Ralph J. Mills
Encyclopedia
Ralph J. Mills Jr. was an American poet and critic.
, Illinois
on December 16, 1931. His father was Ralph J. Mills, President of the Mills Novelty Company
in Chicago (inventors and makers of vending, gaming and slot machines, one of the largest in the country) and his mother was Eileen McGuire, whose family owned Beloit Dairy in Chicago. He and his sister Anne Mills Canter grew up in Chicago and Lake Forest.
His first job was with his family’s Mills Novelty Company in the summer 1950, working the lowest position at the factory, hauling compressors. He graduated from Lake Forest College
, and Northwestern University
, with a master's degree and PhD. He attended Oxford University, and taught at the University of Chicago
, from 1959 to 1965. He taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago
from 1965 until 1997.
In 1959 he married the former Helen Harvey, a descendant of Fred Harvey who started the Fred Harvey Company
chain of roadside restaurants. They had two daughters, Natalie Mills Bontumasi and Brett Mills, and a son, Julian Mills.
He died in Chicago on August 18, 2007.
. He then taught modern literature, poetry and creative writing in the English Department at University of Illinois at Chicago for thirty-two years, 1965–1997, where he was the first director of graduate studies in English.
His literary ambitions date to his college years at Lake Forest College; he studied English and published his early work in Tusitala, the College’s literary magazine. After graduation, Mills earned an MA and PhD in English from Northwestern University and studied at Oxford. He led a distinguished academic career, teaching first at the University of Chicago and later becoming the first director of graduate studies in English at the University of Illinois–Chicago, where he taught modern literature and creative writing for more than 30 years.
Mills committed himself to poetry scholarship early in his career; he edited the letters of the great American poet Theodore Roethke
and the notebooks of David Ignatow
. His interests were diverse — including poets such as Wallace Stevens and William Butler Yeats, experimental writers such as Samuel Beckett, and French men of letters such as René Char and André Michaux. Mills’s scholarly essays and reviews have appeared in the most distinguished literary and academic journals, but he has also written with great verve and clarity for a popular audience in the Chicago Sun-Times. He edited the famous anthology Contemporary American Poetry, which introduced a generation of American college students to the best contemporary poetry.
Between 1963 and 1975, he published numerous critical articles, monographs, eight books of criticism and two volumes of essays on contemporary American poets, as well as edited Theodore Roethke’s letters and selected prose, and David Ignatow’s Notebooks. His essays and criticism concentrated on 20th Century poets such as Roethke, Edith Sitwell
and Wallace Stevens
. His critical work was used in numerous classrooms and workshops over the years and reprinted in textbooks and a compilation of his well-received criticism, Essays on Poetry, was published in 2003.
Within the world of Chicago writers and academics, he was widely respected for his piercing intellect and the breadth of his knowledge. He was also poetry reviewer for the Chicago Daily News, Chicago Sun Times, Poetry, Christian Century and American Poetry Review in the late 1960s.
He published thirteen well-received volumes of poetry and won such nationally recognized awards as the Carl Sandburg Award in 1983 and the William Carlos Williams Prize in 2000. His final selected of poems, Grasses Standing, appeared in 2000 as a capstone to a truly impressive creative career.
Ralph J. Mills, Jr's published volumes of poetry:
Life
Ralph Joseph Mills, Jr. was born in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
on December 16, 1931. His father was Ralph J. Mills, President of the Mills Novelty Company
Mills Novelty Company
The Mills Novelty Company, Incorporated of Chicago, Illinois was once a leading manufacturer of coin operated machines, including slot machines, vending machines, and jukeboxes, in the United States...
in Chicago (inventors and makers of vending, gaming and slot machines, one of the largest in the country) and his mother was Eileen McGuire, whose family owned Beloit Dairy in Chicago. He and his sister Anne Mills Canter grew up in Chicago and Lake Forest.
His first job was with his family’s Mills Novelty Company in the summer 1950, working the lowest position at the factory, hauling compressors. He graduated from Lake Forest College
Lake Forest College
Lake Forest College, founded in 1857, is a private liberal arts college in Lake Forest, Illinois. The college has 1,500 students representing 47 states and 78 countries....
, and Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
, with a master's degree and PhD. He attended Oxford University, and taught at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, from 1959 to 1965. He taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago
University of Illinois at Chicago
The University of Illinois at Chicago, or UIC, is a state-funded public research university located in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, near the Chicago Loop...
from 1965 until 1997.
In 1959 he married the former Helen Harvey, a descendant of Fred Harvey who started the Fred Harvey Company
Fred Harvey Company
The origin of the Fred Harvey Company can be traced to the 1875 opening of two railroad eating houses located at Wallace, Kansas and Hugo, Colorado on the Kansas Pacific Railway. These cafés were opened by Fred Harvey, then a freight agent for the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad...
chain of roadside restaurants. They had two daughters, Natalie Mills Bontumasi and Brett Mills, and a son, Julian Mills.
He died in Chicago on August 18, 2007.
