Hillyer, Robert, 1895-1961

Robert Hillyer was born in East Orange and he taught English and rhetoric at Harvard for several decades. In 1934 he won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for "The Collected Verse of Robert Hillyer."

Hillyer graduated from Harvard in 1917 and taught English at Harvard.

Hillyer was an American poet and Harvard professor.

American poet; Harvard professor.

Hillyer was a poet, novelist, and essayist. He taught English at Harvard (1919-1945).

American author, poet, educator.

American educator, editor, translator, essayist, novelist, and poet; recipient of Pulitzer Prize for his COLLECTED VERSE.

Hillyer (A.B. 1917) was a poet, novelist, and essayist. He taught English at Harvard (1919-1945).

Robert Silliman Hillyer (1895-1961) was an American poet. Born in East Orange, New Jersey, on June third 1895, he was educated at Kent School, Harvard College, and the University of Copenhagen. He won the Garrison Prize for poetry at Harvard as an undergraduate and was an editor of the Harvard Monthly and the Harvard Advocate. In World War I he served as an ambulance driver in the French Army at Verdun for which he received a citation, as well as the Verdun Medal, from the French government. After transferring to the American Expeditionary Force in 1918, he rose from private to First Lieutenant and after the war he was attached to the Peace Conference as a courier. Later Hillyer served at the American Embassy in Brussels, Belgium. From 1919 to 1926 he was Instructor in English at Harvard; following that he became Assistant Professor of English at Trinity College, which awarded him an honorary degree on his return to Harvard in 1928. He became Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard in 1937, a chair first held by John Quincy Adams.

Hillyer was Phi Beta Kappa poet six times: at Tufts, 1923; Harvard, 1928; Columbia, 1936; Harvard (for the Tercentenary of 1936);William and Mary (for the Hundredth Anniversary of the founding of Phi Beta Kappa at that college, 1939); and Goucher, 1940. He was president of The New England Poetry Club, 1923 - 1925, twice president of The Poetry Society of America 1949 and 1951 - 1953, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston and a member of The National Institute of Arts and Letters in New York. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1934.

Hillyer retired from Harvard in 1944 after 25 years of teaching. He accepted a Visiting Professorship at Kenyon College in 1948, and, in 1952, accepted a regular professorship at the University of Delaware. In 1954, the H. Fletcher Brown Chair of English Literature was created and Hillyer became the first incumbent.

An amateur composer and a student of music, Hillyer believed that poetry and music are inseparable. Many of his poems were set to music by various composers, such as Herman Luri, Daniel Pinkham, Gordon Sherwood, Ned Rorem, Mervin Whitcomb, Oscar Harveland, Joseph Clokey and John Drake.

Select Bibliography

Eight Harvard Poets. New York: Lawrence Gomme, 1917. Poems by Harvard undergraduates, including Hillyer, E. E. Cummings, S. Foster Damon and John Dos Passos. Sonnets and Other Lyrics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1917. The Five Books of Youth. New York: Brentano's, 1920. Alchemy: A Symphonic Poem. New York: Brentano's, 1921. A Book of Danish Verse. New York: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1922. Translations from Danish lyric poetry from Oehlenschlager to Johannes V. Jensen (in collaboration with S. Foster Damon and Oluf Friis). The Hills Give Promise. Boston: B. J. Brimmer, 1922. The Coming Forth by Day. Boston: B. J. Brimmer, 1923. Metrical arrangements from the Egyptian Book of the Dead together with an essay on the ancient Egyptian Religion, first published in The Freeman and subsequently reprinted (without the essay) in Van Doren's Anthology of World Poetry. The Halt in the Garden. London: Elkin Mathews, 1924. Foreword by Arthur Machen. The Engagement Ring. The Masquerade. Hartford: The Haylofters, 1929. Prose Masterpieces. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1931 (in collaboration with K. B. Murdock and Odell Shepard). The Gates of the Compass. New York: The Viking Press, 1931. Riverhead. New York: Knopf, 1932. Collected Verse. New York: Knopf, 1933 (awarded the Pulitzer Prize). Some Roots of English Poetry. Norton, Massachusetts: Wheaton College Press, 1933. A Letter to Robert Frost and Others. New York: Knopf, 1937. First Principles of Verse. Boston: The Writer, 1938. In Time of Mistrust. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1939. Pattern of a Day. New York: Knopf, 1940. My Heart for Hostage. New York: Random House, 1942. Poems for Music: 1917-1947. New York: Knopf, 1947. The Death of Captain Nemo. New York: Knopf, 1949. The Suburb By the Sea. New York: Knopf, 1952. The Relic and Other Poems. New York: Knopf, 1957. Robert Burns, Bicentennial Address at Library of Congress. Washington: Library of Congress, 1959. In Pursuit of Poetry. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960. Collected Poems. New York: Knopf, 1961.