Ernest Hilbert
Encyclopedia
Ernest Hilbert is an American poet
Poetry of the United States
American poetry, the poetry of the United States, arose first as efforts by colonists to add their voices to English poetry in the 17th century, well before the constitutional unification of the thirteen colonies...

, critic, and editor born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

 in 1970.

Biography

Hilbert graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in English Literature from Rutgers University in 1993. He also received a Master's Degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...

 (1994) and Doctorate
Doctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...

 (2000) in English Literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....

 from St Catherine's College, Oxford
St Catherine's College, Oxford
St Catherine's College, often called Catz, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its motto is Nova et Vetera...

. His doctoral dissertation was entitled "Dark Earth, Dark Heavens: British Apocalyptic Writing in the First World War and its Aftermath." While a student there, he founded the short-lived magazine Oxford Quarterly (1995–1997), which included among its advisory editors Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
Dame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious...

, Marjorie Perloff, and Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...

, and included contributors such as David Mamet
David Mamet
David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar...

, Charles Wright, Charles Simic, W.D. Snodgrass, Galway Kinnell, Caroline Kizer, Donald Justice, Philip Levine, John Hollander, Christopher Middleton, Andrew Motion, Michael Hamburger, Marilyn Hacker, Charles Tomlinson, Anthony Hecht, Adrienne Rich, Les Murray, Louise Gluck, Mark Strand
Mark Strand
Mark Strand is an American poet, essayist, and translator. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1990. Since 2005, he has been a professor of English at Columbia University.- Biography :...

, and Jorie Graham
Jorie Graham
Jorie Graham is an American poet. The U.S. Poetry Foundation suggests "She is perhaps the most celebrated poet of the American post-war generation". She replaced poet Seamus Heaney as Boylston Professor at Harvard, becoming the first woman to be appointed to this position...

.

After moving from Oxford to Manhattan, he worked as an editor for the punk and beatnik magazine Long Shot for one year before departing over creative differences. He then served as the poetry editor for Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...

’s online magazine Bold Type for several years (2000–2004) and also edited the print and online magazine nowCulture (2000–2005). While at Bold Type, he interviewed Kevin Young, Cynthia Zarin, Kenneth Koch, and Mark Strand. As books and literary editor for nowCulture.com (issued as two print annuals, NC1 and NC2), Hilbert published up-and-coming authors from his own generation, including Matthea Harvey, Timothy Liu, Matthew Zapruder, Wells Tower, and Joshua Beckman. He also interviewed a number of authors for the magazine, including Gustaf Sobin, Alexandar Hemon, Matthew Kneale, and Joe Wenderoth.

In early 2003, he hosted an evening of readings at the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...

 in New York City, entitled "The Future Knows Everything: New American Writing," which featured the poets Rebecca Wolff
Rebecca Wolff
Rebecca Wolff is a poet, fiction writer, and the editor and creator of both Fence Magazine and Fence Books.-Life:Wolff received her MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop, where she was an assistant editor of the Iowa Review....

 and Geoffrey Nutter
Geoffrey Nutter
Geoffrey Nutter is an American poet, born in Sacramento and based in New York. He is the author of three collections of poetry, including A Summer Evening , Water's Leaves & Other Poems , and Christopher Sunset...

 and the novelists Liz Brown
Liz Brown
Elizabeth Brown may refer to:* Elizabeth Martha Brown , last woman to be hanged in public in Dorset, England* Elizabeth Mills Brown , American architectural historian, preservationist, and civic leader* Elizabeth A. R...

 and Suzanne Wise.

Hilbert works as an antiquarian
Antiquarian
An antiquarian or antiquary is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient objects of art or science, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives and manuscripts...

 book dealer with the firm Bauman Rare Books, and lives in Philadelphia with his wife, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

. Hilbert is a member of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics
Association of Literary Scholars and Critics
The Association of Literary Scholars, Critics and Writers was organized in 1994 as the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics by a group of over 400 scholars troubled by what they saw as an over reliance on post-modern theory in the academy...

