HILDA MORLEY
To Hilda Morley’s riends, associates, and readers:
Poet Hilda Morley, who recently moved from the U.S. to London, has been
hospitalized and is in critical condition.
She has surfaced from a coma and is able to receive messages read out loud to
her by friends at her bedside (Josephine Clare and Tamsin Hollo).
Faxes can be sent to her at:
(from US) 011 -- 44 -- 171 -- 830 -- 2029.
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Entry in POSTMODERN AMERICAN POETRY, ed. Paul Hoover:
“HILDA MORLEY
b. 1919
Born in New York City and educated there and in Haifa, Israel, London,
England, and Wellesley, Massachusetts, Hilda Morley has taught at New York
University, Rutgers University, and Black Mountain College [...] Morlay did
not begin to publish her poems in any number until the death of her husband,
composer Stefan Wolpe, in 1971; since then her work has appeared widely.
Her first major collection, *What Are Winds & What Are Waters” (1983), is a
booklength threnody for Wolpe. In the preface, Denise Levertov writes, “her
poetry so truly (and intuitively, I think) manifests the real meaning of the
often-abused concept of ‘composition by field,’ that many other presences are
as vivid around that central figure [of Wolpe]: birds, flowers, landscapes,
street scenes, animals, whatever enters perception, however peripheral, is
given its due.” In her musical use of the poetic line, Morley is associated
with Black Mountain poetics.
Her other collections include {...] *A Blessing Outside Us* (1976), *To Hold
in My Hand: Selected Poems* (1983), and *Cloudless and First* (1988).”
Hilda Morley is a wonderful poet and person. I feel privileged to have spent
some time in animated conversations with her, one long-ago summer at Yaddo.
Anselm Hollo
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