Judith Hall (poet)
Encyclopedia
Life
She teaches at the California Institute of TechnologyCalifornia Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...
, and taught in the MFA program at New England College
New England College
New England College is a private four-year college in Henniker, New Hampshire, enrolling a total of approximately 1800 undergraduate and graduate students.-History:The school was created in 1946 for students attending college on the G.I...
.
For a time Hall directed the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project and senior program specialist for literary publishing at the NEA.
Her work appears in Paris Review Yale Review
Since 1995, she has served as poetry editor of Antioch Review.
Awards
- 2006 Guggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
- NEANational Endowment for the ArtsThe National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
Fellowship - Pushcart Prize.
- Ingram Merrill Fellowship.
- 1991 National Poetry SeriesNational Poetry SeriesThe National Poetry Series is an American literary awards program.Every year since 1979 it has sponsored the publication of five books of poetry...
Works
- "The Crowded Tree ", Poetry Daily
- "The God that Took the Place of Pleasure", Boston Review, DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005
- "SO"; "GARMENTS OF GLADNESS IN A MIME OF TERROR"; "LAMENT", Inertia Magazine
- "The Morning After the Afternoon of a Faun", Ploughshares, Spring 2007
- "The Girl's Will; or Optimism", Poesy Galore
- "Worship of Mars"; "Worship of Venus", Jacket 19, October 2002
Reviews
“Judith Hall’s translations of the ancient poet known as J II read as richly researched and imaginatively restored for a contemporary audience. The only catch is that J II never existed . . . For her latest book, Three Trios, Hall concocted the alter ego of J II, a Jewish female poet who lived in the sixth century B.C.E. who wrote the Apocryphal book of Judith as well as a mysterious, coded set of pagan poems associated with the cult of DionysiusDionysius
The Graeco-Roman name Dionysius, deriving from the name of the Thracian god Dionysus, was exceedingly common, and many ancient people, famous and otherwise, bore it. It remains a common name today in the form Dennis . The modern Greek form of the name is Dionysios or Dionysis. The Spanish form of...
. These ‘translations’ emit the same earthiness and sensuality of the best ancient erotic poetry but are framed in Hall’s contemporary language – not stale, but sexy. . . . The book is such a complete forgery that it includes a scholarly introduction to J II and footnotes throughout. All of Hall’s efforts add up to a powerful, imaginative experiment in poetry.” American Poet, The Journal of the Academy of American Poets
"In the presence of one's own verbal facility, a poet may discover various methods of making things more difficult for herself. Judith Hall's method is twofold: She works with extremely difficult ‘material’, such as cancer and the development of mother-daughter relationships, and she calls upon the verse tradition for ways of handling it. . . . Miss Hall makes genuine poems of considerable power." Henry Taylor on Anatomy, Errata, The Washington Times
"Hall's feminist poetry challenges through psychological authenticity and linguistic struggle -- the assumptions that bind us . . . Insistently clear-eyed and unsentimental, Hall achieves both fluency and linguistic pressures through form. . . . but these forms are never ornamental or derivative. Hall sculpts them to her voice with the precision of Louise Bogan
Louise Bogan
Louise Bogan was an American poet. She was appointed the fourth Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945.-Early years:...
, and with greater inventiveness. She renovates the tradition of love poetry from within; her sonnet sequences, aubades, and epithalamiums are not just anti-Petrarchen, they reevaluate the terms of discourse between men and women beyond anything heard of in the philosophy of George Meredith
George Meredith
George Meredith, OM was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era.- Life :Meredith was born in Portsmouth, England, a son and grandson of naval outfitters. His mother died when he was five. At the age of 14 he was sent to a Moravian School in Neuwied, Germany, where he remained for two...
or Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American lyrical poet, playwright and feminist. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and was known for her activism and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work...
." Bonnie Costello on To Put The Mouth To, The Gettysburg Review