, the Academy of American Poets, the Royal Society of Literature (Somerset House, Strand, London), the Philobiblon Club, and a voting member of the National Book Critics Circle.

Poetry

Hilbert's poetry has appeared in The New Republic, American Poet, The New Criterion, American Poetry Review, 32 Poems, Yale Review, Boston Review, LIT, Georgetown Review, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Harvard Review, The London Magazine, Poetry East, McSweeney’s, The American Scholar, Verse, Measure, Volt, and Fence. He has written literary criticism
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...

 and book reviews for several publications, including Contemporary Poetry Review, the now-defunct New York Sun, Scribner’s American Writers series, and the Academy of American Poets
Academy of American Poets
The Academy of American Poets is a non-profit organization dedicated to the art of poetry. The Academy was incorporated as a "membership corporation" in New York State in 1934...

. On January 16, 2009, he was interviewed by Curtis Fox about the poetry of W.D. Snodgrass for the Poetry Foundation podcast series "Poetry Off the Shelf." The episode was called "People Just Don't Read This Way Anymore."

In recent years he has composed in his own sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...

 form sardonically described by Daniel Nester
Daniel Nester
Daniel Murlin Nester , known as Daniel Nester, is a writer, editor, and poet.-Biography:...

 as the “Hilbertian” sonnet. While retaining the 14 lines of the traditional English sonnet, it substitutes the rhyme scheme ABCABC DEFDEF GG, to create two sestet
Sestet
A sestet is the name given to the second division of an Italian sonnet , which must consist of an octave, of eight lines, succeeded by a sestet, of six lines. The first documented user of this poetical form was the Italian poet, Petrarch. In the usual course the rhymes are arranged abc abc, but...

s and a final couplet
Couplet
A couplet is a pair of lines of meter in poetry. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter.While traditionally couplets rhyme, not all do. A poem may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter are called heroic...

. The iambic pentameter meter of the English sonnet is replaced by "a decasyllabic line that allows for the roughed-up prose rhythms of speech," according to poet and MacArthur Foundation Fellow A.E. Stallings, who goes on to explain that Hilbert's "sonnets tend to conclude in true iambic pentameter, the tradition that haunts rather than dominates these poems." Other poets have written in the form, including Amy Lemon, the Irish poet Justin Quinn, whose "The Snow Turns Down the Sound on Everything" appeared in his book The Months, Lorna Blake, whose sonnet "Endangered Species" appeared in Waccamau, Bill Coyle, whose sonnet "Hindsight" appeared in The New Criterion, and David Yezzi, whose sonnet "Varnishing Days" appeared in the PN Review. Hilbert's sonnet "Prophetic Outlook," which appeared in The American Poetry Review, was taught by Molly Peacock in her course "The 21st-Century Sonnet" at the New School in New York City in December 2008. His poems have also been taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Sarah Lawrence, Drexel University, Columbia University, and the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. Several of his sonnets were featured by David Lehman on the Best American Poetry website. His poem "Ashore," which appeared in the Yale Review early in 2009, was reprinted by the Academy of American Poets for their August 2009 "Shark Week" feature.http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20902 "Domestic Situation," "AAA Vacation Guide," and "Prophetic Outlook" are reprinted by the Poetry Foundation.

His unpublished collection Cathedral Building, which combines a wide variety of styles and poetic approaches, has been a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry (under the title Removal of the Body), the Barrow Street
Barrow Street
Barrow Street may refer to:* Barrow Street , an arts area in the West Village.* Barrow Street, Dublin, home of Ireland's National Performing Arts School, Google Europe, and rock band U2's The Factory studio complex, among many other high-profile tenants* Barrow Street, Wiltshire, a village in the...

 Press Book Contest, the Yale Younger Poets Prize, and the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets
Academy of American Poets
The Academy of American Poets is a non-profit organization dedicated to the art of poetry. The Academy was incorporated as a "membership corporation" in New York State in 1934...

. It also received an honorable mention for the Dorset Prize.

