Eleanor Taylor
Eleanor Ross Taylor (June 30, 1920 - December 30, 2011) was a longtime resident of Charlottesville and a nationally-recognized poet. She published six books of poetry in 50 years and was the winner of the Ruth Lilly Prize for Poetry, a lifetime achievement award.
Taylor was born June 30, 1920 in rural North Carolina. [1] She began her literary career early, and published her first poem at the age of nine in a local paper. She received her first degree from the Women’s College at the University of North Carolina, now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and continued her education at Vanderbilt University. [2]
At Vanderbilt, fellow writers Caroline Gordon and Allen Tate introduced Eleanor to novelist Peter Taylor. [3] The two married within six weeks. The couple lived in Charlottesville for decades where Peter taught at the University of Virginia. Panthea Reid, professor emerita of English at LSU, commented on the relationship, stating
“Like most women of her generation, Eleanor Ross assumed that marriage and a career were incompatible. Despite precocious beginnings, therefore, Eleanor Ross largely ceased to write when she married the major short story writer and novelist, Peter Taylor. Perhaps she did not want to compete with her husband; certainly she was too busy to follow a dedicated writing regime. She served as wife, mother, housekeeper, hostess, letter-writer, and also family packer, as Peter Taylor nomadically moved from one to another writer-in-residence post.” [4]
However, other writers have presented a different view of her marriage. Fellow poet Susan Settlemyre Williams, after interviewing with Taylor, wrote that Peter had encouraged Eleanor to show her work to poet and critic Randell Jarrell. This interaction would result in the publication of Wilderness of Ladies, although Williams did note her later publications did not come “at the expense of what she considered primary responsibilities to her family.” [5] Taylor’s works primarily focused on the difficulties of female lives, and her style has been described as “modernist,” “fragmented,” and as “tightly crafted works of free verse whose language is rooted in a regional foundation.” [6] Taylor has noted that the greatest influences on her work were Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay. [7] Poet and critic Adrienne Rich has stated of her work,
“[it] speak[s] of the underground life of women, the Southern white Protestant woman in particular, the woman-writer, the woman in the family, coping, hoarding, preserving, observing, keeping up appearances, seeing through the myths and hypocrisies, nursing the sick, conspiring with sister- women, possessed of a will to survive and to see others survive.” [8]
Taylor passed away Dec. 30, 2011, in Falls Church, Virginia. [9]
Selected Bibliography [10]
- Wilderness of Ladies (1960)
- Welcome Eumenides (1972)
- New and Selected Poems (1983)
- Days Going/Days Coming Back (1991)
- Late Leisure: Poems (1999)
- Captive Voices: New and Selected Poems (2009)
Selected Honors and Awards [11]
- 1998 Shelley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America
- A 1998 Fellowship with the American Academy of Arts and Letters
- 2000 Library of Virginia's Virginia Prize for Poetry
- 2001 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry
- Election to the Fellowship of Southern Writers (2009)
- The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (2010)
References
- ↑ Web. Eleanor Ross Taylor, Blackbird, Spring 2002, retrieved June 24, 2024.
- ↑ Web. Eleanor Ross Taylor, Academy of American Poets
- ↑ Web. 2000: Eleanor Ross Taylor, Sewanee Library, March 19, 2024
- ↑ Reid, Panthea. “‘CAPRICIOUSLY ONGOING’: ELEANOR ROSS TAYLOR’S ‘LATE LEISURE.’” The Virginia Quarterly Review, vol. 76, no. 2, 2000, pp. 357–63. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26439312. Accessed 24 June 2024.
- ↑ Web. Contemplating Jailbreak: Reflections on the Career of Eleanor Ross Taylor, Blackbird, Fall 2009, retrieved June 24, 2024.
- ↑ Web. Eleanor Ross Taylor, Poetry Foundation, retrieved June 24, 2024.
- ↑ Web. An interview with Eleanor Ross Taylor, Blackbird, retrieved June 24, 2024.
- ↑ Web. Eleanor Ross Taylor, Encyclopedia Virginia, May 3, 2024, retrieved June 24, 2024.
- ↑ Web. Eleanor Ross Taylor, poet of women’s lives in the South, dies at 91, Washington Post, January 10, 2012, retrieved June 24, 2024.
- ↑ Web. Eleanor Ross Taylor, Old Dominion University Digital Commons, retrieved June 24, 2024.
- ↑ Web. Eleanor Ross Taylor, Academy of American Poets, retrieved June 24, 2024.
- ↑ Web. "Esteemed poet Eleanor Taylor dies", McKenzie, Bryan, Daily Progress, Lee Enterprises, January 3, 2012, retrieved January 4, 2012.
- ↑ Web. "Poet Eleanor Ross Taylor dies", Powell, Dannye Romine, The Charlotte Observer, January 3, 2012, retrieved January 4, 2012.