Robert Hillyer

Hillyer was born in East Orange, New Jersey to an old Connecticut family.{{Cite web |last= |first= |date=2022-05-16 |title=Robert Hillyer |url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-hillyer |access-date=2022-05-17 |website=Poetry Foundation |language=en}}{{Cite web |date=2006-06-28 |title=Robert Hillyer |url=http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/poets/hillyer.php |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060628130752/http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/poets/hillyer.php |archive-date=June 28, 2006 |access-date=2022-05-17 |website=Poets of Cambridge, U.S.A. |publisher=Harvard Square Library}} He attended Kent School in Kent, Connecticut. After high school, he attended Harvard University, graduating cum laude in 1917. While there, he was the editor of the literary magazine The Harvard Advocate, and was affiliated with the group known as the Harvard Aesthetes.

When World War I began, he went to France and volunteered for the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, along with Harvard classmate John Dos Passos. Once the United States entered the war, he joined the American forces. After serving as an ambulance driver, Hillyer later returned to France to work in the US Ordnance Department.{{cite web |last1=Nagle |first1=Robert |title=Biographical Sketch of Robert Hillyer |url=https://www.personvillepress.com/11378h/random/hillyer/weboutput/OEBPS/hillyer-biography.xhtml |website=My Heart For Hostage (Special Critical Edition) |publisher=Personville Press |access-date=3 November 2022}} After the Armistice, Hillyer worked as a military courier for the 1919 peace conference in Paris. For a while Hillyer and John Dos Passos shared a flat in Paris and even collaborated on an unpublished novel which they called "Great Novel" (or "G.N.", or "Seven Times round the Walls of Jericho"). Eventually the novel was abandoned in 1921 even though Dos Passos said that Hillyer's contributions had "genuineness" and "more tone than mine."

Hillyer became a professor of English at Harvard University in 1919. In the late 1920s, he taught at Trinity College and was made a member of the Epsilon chapter of the literary fraternity St. Anthony Hall in 1927.

From 1937 to 1944, he was named to the Boylston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard. From 1948 to 1951 Hillyer was a visiting professor at Kenyon College. He also taught at the University of Delaware from 1952 until his death. While at Delaware Hillyer did various regular poetry readings between 1953-1960 which were recorded and are now available for listening through the university's archives. [https://library.udel.edu/special/findaids/view?docId=ead/mss0696.xml;tab=content#seriesi MSS 0696 - University of Delaware audio recordings of poetry readings ], accessed Feb 26 2021

Over his academic life, Hillyer taught a number of writers (and poets) who later became well-known such as Theodore Roethke,{{cite web |title=Entry for Theodore Roethke |url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/american-literature-biographies/theodore-roethke |website=Encyclopedia.com |publisher=Cengage |access-date=30 July 2022}} James Gould Cozzens, {{cite book |last1=McDonald |first1=Roxanne |title="Robert Hillyer" (Entry) |date=2021 |publisher=Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia}} Howard Nemerov, James Agee, Norman Mailer, Robert Fitzgerald and John Simon.{{cite book |last1=Blazek |first1=William |title=Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps and American Literature of World War 1 (Dissertation) |date=1986 |location=University of Aberdeen |page=292}}

In 1919, Hillyer described himself as “a conservative and religious poet in a radical and blasphemous age." In 1934, he received a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his book The Collected Verse of Robert Hillyer. His work is in meter and often rhyme and he tended to write about death, love and nature. He is known for his sonnets and for poems such as "Theme and Variations" (on his war experiences) and the light "Letter to Robert Frost."

He became president of the Conservative Poetry Society of America. In this capacity, he attacked modernist poets such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.

• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for "Collected Verse" in 1934.
• He was named to the Boylston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University in 1937.
• His papers are housed at Syracuse University.

• Pre-Pulitzer Poetry (Ebook, Personville Press, 2023). Includes the full text of 6 poetry books published by Hillyer before winning the Pulitzer Prize.{{cite web |last1=Nagle |first1=Robert |title=Book Announcement: Pre-Pulitzer Poetry |url=https://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/2024/01/pre-pulitzer-poetry-by-robert-hillyer-ebook/ |website=Idiotprogrammer: Texas Literary Blog |date=3 January 2024 |publisher=Personville Press |access-date=12 April 2024}}
• The Collected Poems (Alfred Knopf, 1961)
• The Relic & Other Poems (Knopf, 1957).{{Cite book |last=Hillyer |first=Robert |url=http://archive.org/details/relicotherpoems00hill |title=The relic & other poems |date=1957 |publisher=New York, Knopf |others=Internet Archive}}
• The Suburb by the Sea: New Poems (Knopf, 1952)
• The Death of Captain Nemo: A Narrative Poem (A.A. Knopf, 1949)
• Poems for Music, 1917–1947. (1947)
• Pattern of a Day (1940)
• In a Time of Mistrust (1939)
• A Letter to Robert Frost and Others (1937).
• The Collected Verse of Robert Hillyer. (A. A. Knoft, 1933)
• The Gates of the Compass: A Poem in Four Parts Together with Twenty-Two Shorter Pieces (Viking Press, 1930){{Cite book |last=Hillyer |first=Robert |url=http://archive.org/details/gatesofcompasspo0000hill |title=The gates of the compass : a poem in four parts together with twenty-two shorter pieces |date=1930 |publisher=New York : Viking Press |others=Internet Archive}}
• The Seventh Hill (Viking Press, 1928){{Cite book |last=Hillyer |first=Robert |url=http://archive.org/details/seventhhill0000hill |title=The seventh hill |date=1928 |publisher=New York : Viking Press |others=Internet Archive}}
• The Halt in the Garden (Elkin Matthews,1925)
• The Coming Forth by Day: An Anthology of Poems from the Egyptian Book of the Dead (B.J. Brimmer Company, 1923){{Cite web |title=The Coming Forth By Day – Black's Fine Books & Manuscripts |url=https://blacksbooks.ca/product/the-coming-forth-by-day/ |access-date=2022-05-17 |language=en-CA}}
• [https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Robert_Hillyer_The_Hills_Give_Promise?id=gXA6AQAAIAAJ Hills Give Promise, a Volume of Lyrics, Together with Carmus: A Symphonic Poem] (B.J. Brimmer Company, 1923){{Cite book |last=Hillyer |first=Robert |url=https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Robert_Hillyer_The_Hills_Give_Promise?id=gXA6AQAAIAAJ |title=The Hills Give Promise: A Volume of Lyrics, Together with Carmus: a Symphonic Poem |date=1923 |publisher=B. J. Brimmer Company |language=en |via=Google Play}}
• Alchemy: A Symphonic Poem (Brentano's, 1920)
• The Five Books of Youth (Brentano's, 1920)
• Sonnets and Other Lyrics (Harvard University Press, 1917)
• Eight Harvard Poets (1917), which included works by E. E. Cummings and John Dos Passos

