HINE, (William) Daryl

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Nationality: Canadian. Born: Burnaby, British Columbia, 24 February 1936. Education: McGill University, Montreal, 1954–58; University of Chicago, M.A. 1965, Ph.D. in comparative literature 1967.

Career: Lived in Europe 1958–62. Assistant professor of English, University of Chicago, 1967–69. Editor, Poetry, Chicago, 1968–78. Awards: Canada Foundation-Rockefeller fellowship, 1958; Canada Council grant, 1959, 1979; Ingram Merrill Foundation grant, 1962, 1963, 1983; Guggenheim fellowship, 1980; American Academy award, 1982; MacArthur Foundation fellowship, 1986. Address: 2740 Ridge Avenue, Evanston, Illinois 60201, U.S.A.

Publications

Poetry

Five Poems 1954. Toronto, Emblem, 1955.

The Carnal and the Crane. Toronto, Contact Press, 1957.

The Devil's Picture Book. London and New York, Abelard Schuman, 1960.

Heroics. Fontainebleau, France, Gosswiller, 1961.

The Wooden Horse. New York, Atheneum, 1965.

Minutes. New York, Atheneum, 1968.

Resident Alien. New York, Atheneum, 1975.

In and Out: A Confessional Poem. Privately printed, 1975; New York, Knopf, 1989.

Daylight Saving. New York, Atheneum, 1978.

Selected Poems. Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1980; New York, Atheneum, 1981.

Academic Festival Overtures. New York, Atheneum, 1985.

Arrondissements. Erin, Ontario, Porcupine's Quill, 1988.

Postscripts. New York, Knopf, 1992.

Flotsam & Jetsam. New York, Knopf, 2000.

Plays

Defunctive Music (broadcast, 1961). Published in Tamarack Review (Toronto), Winter 1966.

The Death of Seneca (produced Chicago, 1968). Published in Chicago Review, November 1970.

Radio Plays: Defunctive Music, 1961 (Canada); A Mutual Flame (UK); Alcestis, 1972 (UK).

Novel

The Prince of Darkness & Co. London and New York, Abelard Schuman, 1961.

Other

Polish Subtitles: Impressions from a Journey. London and New York, Abelard Schuman, 1962.

Editor, with Joseph Parisi, The "Poetry" Anthology 1912–1977. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1978.

Translator, The Homeric Hymns and The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice. New York, Atheneum, 1972.

Translator, Idylls and Epigrams, by Theocritus. New York, Atheneum. 1982.

Translator, Ovid's Heroines: A Verse Translation of the Heroides.

New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1991.

Translator, Works & Days & Theogony of Hesiod. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2000.

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Critical Studies: Alone with America by Richard Howard, New York, Atheneum, 1969, London, Thames and Hudson, 1970, revised edition, Atheneum, 1980; "Coming Full Circle" by Robert Martin, in Modern Poetry Studies 7 (New York), no. 1, 1977; "Fabulous Traveller" by John Hollander, in Canto 3 (Andover, Massachusetts), no. 1, 1979; "Parody, Pastiche, and Allusion" by David Bromwich, in Lyric Poetry: Beyond New Criticism, edited by Chavia Hosek and Patricia Parker, Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1985.

Daryl Hine comments:

To the degree that conscious intent plays any part in creation, which is debatable but variable surely according to genre, I strive for a certain opacity, even solidity of effect not incompatible often with apparent clarity. For me a poem is not a means of communication but an end, an object of contemplation. Meaning, almost inevitable in the medium of language, and reference, irresistible to human beings, figure for me as purely syntactical, a matter of good manners, indispensable to the symmetry and unity that constitute the structural principles of all art. I like my poetry not merely cooked but fermented and distilled. While this ideal is only rarely and partially achieved, whether in my own work or in the history of literature, it remains my only motive for writing at all, apart from amusement. The process is engaging, but the product is the thing.

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When Daryl Hine's first full-length book of poems, The Carnal and the Crane, appeared in 1957, Northrop Frye described it as "a brilliant series of phrases" moving "across a mysteriously dark background." More than ten books of poetry, a novel, and a travel book later, the phrases retain their brilliance and the background its mystery. Elegance is characteristic of all of Hine's writing, which may be appreciated for its formal qualities if not for its expressiveness. His work resembles nothing more than an excellent, clear, but very dry wine.

The poet has called his first book "rhapsodic" and surreal in imagery and structure. The Carnal and the Crane was followed by The Devil's Picture Book, a more crafted work. The Wooden Horse, which explored the possibilities of dramatic monologues, led Hine to the intimate 1968 publication Minutes. This gave way to a technical tour de force, The Homeric Hymns, translations from once oral Greek poems written anonymously in the Homeric manner. With these noble-sounding praises the worlds of poetry and classical scholarship merge for Hine, as in the dactylic hexameters of the first line of "To Apollo": "How should I hymn you, Apollo, so handsomely sung of already?"

Hine's classical learning, far from being confined to The Homeric Hymns, reverberates rather than echoes with Greek, Roman, Christian, and even Celtic references throughout all of his poetry. It is an attractive characteristic of his work that he can capture an image with crystal clarity in a symbolist fashion, as in "Les Yeux de la tête" from Minutes:

   A tiny palace and a formal garden
   In miniature, lawns, flowers, jewelled trees
   By Fabergé, and in the midst a fountain
   Whose precious drops like tear drops fill the eyes.

Hine's poems proceed from image to image, building on the principle of polarity, finding in the irreconcilability of opposites proof of the inability of people to merge, the impossibility of history, in a world in which "all our wisdom is unwillingness."

—John Robert Colombo