The godmother of the New Formalism, Rhina Espaillat occupies a section in every contemporary anthology of rhymed and metered verse.
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By GEORGE WILLIS
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By BRADLEY CORTRIGHT
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By A.R. HOFFMAN
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By MATTHEW RICE
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By GEORGE WILLIS
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By BRADLEY CORTRIGHT
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By LUKE FUNK
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By MATTHEW RICE
|You may know some poems by Rhina Espaillat. Born on January 20, 1932, she had her 90th birthday this year celebrated by several of the better poetry publications. Back in its 1990s heyday, Prairie Home Companion featured her work. The godmother of the New Formalism — the counter-current that emerged mostly in the 1990s to offer alternatives to the endless free verse of modern college-writing-program poetry — she occupies a section in every contemporary anthology of rhymed and metered verse. The authorized translator of Robert Frost into Spanish, and the translator of such works as the poetry of St. John of the Cross into English, Espaillat is a major poet working in our lifetimes.
Of course, if you were a regular reader of The New York Sun, you wouldn’t need to be introduced to her work. The Sun recognized her poetry long before most other publications, booming her 72 years ago with a January 4, 1950, article titled “Teen-age Poet Wins Honors”—a page 23 feature complete with a picture of the young poet and a brief poem called “The Pigeons.” Her rule, she told the Sun, is “to write poetry that’s personal and yet will be understood by every one.”
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