Edwin Honig Explained

Edwin Honig
Birth Date:	3 September 1919
Birth Place:	Brooklyn, New York
Death Place:	Providence, Rhode Island
Nationality:	American
Occupation:	Author, professor
Known For:	Poetry, translations

Edwin Honig (September 3, 1919  - May 25, 2011)^[1] was an American poet, playwright, and translator.

Life

Honig was born in Brooklyn, New York. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1941 and, after Army service in Europe during World War II, a master’s in English from Wisconsin.He published ten books of poetry, eight books of translation, five books of criticism and fiction, three books of plays.

He taught at Harvard University and Brown University, where he started the Graduate Writing Program, and was Emeritus Professor. He was on the Advisory Board of the Christopher Isherwood Foundation.^[2]

His work appeared in AGNI and Nedge magazines.^{[3] [4]}

Professor Honig’s first wife, Charlotte, died in the early 1960s. His second marriage, to Margot Dennes, ended in divorce in the early 1980s.

Following an illness, cited by a family friend as complications from Alzheimer's disease, Honig died on May 25, 2011.^[5] Professor Honig's survivors include his sister, Lila Putnam, and his two adopted sons from his marriage to Ms. Dennes, Daniel (born 1965) and Jeremy (born 1967).^[6]

In 2012, filmmaker Alan Berliner completed a documentary feature film about Honig and Honig's loss of memory due to Alzheimer's titled, First Cousin Once Removed. Berliner's mother was Honig's first cousin. The film premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 9.^[7]

Awards

• 1948 Guggenheim Fellowship
• writer-in-residence Mishkenot Sha'ananim
• The National Endowment for the Arts
• The Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters
• 1986 he was knighted by the President of Portugal for his work in literary translation
• 1996 by the King of Spain^[8]
• 1968-1969 Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship
• Governor's Medal (Rhode Island)
• Golden Rose of the New England Poetry Club

Work

• Pacific Grove; Pinch-hitting; To Infinite Eternity; Turning Eighty; Up Sooner Than That; Elsewhere; On Moving On; Fountain. JACKET . 16 . March 2002 .

Poetry

• Book: The Moral Circus. Contemporary Poetry . Baltimore, MD. 1955 .
• Book: The Gazabos: Forty-one Poems. Clarke & Way . New York, NY. 1959 .
• Book: Survivals. October House . New York, NY. 1965 .
• Book: Spring Journal. registration. Wesleyan University Press . Middletown, CT. 1968 . 978-0-8195-2041-8 .
• Book: Four Springs. Swallow Press . Chicago, IL. 1972 .
• Book: Shake a Spear with Me, John Berryman: New Poems and a Play . Copper Beech Press . Providence, RI. 1974. 978-0-914278-02-3 .
• Book: At Sixes. Burning Deck Press. Providence, RI. 1974 .
• Book: Selected Poems, 1955-1976. Texas Center for Writers . Montrose, AL. 1979. 0-916092-08-9 .
• Book: Cow/lines . Copper Beach Press . 1982 . 9780914278375 . with illustrations by Jean Zaleski
• Book: Gifts of Light. Turkey Press . Isla Vista, CA. 1983. 978-0-918824-42-4 .
• Book: Interrupted Praise: New/Selected Poems. Scarecrow Press. Metuchen, NJ. 1983. 978-0-8108-1564-3.
• Book: The Imminence of Love: Poems 1962-1992. September 1992. Texas Center for Writers. 1993. 978-0-916092-16-0 .
• Book: Time and Again: Poems, 1940-1997. Xlibris . Philadelphia, PA. 2000. 978-0-7388-9520-8 .

Plays

• The Widow (verse play), first produced in San Francisco, CA, 1953.
• Calisto and Melibea (libretto; first produced in Davis, CA, 1979), Hellcoal Press (Providence, RI), 1972.
• Book: Ends of the World and Other Plays. Copper Beech Press . Providence, RI. 1983. 0-914278-36-3 .

