Robert Silliman Hillyer (June 3, 1895 – December 24, 1961) was an American poet and professor of English literature.[1] He won a Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1934.[1]

Robert Hillyer
BornRobert Silliman Hillyer
(1895-06-03)June 3, 1895
East Orange, New Jersey, US
DiedDecember 24, 1961(1961-12-24) (aged 66)
Wilmington, Delaware, US
Occupationpoet, writer, university faculty
EducationHarvard University (BA)
Literary movementHarvard Aesthetes
Notable worksThe Collected Verse of Robert Hillyer
A Letter to Robert Frost and Others
Notable awardsPulitzer Prize in Poetry, 1934

Early life

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Hillyer was born in East Orange, New Jersey to an old Connecticut family.[2][3] He attended Kent School in Kent, Connecticut. After high school, he attended Harvard University, graduating cum laude in 1917.[1] While there, he was the editor of the literary magazine The Harvard Advocate, and was affiliated with the group known as the Harvard Aesthetes.[2]

When World War I began, he went to France and volunteered for the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, along with Harvard classmate John Dos Passos.[1][2] Once the United States entered the war, he joined the American forces.[1] After serving as an ambulance driver, Hillyer later returned to France to work in the US Ordnance Department.[4] After the Armistice, Hillyer worked as a military courier for the 1919 peace conference in Paris. For a while Hillyer and John Dos Passos shared a flat in Paris and even collaborated on an unpublished novel which they called "Great Novel" (or "G.N.", or "Seven Times round the Walls of Jericho"). Eventually the novel was abandoned in 1921 even though Dos Passos said that Hillyer's contributions had "genuineness" and "more tone than mine."

Career

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Academic

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Hillyer became a professor of English at Harvard University in 1919.[1][2][3] In the late 1920s, he taught at Trinity College and was made a member of the Epsilon chapter of the literary fraternity St. Anthony Hall in 1927.

From 1937 to 1944, he was named to the Boylston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard.[2] From 1948 to 1951 Hillyer was a visiting professor at Kenyon College.[1] He also taught at the University of Delaware from 1952 until his death.[1] While at Delaware Hillyer did various regular poetry readings between 1953-1960 which were recorded and are now available for listening through the university's archives.[5]

Over his academic life, Hillyer taught a number of writers (and poets) who later became well-known such as Theodore Roethke,[6] James Gould Cozzens, [7] Howard Nemerov, James Agee, Norman Mailer, Robert Fitzgerald and John Simon.[8]

Poet

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In 1919, Hillyer described himself as “a conservative and religious poet in a radical and blasphemous age."[3] In 1934, he received a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his book The Collected Verse of Robert Hillyer.[1][2] His work is in meter and often rhyme and he tended to write about death, love and nature.[1] He is known for his sonnets and for poems such as "Theme and Variations" (on his war experiences) and the light "Letter to Robert Frost."

He became president of the Conservative Poetry Society of America.[3] In this capacity, he attacked modernist poets such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.[3]

Awards and honors

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Works

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Poetry

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Novels

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Criticism and scholarship

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Editor and/or translator

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  • Oluf Friis (1922). A Book of Danish Verse: Translated in the Original Meters. Translators Samuel Foster Damon, Robert Hillyer. The American-Scandinavian Foundation.[3]
  • Kahlil Gibran. A Tear and a Smile.[20] Introduction by Robert Hillyer. (A. A. Knopf, 1959).[21]
  • Eight More Harvard Poets. Edited by Samuel Foster Damon and Robert Hillyer. (Brentano, 1923)[22]
  • Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne and The Complete Poetry of William Blake, Introduction by Robert Hillyer, Random House: New York, 1941. pages xv-lv.

Personal

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In 1926, he married Dorothy Hancock Tilton.[3] They had one son, but divorced in 1943.[3]

He was 66 when he died in Wilmington, Delaware.[1]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o "Robert Hillyer, Pulitzer Poet". The Youngstown Vindicator. December 31, 1961. Retrieved December 26, 2012.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r "Robert Hillyer". Poetry Foundation. 2022-05-16. Retrieved 2022-05-17.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Robert Hillyer". Poets of Cambridge, U.S.A. Harvard Square Library. 2006-06-28. Archived from the original on June 28, 2006. Retrieved 2022-05-17.
  4. ^ Nagle, Robert. "Biographical Sketch of Robert Hillyer". My Heart For Hostage (Special Critical Edition). Personville Press. Retrieved 3 November 2022.
  5. ^ MSS 0696 - University of Delaware audio recordings of poetry readings , accessed Feb 26 2021
  6. ^ "Entry for Theodore Roethke". Encyclopedia.com. Cengage. Retrieved 30 July 2022.
  7. ^ McDonald, Roxanne (2021). "Robert Hillyer" (Entry). Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia.
  8. ^ Blazek, William (1986). Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps and American Literature of World War 1 (Dissertation). University of Aberdeen. p. 292.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  9. ^ Nagle, Robert (3 January 2024). "Book Announcement: Pre-Pulitzer Poetry". Idiotprogrammer: Texas Literary Blog. Personville Press. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
  10. ^ Hillyer, Robert (1957). The relic & other poems. Internet Archive. New York, Knopf.
  11. ^ Hillyer, Robert (1930). The gates of the compass : a poem in four parts together with twenty-two shorter pieces. Internet Archive. New York : Viking Press.
  12. ^ Hillyer, Robert (1928). The seventh hill. Internet Archive. New York : Viking Press.
  13. ^ "The Coming Forth By Day – Black's Fine Books & Manuscripts". Retrieved 2022-05-17.
  14. ^ Hillyer, Robert (1923). The Hills Give Promise: A Volume of Lyrics, Together with Carmus: a Symphonic Poem. B. J. Brimmer Company – via Google Play.
  15. ^ Hillyer, Robert. Riverhead. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1932. via Google Books.
  16. ^ Hillyer, Robert, 1895-1961. My Heart for Hostage. New York: Random House, 1942. via Hathi Trust.
  17. ^ "My Heart for Hostage (Free Novel)". Personville Press website. Personville Press. Retrieved 3 November 2022.
  18. ^ Hillyer, Robert (1960). In pursuit of poetry. Internet Archive. New York, McGraw-Hill.
  19. ^ Hillyer, Robert (1933). Some roots of English poetry. Internet Archive. Norton, Mass. : Wheaton College Press.
  20. ^ "A Tear And A Smile by Kahlil Gibran". gutenberg.net.au. Retrieved 2022-05-17.
  21. ^ Gibran, Kahlil. 1965. A tear and a smile. Translated from Arabic by H.M. Nahmad, with an introduction by Robert Hillyer. New York: Knopf.
  22. ^ Damon, S. Foster, Robert Hillyer, Dorian Abbott, Norman Cabot, Grant Code, Malcolm Cowley, Jack Mereten, Joel T. Rogers, Royall H. Snow, and John Brooks. 1923. Eight more Harvard poets.
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