• [https://books.google.com/books?id=7RAyAAAAIAAJ Riverhead] (Alfred Knopf, 1932)Hillyer, Robert. [https://books.google.com/books?id=7RAyAAAAIAAJ Riverhead]. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1932. via Google Books.
• [https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b56666 My Heart for Hostage] (Random House, 1942)Hillyer, Robert, 1895-1961. [https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b56666 My Heart for Hostage]. New York: Random House, 1942. via Hathi Trust. In 2022 this novel was digitized and made available for free download by Personville Press. {{cite web |title=My Heart for Hostage (Free Novel) |url=https://www.personvillepress.com/11378h/random/hillyer/hillyer4410.html |website=Personville Press website |publisher=Personville Press |access-date=3 November 2022}}

• In Pursuit of Poetry (McGraw-Hill, 1960){{Cite book |last=Hillyer |first=Robert |url=http://archive.org/details/inpursuitofpoetr00hill |title=In pursuit of poetry |date=1960 |publisher=New York, McGraw-Hill |others=Internet Archive}}*
• First Principles of Verse. (The Writer, Inc., 1938).
• Some Roots of English Poetry (Wheaton College Press, 1933){{Cite book |last=Hillyer |first=Robert |url=http://archive.org/details/somerootsofengli0000hill |title=Some roots of English poetry |date=1933 |publisher=Norton, Mass. : Wheaton College Press |others=Internet Archive}}

• {{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=g3cRAAAAYAAJ&q=robert+hillyer |title=A Book of Danish Verse: Translated in the Original Meters |author=Oluf Friis |others=Translators Samuel Foster Damon, Robert Hillyer |publisher=The American-Scandinavian Foundation |year=1922}}
• Kahlil Gibran. A Tear and a Smile.{{Cite web |title=A Tear And A Smile by Kahlil Gibran |url=https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500541h.html |access-date=2022-05-17 |website=gutenberg.net.au}} Introduction by Robert Hillyer. (A. A. Knopf, 1959).Gibran, Kahlil. 1965. [http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/977393365 A tear and a smile.] Translated from Arabic by H.M. Nahmad, with an introduction by Robert Hillyer. New York: Knopf.
• Eight More Harvard Poets. Edited by Samuel Foster Damon and Robert Hillyer. (Brentano, 1923)Damon, S. Foster, Robert Hillyer, Dorian Abbott, Norman Cabot, Grant Code, Malcolm Cowley, Jack Mereten, Joel T. Rogers, Royall H. Snow, and John Brooks. 1923. [http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1318413 Eight more Harvard poets].
• [https://archive.org/details/completepoetryse0000donn%20q7j5/mode/2up Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne and The Complete Poetry of William Blake], Introduction by Robert Hillyer, Random House: New York, 1941. pages xv-lv.

In 1926, he married Dorothy Hancock Tilton. They had one son, but divorced in 1943.

He was 66 when he died in Wilmington, Delaware.

• List of ambulance drivers during World War I

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• Robert Hillyer: Recordings of Poets Reading their Own Poems
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• [https://library.udel.edu/special/findaids/view?docId=ead/mss0696.xml;tab=content#seriesi MSS 0696 - University of Delaware audio recordings of poetry readings]. Audio of various poetry readings Hillyer gave between 1953-1960.
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1795 Digital Works by Robert Hillyer on Project Gutenberg]

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Category:1895 births

Category:1961 deaths

Category:Kent School alumni

Category:Harvard University alumni

Category:Harvard Advocate alumni

Category:American Field Service personnel of World War I

Category:20th-century American poets

Category:Danish–English translators

Category:20th-century American translators

Category:Harvard University faculty

Category:Trinity College (Connecticut) faculty

Category:St. Anthony Hall

Category:Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winners

Category:Kenyon College faculty

Category:University of Delaware faculty

Category:Writers from East Orange, New Jersey