By The Editors
Though the Black Mountain poets never labeled themselves or self-identified as a school of poetry, they are a group of interconnected poets, many of whom were connected together through Black Mountain College: an experimental, arts-centered university in North Carolina in operation from 1933 to 1957. Some Black Mountain poets, such as Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Hilda Morley, and Charles Olson, taught at the college.
Hilda Morley
“It is a shameful comment on our present-day literary situation that Hilda Morley’s work has been largely neglected, that a great deal of it has gone unpublished, in spite of the author’s productivity and her wide circle of acquaintance,” declared Ralph J. Mills, Jr., in an issue of the literary journal Ironwood dedicated to Morley. Recognition for her poetic accomplishments came relatively late in life for Morley, according to Mills, although the poet had been penning verse since childhood. Until the 1970s, Morley’s poetry could be found only in literary journals. More than one critic has lauded Morley’s consistent body of work over the decades while questioning why her poems remained undiscovered for so long. “Morley manages to speak clearly and sparely of what is least sayable: the sense that we inhabit a living web, not as separate beings but as molecules of a larger and elastic whole,” asserted Village Voice contributor Geoffrey O’Brien. FOR MORE
Photo Credit: Erda Estremera in Unsplash