Nine poems from Sixty Sonnets (2009) and its companion volume All of You on the Good Earth (2013) appeared in the Swallow Anthology of New American Poets (Ohio University Press, 2009). His poem "Domestic Situation" appears in two Penguin anthologies, Poetry: A Pocket Anthology (2011) and Literature: A Pocket Anthology (2011).

In 2009, the Tollund Group, a Nordic translation firm, sponsored its first annual poetry translation prize. Two translations of Hilbert's poems were awarded cash prizes. The winner of the best Danish translation was Mette Bollerup Doyle, who translated Hilbert's "Outsider Art" ("Outsiderens kunst"). The winner for Norwegian translation was Marit Ombudstvedt of Vestby in Norway, who translated "Love Songs" (Kjærlighetssanger"). The judges failed to select a winner in the category of Swedish language.

He has written jacket recommendations for other authors under the pseudonym Vladimir Slender-Hedge.
Hilbert's first collection, Sixty Sonnets, was issued by Red Hen Press in early 2009
2009 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* January 5 – The Turkish government announces it will posthumously restore the citizenship it had stripped from influential poet Nazim Hikmet, a Marxist who died in 1963 as an exile in the Soviet...

. According to the publisher, "the collection is calculated to reflect the sixty minutes in an hour of heightened imaginative contemplation. It contains memories of violence, historical episodes, humorous reflections, quiet despair, violent discord, public outrage, and private nightmares. A cast of fugitive characters share their desperate lives—failed novelists, forgotten literary critics, puzzled historians, armed robbers, jobless alcoholics, exasperated girlfriends, high school dropouts, drowned children, and defeated boxers. These characters populate love poems ('My love, we know how species run extinct'), satires ('The way of the human variety, / Not even happy just being happy'), elegies ('The cold edge of the world closed on you, kissed / You shut'), and songs of sorrow ('Seasons start slowly. They end that way too'). The original rhyme scheme devised for this sequence—ABCABCDEFDEFGG—allows the author to dust off of the Italian 'little song' and Americanize the Elizabethan love poem for the twenty-first century. Speaking at times in propria persona ('We'll head out, you and me, have a pint'), in the voices of both male and female characters ('I'm sorry I left you that day at MoMA
Moma
Moma may refer to:* Moma , an owlet moth genus* Moma Airport, a Russian public airport* Moma District, Nampula, Mozambique* Moma River, a right tributary of the Indigirka River* Google Moma, the Google corporate intranet...

'), and across historical gulfs ('Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....

 and Charlemagne
Charlemagne
Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800...

, Marie Curie
Marie Curie
Marie Skłodowska-Curie was a physicist and chemist famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first person honored with two Nobel Prizes—in physics and chemistry...

, Al Capone
Al Capone
Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone was an American gangster who led a Prohibition-era crime syndicate. The Chicago Outfit, which subsequently became known as the "Capones", was dedicated to smuggling and bootlegging liquor, and other illegal activities such as prostitution, in Chicago from the early...

'), Sixty Sonnets marshals both trivia and tragedy to tell stories of modern America, at last achieving a hard-won sense of careful optimism, observing 'the last, noble pull of old ways restored, / Valued and unwanted, admired and ignored.'"

Hilbert's own Nemean Lion Press issued a hand-sewn, signed-limited edition of Fletching of Hackles, a collaborative effort by Hilbert and David Yezzi. The book, designed by Jennifer Mercer and bound by Melissa Moffa, consists of dueling limericks and clerihews in which Hilbert and Yezzi challenge and insult each other. It is limited to 24 numbered copies with four authors' and artists' proofs, all signed by Hilbert, Yezzi, Mercer, and Moffa. The series sold out the week it was issued, in the second month of June, 2009, and is currently unobtainable. The second title from the press was 3 X 5 [Three by David Yezzi, Five by Ernest Hilbert] a small tête-bêche folio, hand-sewn issued in 2010, in Prussian-blue faux-snakeskin binding with cutaway title windows, stiff eggshell-blue wrappers, limited to 12 copies signed by designer, bookmaker, and both authors, only eight for sale. It sold out by subscription two weeks before publication.

