Background
Hadas, Rachel was born on November 8, 1948 in New York City. Daughter of Moses and Elizabeth (Chamberlayne) Hadas.
( Merrill, Cavafy, Poems and Dreams is a collection that-...)
Merrill, Cavafy, Poems and Dreams is a collection that--as the title indicates--looks both outward and inward. It begins with essays on Greek poets from Homer to Ritsos, in which Rachel Hadas's knowledge of classical literature and her years in Greece richly inform the writing. The collection also includes a loving exploration of the work of poet James Merrill, who was a close personal friend of the author's. The second half of the book combines explorations of various corners and horizons of the poetry scene, including neglected American poets and Hadas's thoughts on her own poetics and career. "Two Letters from New York" and "Tangled Web Sites" take bemused looks at literary or cultural landscapes. Hadas also looks inward: to dreams and dreamwork, to her dead mother's address book, to the emblematic drilling of a well in a country house. The range of selections includes essays, interviews, memoir, criticism, and a few of Hadas's own poems. Rachel Hadas is the author of eleven books of poetry, essays, and translations. Her most recent book is Halfway Down the Hall: New and Selected Poems. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry and an American Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is Professor of English at the Newark campus of Rutgers University.
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(The domestic facts of life are fashioned into searching m...)
The domestic facts of life are fashioned into searching meditations by Rachel Hadas in A Son From Sleep, a book about wakings. The poet is admonished by her dreams and summoned from her slumbers. Hadas's acute observation of ordinary things illuminates and expands them. She listens while a child "plaits her fledgling macrame / of consonants and vowels." She learns "several kinds of silence." She resolves to "uncover language / as medium of nothing except mysteries," and for Hadas, mysteries take root in tangible things--in cats, blankets, subways, her husband, and especially, in motherhood.
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( Good translators must somehow avoid the dangers of mere...)
Good translators must somehow avoid the dangers of mere literalism on the one hand and creative embellishments on the other. Hadas has succeeded admirably by offering rhythmical and accurate translations of a wide variety of texts by Tibullus, Seneca, Hugo, Baudelaire, Mallarme, Rimbaud, LaForgue, Valery, and the modern Greek poet Konstantine Karyotakis, among others. Nostalgia, ennui, melancholy, and grief are the dominant tones of these poems, which speak poignantly of love lost and the inexorable passage of time. Hadas often finds a contemporary phrase to formulate an older writer's meaning. Thus, Tibullus can say that love protects him from "the switchblade knife" while LaForgue is "suddenly zapped by lightning." Some readers may miss the presence of en face texts in the original languages, but the author's assertion that she did this work purely "for the pleasure" is apparent throughout. Recommended for larger collections. - Daniel L. Guillory, Millikin Univ., Decatur, Ill.
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(Rachel Hadas's The Empty Bed takes an unflinching look at...)
Rachel Hadas's The Empty Bed takes an unflinching look at the loss of friends to AIDS and cancer, and commemorates the despair and rage of those left to grieve for the dead. Between 1991 and 1993, five of the poets with whom Hadas had worked at Gay Men's Health Crisis died, and in the midst of these deaths came that of the poet's mother. Written with the energy of desperation, the central section of The Empty Bed is devoted to a series of elegies -- private but also public laments almost secretly empowered by their formal schemes. The elegies are embraced by preparatory meditations on boundaries and thresholds; wise and passionate, these poems celebrate the consolations of friendship and of art. The collection is infused with a growing certainty that although the emptiness left by the deaths of loved ones can never be filled, it can be haloed and commemorated, and in that sense mitigated, by language.
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(Rachel Hadas brings an acute perception and a rich educat...)
Rachel Hadas brings an acute perception and a rich education to her exquisitely crafted poetry. As James Merrill wrote, Hadas's "honeyed words and bracing forms . . . over and over bring the mind to its senses." Rooted in the domestic and illuminated by Hadas's lifelong engagement with classics, the poems gathered here, many in traditional forms, draw out the relationships between life, love, time and art. This collection will be welcomed by all who love Hadas's strongly etched lines and passionate intelligence.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0819522511/?tag=2022091-20
Hadas, Rachel was born on November 8, 1948 in New York City. Daughter of Moses and Elizabeth (Chamberlayne) Hadas.
Bachelor in Classics, Radcliffe College, 1969. Master of Arts, Johns Hopkins, 1977. Doctor of Philosophy, Princeton University, 1982.
From adjunct to associate professor, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey, 1981-1992; professor, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey, since 1992; Adjunct Professor, Columbia University, New York City, 1992-1993. Visiting professor Hellenic studies program Princeton University, spring 1995.
(Rachel Hadas's The Empty Bed takes an unflinching look at...)
(Rachel Hadas's The Empty Bed takes an unflinching look at...)
(The domestic facts of life are fashioned into searching m...)
( Good translators must somehow avoid the dangers of mere...)
( Merrill, Cavafy, Poems and Dreams is a collection that-...)
(Rachel Hadas brings an acute perception and a rich educat...)
(Double Legacy, The: Reflections On A Pair Of Deaths, by H...)
(Book by Hadas, Rachel)
(Book by Hadas, Rachel)
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Fellow American Academy Arts and Sciences. Member Modern Language Association, Poets, Essayists and Novelists, Poetry Society American, Modern Greek Studies Association, National Book Critics Circuit.
Married Stavros Kondilis, November 7, 1970 (divorced 1978). Married George Edwards, July 22, 1978. 1 child, Jonathan.