R.P. Blackmur

Richard Palmer Blackmur (1904-1965) in 1937. Courtesy John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Richard Palmer Blackmur (January 21, 1904 - February 2, 1965) was an American poet and literary critic.

Life

Blackmur was born and grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. An autodidact, he worked in a bookshop after graduating from high school, and attended lectures at Harvard University without enrolling.

He was managing editor of literary quarterly Hound & Horn from 1928 to 1930, at which time he resigned, although he continued to contribute to the magazine until its demise in 1934. In 1935 he published his 1st volume of criticism, The Double Agent; during the 1930s his criticism was influential among many modernist poets and the New Critics.

In 1940 Blackmur moved to Princeton University, where he taught first creative writing and then English literature for the next 25 years. He founded and directed the university's Christian Gauss Seminars in Criticism, named in honor of his colleague Christian Gauss. He met other influential poets while he taught at Princeton, including W.S. Merwin and John Berryman. Merwin later published an anthology dedicated to Blackmur and Berryman, and a book of his own poetry (The Moving Target) dedicated to Blackmur.

Blackmur died in Princeton, New Jersey.

Writing

Criticism

"The literary criticism of the late R.P. Blackmur has suffered a strange reversal of fortune in this country," wrote Morris Dickstein in 1968 in Commentary. "In the 30′s and even more so in the 40′s – heyday of the New Criticism – he was a living legend while still young, commonly described as the ideal critic. In the 60′s, however, his work has just as often been rejected as tortuous and unreadable."

Recognition

Blackmur's honors include the inaugural Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, a Guggenheim Fellowship, membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellowship in American Letters at the Library of Congress.

W.H. Auden included his poetry in the Faber Book of Modern American Verse.

In popular culture

Saul Bellow was deliberately unkind to Blackmur when he based the snob figure of the critic Sewell on him in the novel Humboldt's Gift, 1975.

Publications

Poetry

• From Jordan’s Delight. New York: Arrow Editions, 1937.
• The Second World. Cummington, MA: Cummington Press, 1942.
• The Good European, and other poems. Cummington, MA: Cummington Press, 1947.
• Poems (edited by Denis Donoghue). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977.

Non-fiction

• Dirty Hands; or, The true-born censor. Cambridge, UK: Minority Press, 1930.
• The Double Agent: Essays in craft and elucidation. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1935.
• Form and Value in Modern Poetry. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1946.
• Language as Gesture: Essays in poetry. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1952.
• The Lion and the Honeycomb: Essays in solicitude and critique. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955.
• Anni Mirabiles, 1921-1925: Reason in the madness of letters: Four lectures presented under the auspices of the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund. Washington, DC: Reference Dept., Library of Congress, 1956.
• Four Poets on Poetry (by Richard P. Blackmur, Yvor Winters, Marianne Moore, & Mark Van Doren; edited by Don Cameron Allen). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1959.
• American Short Novels. New York: Crowell, 1960.
• Eleven Essays in the European Novel. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1964.
• A Primer of Ignorance (edited by Joseph Fink). New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1967.
• Studies in Henry James (edited by Veronica A. Makowsky). New York: New Directions, 1983.
• Selected Essays of R.P. Blackmur (edited by Denis Donoghue). New York: Ecco Press, 1986.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of U.S. poets
• List of literary critics

External links

Poems

• R.P. Blackmur at the Poetry Foundation
• Richard P. Blackmur at AllPoetry (3 poems)

Audio / video

• 12 Sonnets and other poems by Richard P. (R.P.) Blackmur

Books

• R.P. Blackmur at Amazon.com

About

• R.P. Blacmur in the Columbia Encyclopedia & Houghton Mifflin Chronology of American Literature
• Richard P. Blackmur at the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
• Blackmur, Richard P. at Princeton University
• "R.P. Blackmur: America's best critic," Virginia Quarterly Review
• "A master of close reading," New York Times (review of Selected Essays of R.P. Blackmur)