Josephine Jacobsen

Josephine Jacobsen
Born Josephine Winder Boylan
(1908-08-19)August 19, 1908
Coburg, Ontario, Canada
Died 9 July 2003(2003-07-09) (aged 94)
Cockneyville, Maryland, USA
Nationality American
Education Self-educated and private tutors
Alma mater Roland Park Country School in Baltimore
Genres Poetry, short stories, reviews
Notable works In the Crevice of Time: New and Collected Poems (1995) won the Poets' Prize.[1]
Notable awards Received multiple grants, prizes, and awards.[2]
Robert Frost Medal (1997)
Years active Eight decades[3]
Spouse Eric Jacobsen, 63 years
Children Erlend Jacobsen

Josephine Jacobsen (19 August 1908 – 9 July 2003) was an American poet, short story writer, essayist, and critic. She was appointed the twenty-first Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1971.[4] In 1997, she received the Poetry Society of America’s highest award, the Robert Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry.

Birth

Josephine Jacobsen, in full Josephine Winder Jacobsen, née Josephine Winder Boylan was born August 19, 1908 in Coburg, Ontario, Canada.[5] Her birth was “premature and dramatic”. Her American parents were vacationing in Canada and anticipated her arrival several months later. The baby Jacobsen weighed only two-and-a-half pounds and was not expected to survive. However, her mother, Octavia Winder Boylan, was determined that she would survive. At age 94, recalling her birth, Jacobsen reflected, "I must have been a fierce particle."[6] Jacobsen was taken to New York at age three months.[7]

Jacobsen’s father, a doctor and amateur Egyptologist, died when she was five.[8] Her brother suffered a nervous breakdown; her mother suffered bouts of manic depression. Jacobsen found solace in reading the poetry of Robert W. Service and Rudyard Kipling and they inspired her to begin writing poetry.[9]

Education

After her father's death, Josephine and her mother traveled constantly. This prevented her from going to school. They did not settle in one place long enough for Josephine to go to school. Taught by private tutors, she became a voracious reader.[10]

At age fourteen, Jacobsen moved to Maryland with her mother and lived there until her death. There she was again educated by private tutors at Roland Park Country School in Baltimore, graduating in 1926.[11]
[12]

Jacobsen’s mother never went to college, but like her daughter she was a “tremendous reader”.[13] Thus, it followed that when her daughter’s headmistress suggested that Jacobsen go to college, her mother disagreed, so her daughter never attended college. Instead, Jacobsen “wrote, travelled, and acted with the Vagabond Players (a well-known Baltimore theatre troupe) until 1932 when she married”. Her husband was Eric Jacobsen, a tea importer. They were “happily” married for 63 years until he died in 1995.[14]

Literary career

Jacobsen's literary career began when her first poem was published in the children's St. Nicholas Magazine when she was 11 years old.[15] Jacobsen described seeing her poem in print in St. Nicholas as the “most amazing feeling” and “a special occasion”. She said that she thought, “I’m a professional poet at the age of 11.”[16] In her late teens, Jacobsen started publishing in the Junior League magazine Connected.[17]

Jacobsen’s first poetry collection, Let Each Man Remember, was published in 1940.[18] However, she did not gain widespread recognition until her 60's.[19] For Jacobsen, it was “the writing itself, not prizes or possible honors, that mattered the most”.[20] She also said that the “greatest thing” she can feel about one of her poems is that it has " helped another human being in a really bad time”.[21]

Being a fan of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team, Jacobsen wrote poems on her love of baseball.[22]

Short stories and nonfiction

Jacobsen also wrote short stories, including the collections A Walk with Raschid and Other Stories (1978), On the Island (1989), and What Goes Without Saying (1996).[23]

Jacobsen’s nonfiction writing includes reviews, lectures and essays for such publications as Commonweal, The Nation, and The Washington Post. In the late 1970s, she contributed op-ed and travel essays to the Baltimore Sun.[24]

Much of Jacobsen’s best work was done in her sixties, seventies, and eighties. Her friend William Morris Meredith, Jr. told her she was "post-cocious."[25]

Honors and praise

In 1971, L. Quincy Mumford, the librarian of Congress, named her consultant in poetry for 1971-1973 and as honorary consultant in American letters from 1973 to 1979.[26]

Beginning in 1973, Jacobsen received multiple grants, prizes, and awards.[27]

Between 1978 and 1979, Jacobsen was Vice President of the Poetry Society of America.[29] From 1979 to 1983, she was a member of both the literature panel for the National Endowment for the Arts and of the poetry committee of the Folger Library.[30] In 1984, Jacobsen was lecturer for the American Writers Program annual meeting in Savannah, GA.[31]

