Hilda Morley

Hilda Morley (September 19, 1916 – March 23, 1998) was an American poet associated with the Black Mountain movement.

She was born Hilda Auerbach in New York City to Russian parents. Her father, Rachmiel Auerbach, was a doctor, and her mother, Sonia Lubove Kamenetsky, was a feminist and Labor Zionist. Her mother was born in Baku, and her father, born in Riga, was descended from Hasidic rabbis. She was a cousin of Isaiah Berlin through her father. As a child she wrote amazingly precocious work, and corresponded with William Butler Yeats. At the age of fifteen she moved to Haifa, Palestine, with her mother, and later to London to study at the University of London. She was briefly married during her time in London, and divorced. She met and corresponded later with the poet H.D., who would influence her work. At their first meeting Hilda Morley questioned H.D. about her friendship with D. H. Lawrence and H.D. said, "You make me feel so historical."

When the Blitz began in London she moved back to the United States. In 1945, she married the painter Eugene Morley. They divorced in 1949, but his connection to abstract expressionism and to the New York School of painting was a lasting influence on her poetry. She wrote major poems that are inspired by individual works of visual art. Through Eugene Morley she became friends with Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, David Smith, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning and Elaine de Kooning. Philip Guston would watch her from his studio window, and declared that she was his muse.

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