from Hasidic rabbis. She was a cousin of Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
Sir Isaiah Berlin OM, FBA was a British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas of Russian-Jewish origin, regarded as one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century and a dominant liberal scholar of his generation...
through her father. As a child she wrote amazingly precocious work, and corresponded with William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...
. At the age of fifteen she moved to Haifa
Haifa
Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...
, Palestine, with her mother, and later to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
to study at the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
. She was briefly married during her time in London, and divorced. She met and corresponded later with the poet H.D.
H.D.
H.D. was an American poet, novelist and memoirist known for her association with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets such as Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington...
, who would influence her work. At their first meeting Hilda Morley questioned H.D. about her friendship with D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
and H.D. said, "You make me feel so historical."
When the Blitz
The Blitz
The Blitz was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, during the Second World War. The city of London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed...
began in London she moved back to the United States. In 1945, she married the painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
Eugene Morley. They divorced in 1949, but his connection to abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
and to the New York School
New York School
The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City...
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
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
, Franz Kline
Franz Kline
Franz Jozef Kline was an American painter mainly associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement centered around New York in the 1940s and 1950s. He was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and attended Girard College, an academy in Philadelphia for fatherless boys...
, David Smith
David Smith (sculptor)
David Roland Smith was an American Abstract Expressionist sculptor and painter, best known for creating large steel abstract geometric sculptures.-Biography:...
, Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz , was a Russian-born American painter. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, and even resisted classification as an "abstract painter".- Childhood :Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Province, Russian...
and Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....
and Elaine de Kooning
Elaine de Kooning
Elaine de Kooning was an Abstract Expressionist, Figurative Expressionist painter in the post-World War II era and editorial associate for Art News magazine...
. Philip Guston
Philip Guston
Philip Guston was a notable painter and printmaker in the New York School, which included many of the Abstract expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning...
would watch her from his studio window, and declared that she was his muse.
In 1952, she married the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, Stefan Wolpe
Stefan Wolpe
Stefan Wolpe was a German-born composer.-Life:Wolpe was born in Berlin. He attended the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory from the age of fourteen, and the Berlin Hochschule für Musik in 1920-1921. He studied composition under Franz Schreker and was also a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni...
, who through Morley was introduced to the abstract expressionist art scene. Wolpe taught at Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College, a school founded in 1933 in Black Mountain, North Carolina, was a new kind of college in the United States in which the study of art was seen to be central to a liberal arts education, and in which John Dewey's principles of education played a major role...
, 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
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
, David Tudor
David Tudor
David Eugene Tudor was an American pianist and composer of experimental music.- Biography :Tudor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied piano with Irma Wolpe and composition with Stefan Wolpe and became known as one of the leading performers of avant garde piano music. He gave the...
, Merce Cunningham
Merce Cunningham
Mercier "Merce" Philip Cunningham was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American avant-garde for more than 50 years. Throughout much of his life, Cunningham was considered one of the greatest creative forces in American dance...
, Dorothea Rockburne
Dorothea Rockburne
Dorothea Rockburne is an abstract painter drawing inspiration primarily from her deep interest in mathematics and astronomy. In 1950 she moved to the United States to attend Black Mountain College, where she studied with mathematician Max Dehn, a lifelong influence on her work...
and Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...
, in addition to poets Charles Olson
Charles Olson
Charles Olson , was a second generation American modernist 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 School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance...
and Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley 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's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...
. Wolpe and Morley traveled widely in Europe as Wolpe taught at Darmstadt
Darmstadt
Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...
and had a residency in Rome. Wolpe developed Parkinson's Disease
Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system...
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
Charles Olson , was a second generation American modernist 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 School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance...
, but Wong May
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 was born in Chongqing, China in 1944 and moved to Singapore with her mother in 1950...
. Wong May was a young poet originally from China via Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
. Wong May met Hilda Morley at the MacDowell Colony
MacDowell Colony
The MacDowell Colony is an art colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, U.S.A., founded in 1907 by Marian MacDowell, pianist and wife of composer Edward MacDowell. She established the institution and its endowment chiefly with donated funds...
in New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
during a residency there in the late 1960s. 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
Denise Levertov
-Early life and influences:Levertov was born and grew up in Ilford, Essex.Couzyn, Jeni Contemporary Women Poets. Bloodaxe, p74 Her mother, Beatrice Spooner-Jones Levertoff, came from a small mining village in North Wales...
. 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
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
and T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, 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 Kunitz
Stanley Jasspon Kunitz 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:...
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
Hayden Carruth was an American poet and literary critic. He taught at Syracuse University.-Life:Hayden Carruth grew up in Woodbury, Connecticut, and was educated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at the University of Chicago. He lived in Johnson, Vermont for many years...
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
Geoffrey O'Brien 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 1998.-Biography:...
in The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
.
After living in New York for three decades Morley moved to Sag Harbor
Sag Harbor, New York
Sag Harbor is an incorporated village in Suffolk County, New York, United States, with parts in both the Towns of East Hampton and Southampton. The population was 2,313 at the 2000 census....
on Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
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.
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)