In 1993, Jacobsen received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.[32] In 1994 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[33]

In 1997, Jacobsen was awarded the Poets' Prize for her In the Crevice of Time: New and Collected Poems (1995).[34] That same year, she received the Poetry Society of America’s highest award, the Robert Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry. In part, “the medal honored her legendary generosity in helping younger, struggling poets get their work published, a quality considered rare in her profession.”[35]

Jacobsen received honorary Doctorates of Humane Letters from Goucher College, Notre Dame of Maryland University, Towson University, and Johns Hopkins University.[36]

Praise
Joseph Brodsky praised Jacobsen’s poetry for its "reserve, stoic timbre, and its high precision".[37] She was known for “elegant, concise phrasing on a wide range of topics and in varied forms” in which she “plumbed questions of identity, interrelatedness and isolation”.[38]

Julie Miller commented that Jacobsen's poetry "rejoices in words for their own sake, not for the sake of the objects or ideas to which they refer. Words themselves become metaphors for the inexplicable tangle of body and spirit'. . . . Through words we are identified. They allow us to recognize and name the human experience."[39]

William Jay Smith of The New York Times Book Review praised Jacobsen's "observant eye and varied interest” and her “broad range of skillfully handled stanza forms."[40]

Joyce Carol Oates also of The New York Times Book Review compared Jacobsen with John Crowe Ransom, Emily Dickinson, and Elizabeth Bishop, all of whose poetry is "fastidiously imagined, brilliantly pared back, miniature narrative that always yields up a small shock of wonder."[41]

A Washington Post Book World review of her short stories wrote that Jacobsen is certain of "what is and is not important, and why. These stories, consequently, have a bracing rigor about them, a keen independence, and the clean ring of truth."[42]

Death

Jacobsen’s husband Eric died suddenly in December 1995 (they had been married for 63 years). They had been living in an apartment at Broadmead, a Retirement community in Cockeysville, MD outside Baltimore.[43] After her husband’s death and after several falls, Josephine moved from their apartment to assisted living at Broadmead.[44]

Jacobsen died on July 9, 2003 at Broadmead. She was 94.[45] She was survived by a son, Erlend, of Plainfield, VT, five grandchildren, and a great-grandson.[46]

A memorial Mass was offered for Jacobsen on September 4, 2003 at the Marikle Chapel of the Annunciation at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. She had been a “longtime benefactor”. [47]

Works

Jacobsen’s works are here divided into five groups.
1. Books other than collections of her poems and short stories
2. Collections of her poems and short stories, selected by Jacobsen
3. Anthologies that include Jacobsen’s poems, short stories, or other writings
4. Media
5. Lectures

Notations about some works are taken from WorldCat.

1. Books other than collections of her poems and short stories

2. Collections of her poems and short stories, selected by Jacobsen

This section is divided into 2.1 Poems and 2.2 Short stories.

2.1 Poems

“176 new and previously published poems.”

2.2 Short stories

“brings together thirty of her previously published stories.”

3. Anthologies that include Jacobsen’s poems, short stories, or other writings

includes Jacobsen’s “On the Island”
includes Jacobsen’s “On the Island”
"A superb collection of short stories by twentieth-century American poets...far superior...to practically everything being done in fiction today."--Kirkus Reviews
includes Jacobsen’s “A Walk With Raschid”
includes Jacobsen’s short story “On the Island”
includes Jacobsen’s “The Mango Community”
includes Jacobsen’s short story “The Glen”
includes Jacobsen’s short story “Jack Frost”
includes Jaccobsen’s poem “The Limbo Dancer”
includes Jacobsen’s “The Woods”
includes Jacobsen’s “The Pier-Glass”
“A rich assortment of the writings of rediscovered octogenarian poet Josephine Jacobsen”
includes Jacobsen’s “Last Will and Testament”
includes Jacobsen’s “Reverie on Memory”
includes Jacobsen’s “On the Island”
includes Jacobsen’s “You Can Take It With You”
includes Jacobsen’s “Fiddler crab”

4. Media

5. Lectures

Jacobsen contributed “From Anne to Marianne: Some Women in American Poetry”

