author
Robert Hillyer
1895–1961
A Pulitzer Prize–winning poet and longtime Harvard teacher, he wrote formal, musical verse at a time when modern poetry was rapidly changing. His career joined literary life, teaching, and public debate in a way that still makes him an interesting figure in 20th-century American letters.
1 Audiobook
The Five Books of Youth
by Robert Hillyer
About the author
Born in East Orange, New Jersey, in 1895, Robert Silliman Hillyer became known as an American poet, critic, and professor of English literature. He studied at Harvard, where he edited student literary publications, and later also studied at the University of Copenhagen.
Hillyer is best remembered for Collected Verse, which won the 1934 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He taught at Harvard for many years and was appointed Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory before later teaching at Kenyon College and the University of Delaware.
His poetry was known for its traditional use of meter and rhyme, and he became an outspoken critic of literary modernism. That made him a noticeable and sometimes controversial voice in mid-century American poetry, but it also helps explain why his work still stands out for readers interested in craft, form, and the literary arguments of his era.