Daryl Hine
Encyclopedia
Daryl Hine is a Canadian poet
and translator.
, The Carnal and the Crane, was published as part of Louis Dudek
's McGill Poetry Series in 1957.
Hine then went to Europe on a Canada Council scholarship, where he lived for the next three years. He moved to New York in 1962 and to Chicago in 1963, taking a PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago
in 1967. He taught there and at at Northwestern University and at Illinois University (Chicago Campus) during the following decade while he served as editor of Poetry Magazine. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1986, and lives in semi-retirement in Evanston, Illinois.
He is the son of Robert Fraser and Elsie James Hine.
He was an editor of Poetry magazine, from 1968-78. The correspondence is held at Indiana University
.
His work appeared in the New York Review of Books, Harper's, The New Yorker, The Tamarack Review, The Paris Review,
He first came out as gay
in his 1975 work In & Out, which was initially available only in a privately-printed version in limited circulation. The work did not gain general publication until 1989.
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and translator.
Life
Daryl Hine was born in Burnaby in 1936 and grew up in New Westminster B.C. He attended McGill University in Montreal 1954-58. His first chapbookChapbook
A chapbook is a pocket-sized booklet. The term chap-book was formalized by bibliophiles of the 19th century, as a variety of ephemera , popular or folk literature. It includes many kinds of printed material such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales,...
, The Carnal and the Crane, was published as part of Louis Dudek
Louis Dudek
Louis Dudek, OC was a Canadian poet, academic, and publisher known for his role in defining Modernism in poetry, and for his literary criticism. He was the author of over two dozen books...
's McGill Poetry Series in 1957.
Hine then went to Europe on a Canada Council scholarship, where he lived for the next three years. He moved to New York in 1962 and to Chicago in 1963, taking a PhD in Comparative Literature 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...
in 1967. He taught there and at at Northwestern University and at Illinois University (Chicago Campus) during the following decade while he served as editor of Poetry Magazine. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1986, and lives in semi-retirement in Evanston, Illinois.
He is the son of Robert Fraser and Elsie James Hine.
He was an editor of Poetry magazine, from 1968-78. The correspondence is held at Indiana University
Indiana University
Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...
.
His work appeared in the New York Review of Books, Harper's, The New Yorker, The Tamarack Review, The Paris Review,
He first came out as gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
in his 1975 work In & Out, which was initially available only in a privately-printed version in limited circulation. The work did not gain general publication until 1989.
Awards
- 2010 Finalist, Governor-General's Literary Award for Poetry
- 2005 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award
- 1986 MacArthur FoundationMacArthur FoundationThe John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is one of the largest private foundations in the United States. Based in Chicago but supporting non-profit organizations that work in 60 countries, MacArthur has awarded more than US$4 billion since its inception in 1978...
Fellow - 1980 Guggenheim Fellowship
Plays
- A Mutual Flame (radio play), BBC, 1961.
- The Death of Seneca, produced in Chicago, 1968.
- Alcestis (radio play), BBC, 1972.
Reviews
Hine is less an oracle than a high-energy technician. A recurring metaphor is nuclear fusion — its poetic procedures putting mundane, household elements under graceful pressure until they fuse together into a new substance, dense and glowing in contrast to their prosaic ingredients.
Daryl Hine's is a cultured voice. It avoids stuffiness, egoism and shallow ironies. At the centre of this hailstorm of rhyme is a calm - one made of seeming trifles, yet with thinking that is profound. It is a reflection on civilization as a whole, and is the summing up of a life in particular weighed against eternity.
In Puerilities, Hine has beautifully re-created Book XII of the Greek Anthology; it stands as a translation, and as a poetic achievement in its own right. Puerilities entertains, and can move one too.
Daryl Hine, celebrated for translations of the Homeric Hymns and Theocritus, has embarked on his own autobiography in classical disguise in Academic Festival Overtures. Though the poem is written in self-proclaimed alexandrines (by alternating 13 and 12 syllables), its indented patterning is suggestive rather of Ovid (part Tristia, part Amores). The narrative impulse races through long paragraphs, while a rhyme scheme insistently coagulates internal elements into epigrammatic quatrains. It is a virtuoso achievement, as remarkable in its way as anything by Auden. It is also a remarkable record of a yearning, bookish and inhibited boyhood.
Hine's robust language…gleams with what sonneteers used to call sprezzatura, the confident, making-it-look-easy gloss that greases great art.
At certain moments, in reading him, one has the startled sense that language has arrived at a kind of impasse which only a quick scintillation of wit – in the form of a sly rhyme, a subtle pun or an extravagant rhetorical flourish – can grace, if not elude. As a result, Hine’s poems, unlike the brittle pirouettes of the formalist, seem to take shape, in all their glistening eloquence, hot from some secret forge...Hine succeeds at something which once was commonplace but has now become sadly rare: he writes poems which give pleasure to the reader.
One cannot write about Daryl Hine without using words like "bravura" and "virtuosity."