Modern without being modernist, the American poet Robert Hillyer argued for ‘conservative poetry,’ dubbing himself ‘a conservative and religious poet in a radical and blasphemous age.’
The American poet Robert Hillyer (1895–1961) is close to being washed under by the great wave of the world, another figure pulled down into the forgetful sea. Only today’s poem, “Early in the Morning,” much remains in public notice, really—and that at least partly because the composer Ned Rorem set it to music in one of the few commonly performed examples of American art song. But Hillyer remains a fascinating man. Helping form “the Harvard poets,” which included his classmates John Dos Passos and E.E. Cummings, Hillyer went to Europe shortly after graduating in 1917 to serve in an international ambulance core before America entered the war. He taught at Harvard for many years afterward, won the Pulitzer Prize, and wrote eight books of poetry. Modern without being modernist, he argued for “conservative poetry,” dubbing himself “a conservative and religious poet in a radical and blasphemous age.” In “Early in the Morning” he gives a wonderful example of what we might call Spots of Time poetry: a particular moment, sharply observed, that somehow resonates with a mystical and universal feeling.
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