Education
Ralph J. Mills, Jr. graduated from Lake Forest Academy in 1950, Lake Forest College in 1954, Northwestern University in 1956 with an MA in English. He later received a PhD from Northwestern in 1965 (under Richard Ellmann, noted scholar of James Joyce and W.B. Yeats). Mills also attended Oxford University from August 1956 - May 1957 and received an Honorary Degree in Letters from Lake Forest College, 2004.Professor and Critic
Ralph Mills Jr., was an acclaimed poet, scholar and professor. A teacher and critic known for the precision of his observations and the generosity of his praise, Mills first taught at University of Chicago, 1959–1965, and was also Associate Chairman of the Committee on Social ThoughtCommittee on Social Thought
The Committee on Social Thought is one of several PhD-granting committees at the University of Chicago. It was started in 1941 by historian John Ulric Nef along with economist Frank Knight, anthropologist Robert Redfield, and University President Robert Maynard Hutchins.The committee is...
. He then taught modern literature, poetry and creative writing in the English Department at University of Illinois at Chicago for thirty-two years, 1965–1997, where he was the first director of graduate studies in English.
His literary ambitions date to his college years at Lake Forest College; he studied English and published his early work in Tusitala, the College’s literary magazine. After graduation, Mills earned an MA and PhD in English from Northwestern University and studied at Oxford. He led a distinguished academic career, teaching first at the University of Chicago and later becoming the first director of graduate studies in English at the University of Illinois–Chicago, where he taught modern literature and creative writing for more than 30 years.
Mills committed himself to poetry scholarship early in his career; he edited the letters of the great American poet Theodore Roethke
Theodore Roethke
Theodore Roethke was an American poet, who published several volumes of poetry characterized by its rhythm, rhyming, and natural imagery. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1954 for his book, The Waking.-Biography:...
and the notebooks of David Ignatow
David Ignatow
-Life:David Ignatow was born in Brooklyn on February 7, 1914, and spent most of his life in the New York City area. He died on November 17, 1997, at his home in East Hampton, New York. His papers are held at University of California, San Diego.-Career:...
. His interests were diverse — including poets such as Wallace Stevens and William Butler Yeats, experimental writers such as Samuel Beckett, and French men of letters such as René Char and André Michaux. Mills’s scholarly essays and reviews have appeared in the most distinguished literary and academic journals, but he has also written with great verve and clarity for a popular audience in the Chicago Sun-Times. He edited the famous anthology Contemporary American Poetry, which introduced a generation of American college students to the best contemporary poetry.
Between 1963 and 1975, he published numerous critical articles, monographs, eight books of criticism and two volumes of essays on contemporary American poets, as well as edited Theodore Roethke’s letters and selected prose, and David Ignatow’s Notebooks. His essays and criticism concentrated on 20th Century poets such as Roethke, Edith Sitwell
Edith Sitwell
Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell DBE was a British poet and critic.-Background:Edith Sitwell was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, the oldest child and only daughter of Sir George Sitwell, 4th Baronet, of Renishaw Hall; he was an expert on genealogy and landscaping...
and Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens 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 a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...
. His critical work was used in numerous classrooms and workshops over the years and reprinted in textbooks and a compilation of his well-received criticism, Essays on Poetry, was published in 2003.
Within the world of Chicago writers and academics, he was widely respected for his piercing intellect and the breadth of his knowledge. He was also poetry reviewer for the Chicago Daily News, Chicago Sun Times, Poetry, Christian Century and American Poetry Review in the late 1960s.
Poet
A highly respected and published critic, Mills was a distinguished poet in his own right. He began writing poetry in his thirties. Prompted by the death of his father, his focus turned from writing criticism to his own poetry. Much of his poetry was in the objectivist style, "dependent on images, tersely presented," said Michael Anania, a poet and colleague of Mr. Mills' at UIC. He worked in a third-floor den of his home, writing in longhand and revising frequently before moving to a typewriter.He published thirteen well-received volumes of poetry and won such nationally recognized awards as the Carl Sandburg Award in 1983 and the William Carlos Williams Prize in 2000. His final selected of poems, Grasses Standing, appeared in 2000 as a capstone to a truly impressive creative career.
Ralph J. Mills, Jr's published volumes of poetry:
- Door to the Sun (1974)
- A Man to his Shadow (1975)
- Night Road/Poems (1978)
- Living with Distance (1979, awarded Society of Midland Authors Prize for Poetry)
- With No Answer (1980)
- March Light (1983, awarded Carl Sandburg Award)
- For a Day (1985)
- Each Branch: Poems 1976-1985 (1986)
- a while (1989)
- Nine Poems (1993)
- A Window In Air (1993)
- In Wind’s Edge (1997)
- Grasses Standing: Selected Poems (2000, awarded the William Carlos Williams Prize from the Poetry Society of America)
Awards
- 1979, 1984 and 1987 Illinois Art Council Award for Poetry
- 1980 Society of Midland Authors Prize for Poetry
- 1984 Carl Sandburg Literary Award
- 1999 Selected as part of the Poetry in Motion for the Chicago Transit Authority
- 2000 William Carlos Williams AwardWilliam Carlos Williams AwardThe William Carlos Williams Award is given out by the Poetry Society of America for a poetry book published by a small press, non-profit, or university press....
from the Poetry Society of America