Hoskins, Katherine

The 20th century American poet Katherine Hoskins is the author of four poetry collections and was a frequent contributor to numerous periodicals, including The Nation, New Republic, Poetry, the Sewanee Review, and New Yorker Magazine.

Poet and author. Full name: Katherine De Montalant Hoskins. Born in 1909.

The 20th century American poet Katherine Hoskins is the author of four poetry collections and was a frequent contributor to numerous periodicals, including The Nation , New Republic , Poetry , the Sewanee Review , and New Yorker Magazine .

Katherine de Montalant Hoskins was born on May 25, 1909, in Indian Head, Maryland. She was the daughter of Katherine Peck Lackey and Henry Ellis Lackey, a Rear-Admiral in the U.S. Navy. Although she did not attend school until she was eleven, Hoskins graduated with honors from Smith College in 1931. In 1935 she married Albert L. Hoskins, Jr., a former first lieutenant in World War I who worked as a probation officer in Boston Municipal Court. Katherine Hoskins had one daughter, Camilla, and lived in Weston, Massachusetts, until her death on May 26, 1988.

Hoskins' first book of poetry, A Penitential Primer, was published in 1945. Her other poetry collections include Villa Narcisse (1956), Out in the Open (1959), and Excursions (1967). Hoskins's poetry is based on common human experiences and everyday life. She said that her themes "consist of Nature and People wherever I happen to be--often, in thought at least, south of the Mason-Dixon line." She listed Spenser, Yeats, John Crowe Ransom, and Wallace Stevens as poets who influenced her work. Although Hoskins is best known for her poetry, she also wrote plays, short stories, and reviews. Although she never publicized herself or her work, Hoskins was recognized and praised by her contemporaries. She received a Brandeis University Creative Arts Award in 1957 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1958. Hoskins also corresponded regularly with literary figures of her day, including Wallace Stevens, John Crowe Ransom, Robert Lowell, and Malcolm Cowley. On the jacket of Excursions, Hoskins's last book, Lowell wrote "How much better she is than so many poets very much more famous! What other poet so well catches the pathos and sweetness of time in motion, the blood of our developing and fading lives."

"Obituaries," Boston Globe , June 15, 1988.