Translations

• Book: Miguel de Cervantes. The Cave of Salamanca. Crysalis. 1960 .
• Book: Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Four Plays. Hill & Wang. 1961.
• Book: Miguel de Cervantes, Eight Interludes. New York, NY. 1964. New American Library. 0-460-87751-8 .
• Book: Four plays. Pedro Calderón de la Barca. Hill and Wang. 1961. 0-8131-1409-8.
• Book: Selected Poems of Fernando Pessoa. Swallow Press. Chicago, IL. 1971. 978-0-8040-0520-3.
• Book: Federico García Lorca. Divan and Other Writings. Copper Beech Press . Providence, RI. 1974. 978-0-914278-14-6 .
• Book: Lope de Vega. La Dorotea. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA. 1985. 978-0-674-50590-2 . (With A. S. Trueblood)
• Book: Fernando Pessoa. The Keeper of Sheep. registration. Sheep Meadow Press. Riverdale-on-Hudson, NY. 1986. 978-1-878818-45-4 .
• Book: The Poems of Fernando Pessoa. Ecco Press. New York, NY. 1986. 978-0-87286-342-2 .
• Book: Poems of Fernando Pessoa . registration. City Lights Books. 1998. 978-0-87286-342-2 . Edwin Honig, Susan M. Brown .
• Book: Fernando Pessoa: Always Astonished (selected prose). City Lights Books . San Francisco, CA. 1988. 978-0-87286-228-9 .
• Book: The Unending Lightning: The Selected Poems of Miguel Hernandez. Sheep Meadow Press . Riverdale-on-Hudson, NY. 1990. 978-0-935296-86-0 .
• Book: Federico García Lorca. Four Puppet Plays, Play without a Title, the Divan Poems, and Other Poems, Prose Poems, and Dramatic Pieces. registration. Sheep Meadow Press . Riverdale-on-Hudson, NY. 1990. 978-0-935296-94-5 .
• Book: Pedro Calderón de la Barca. Six Plays. Fordham University Press . New York, NY. 1993. 978-1-882763-05-4 .

Criticism

• Book: Conversations with Richard Wilbur . Richard Wilbur, William Butts. A Conversation with Richard Wilbur. registration . 162 . Edwin Honig. . University Press of Mississippi. 1990. 978-0-87805-425-1 .
• Book: The poet's other voice . University of Massachusetts Press. 1985. 978-0-87023-477-4 .
• Book: Dark Conceit: The Making of Allegory . Northwestern University Press . 1959 . 978-0-87451-222-9 .

External links

• "Edwin Honig (1919 -)", The Poetry Foundation
• The "Calisto and Melibea" of Edwin Honig, Joseph Snow, University of Georgia
• Edwin Honig's obituary
• Blog post on PBS.org on First Cousin Once Removed

Notes and References

1. News: Edwin Honig, a Poet, Professor and Translator, Dies at 91. The New York Times. June 4, 2011. Margalit Fox.
2. http://isherwoodfoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16&Itemid=27 Isherwoodfoundation.org
3. Web site: Bu.edu . 2009-06-03 . https://web.archive.org/web/20180903211341/http://www.bu.edu/agni/authors/E/Edwin-Honig.html . 2018-09-03 . dead .
4. Web site: Bu.edu . 2009-06-03 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160303184017/http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/mags/nedge/ . 2016-03-03 . dead .
5. Web site: Edwin Honig (1919–2011) . Joris . Pierre . June 5, 2011 . Nomadics . June 11, 2011.
6. News: Edwin Honig, a Poet, Professor and Translator, Dies at 91 . February 3, 2012 . The New York Times . Margalit . Fox . June 4, 2011.
7. http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2012/films/first-cousin-once-removed Filmlinc.com
8. http://www.epoetry.org/issues/issue1/alltext/rvgoul.htm Epoetry.org