In November 2009 LATR Editions in New York published Hilbert's Aim Your Arrows at the Sun, a chapbook of primarily free-verse poems, limited to 250 copies, featuring hand-sewn covers designed and printed by Woodside Press and a foreword by critic Adam Kirsch.

Hilbert's second sequence of sixty sonnets, All of You on the Good Earth, is scheduled for publication by Red Hen Press in 2013.

Books

  • Sixty Sonnets (Red Hen Press, 2009), ISBN 1597093610, poetry
  • Aim Your Arrows at the Sun (LATR Editions, New York, 2009), hand-sewn, letterpress chapbook
  • A Fletching of Hackles, Fresh Verse by Ernest Hilbert and David Yezzi (Nemean Lion Press, 2009), signed-limited art book
  • "Such Root Satisfaction," 3 X 5 [Three by David Yezzi, Five by Ernest Hilbert] (Nemean Lion Press, 2010), signed-limited art book

Anthology Appearances

  • Gamers: Writers, Artists, and Programmers on the Pleasures of Pixels, ed. Shanna Compton (Soft Skull Press, 2004), ISBN 1932360573
  • Poem, Revised: 54 Poems, Revisions, Discussions, ed. Robert Hartwell Fiske (Marion Street Press, 2008), ISBN 1933338253
  • Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, ed. David Yezzi (University of Ohio Press, 2009), ISBN 0804011214
  • Two Weeks: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, ed. Ash Bowen and Johnathon Williams (Line Break Press, 2011)
  • Poetry: A Pocket Anthology, ed. R.S Gwynn (Penguin, 2011), ISBN 9780558752118
  • Literature: A Pocket Anthology, ed. R.S Gwynn (Penguin, 2011), ISBN 9780205032198

Selected Essays and Reviews


Selected Interviews


Music

Hilbert has composed libretti for Daniel Felsenfeld
Daniel Felsenfeld
Daniel Felsenfeld is a composer of contemporary classical music and a writer.-Biography:Felsenfeld was born in Washington, D.C., raised primarily in Southern California and currently resides in Brooklyn with his wife, writer Elizabeth Isadora Gold...

 for the following works:
  • Summer and All it Brings, solo cantata
    Cantata
    A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....

    , chamber arrangement (score for soprano
    Soprano
    A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

    , spoken male voice, cello
    Cello
    The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

    , and harpsichord
    Harpsichord
    A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...

    ); performed August 19, 20, 21, 2002, Bowery Poetry Club, New York City.
  • "Fortune Does Not Hide" (aria) performed live on WNYC, public radio, April 24, 2004
  • The Last of Manhattan, five-act opera, The Kitchen, Chelsea NYC, nine singers and ensemble accompaniment, two consecutive shows, May 11, 2004, each followed by a panel featuring Hilbert and Felsenfeld, moderated by Mark Adamo.
  • Summer and All it Brings, full orchestral arrangement, performed by the New York City Opera at Symphony Space in Manhattan, VOX: Showcasing American Composers, May 26, 2004
  • "Of all those who held it would come," final section of The Bridge, song cycle for piano and soprano; performed at Grace Episcopal Church, May 18, 2003
  • In April, 2008, Hilbert signed a deal to record with Philadelphia record label Pub Can Records in Widget Studios. The CD, produced by David Young, will include recordings of Hilbert and others reading from his book Sixty Sonnets, backed by several musicians, including a drummer, bassist, and guitarist.

  • April 30, 2009, Summer and All it Brings was performed as part of the PEN American Center "[Elaborations/Collaborations]http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/3216/prmID/1502" festival at Proshansky Auditorium, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue. Author Wesley Stace, also known by his stage name John Wesley Harding, performed the spoken male voice.

  • Friday, May 8th, 2009, Hilbert appeared on stage as a special guest with the rockabilly-punk band Mercury Radio Theater at the Khyber Pass rock club in Philadelphia.

  • June 21st, 2009, "Of All Those Who Held it Would Come" was performed as part of the [Make Music New York] series.

External links

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