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ “Biography of Josephine Jacobsen.” Accessed May 8, 2015.
  2. ↑ John Wheatcroft, Our Other Voices: Nine Poets Speaking (Bucknell University Press, 1991), 103.
  3. ↑ Maryland Women Hall of Fame.
  4. ↑ Library of Congress.
  5. ↑ "Josephine Jacobsen". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016. Web.
  6. ↑ “Elizabeth Spires on Josephine Jacobsen” (Poetry Society). Accessed April 18, 2016.
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Saxon, “Josephine Jacobsen, 94, Former Poet Laureate,” New York Times, July 12, 2003. Accessed January 18, 2016.
  8. ↑ “Elizabeth Spires on Josephine Jacobsen” (Poetry Society). Accessed April 18, 2016.
  9. ↑ “Josephine Jacobsen, 1908-2003". Accessed January 6, 2016.
  10. ↑ “Elizabeth Spires on Josephine Jacobsen” (Poetry Society). Accessed April 18, 2016.
  11. ↑ “Josephine Jacobsen, 1908-2003". Accessed March 9, 2016.
  12. ↑ Wolfgang Saxon, “Josephine Jacobsen, 94, Former Poet Laureate,” New York Times, July 12, 2003. Accessed January 18, 2016.
  13. ↑ John Wheatcroft, Our Other Voices: Nine Poets Speaking (Bucknell University Press, 1991), 109.
  14. ↑ “Elizabeth Spires on Josephine Jacobsen” (Poetry Society). Accessed April 18, 2016.
    Benjamin Ivry, “An Appreciation; Josephine Jacobsen's Legacy: The Physical Thrill of Poetry” (New York Times, July 19, 2003. Accessed February 18, 2016.
  15. ↑ "Josephine Jacobsen". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016. Web.
  16. ↑ Grace Cavalieri, “Josephine Jacobsen.” Accessed March 20, 2016.
  17. ↑ Connected.
    John Wheatcroft, Our Other Voices: Nine Poets Speaking (Bucknell University Press, 1991), 109.
  18. ↑ Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016. Web.
  19. ↑ Benjamin Ivry, “An Appreciation; Josephine Jacobsen's Legacy: The Physical Thrill of Poetry” (New York Times, July 19, 2003. Accessed February 18, 2016.
  20. ↑ “Elizabeth Spires on Josephine Jacobsen” (Poetry Society). Accessed April 18, 2016.
  21. ↑ Grace Cavalieri, “Josephine Jacobsen.” Accessed March 20, 2016.
  22. ↑ “Biography of Josephine Jacobsen” Accessed May 8, 2015.
  23. ↑ Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016. Web.
  24. ↑ Josephine Jacobsen (1908 - 2003).
  25. ↑ “Elizabeth Spires on Josephine Jacobsen” (Poetry Society). Accessed April 18, 2016.
  26. ↑ “Biography of Josephine Jacobsen”Accessed May 8, 2015.
    Wolfgang Saxon, “Josephine Jacobsen, 94, Former Poet Laureate,” New York Times, July 12, 2003. Accessed January 18, 2016.
  27. ↑ John Wheatcroft, Our Other Voices: Nine Poets Speaking (Bucknell University Press, 1991), 103.
  28. ↑ John Wheatcroft, Our Other Voices: Nine Poets Speaking (Bucknell University Press, 1991), 103.
  29. ↑ “Josephine Jacobsen.” Accessed April 18, 2016.
  30. ↑ “Josephine Jacobsen.” Accessed April 18, 2016.
  31. ↑ Poetry Foundation, “Josephine Jacobsen 1908–2003.” Accessed April 18, 2016.
  32. ↑ Wolfgang Saxon, “Josephine Jacobsen, 94, Former Poet Laureate,” New York Times, July 12, 2003. Accessed January 18, 2016.
  33. ↑ Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016. Web.
  34. ↑ “Biography of Josephine Jacobsen.” Accessed May 8, 2015.
  35. ↑ Wolfgang Saxon, “Josephine Jacobsen, 94, Former Poet Laureate,” New York Times, July 12, 2003. Accessed January 18, 2016.
  36. ↑ “Josephine Jacobsen.” Accessed April 18, 2016.
  37. ↑ “Biography of Josephine Jacobsen” Accessed May 8, 2015.
  38. ↑ Wolfgang Saxon, “Josephine Jacobsen, 94, Former Poet Laureate,” New York Times, July 12, 2003. Accessed January 18, 2016.
  39. ↑ Poetry Foundation, “Josephine Jacobsen 1908–2003." Accessed April 18, 2016.
  40. ↑ Poetry Foundation, “Josephine Jacobsen 1908–2003." Accessed April 18, 2016.
  41. ↑ Poetry Foundation, “Josephine Jacobsen 1908–2003." Accessed April 18, 2016.
  42. ↑ Poetry Foundation, “Josephine Jacobsen 1908–2003." Accessed April 18, 2016.
  43. ↑ Broadmead.
  44. ↑ “Elizabeth Spires on Josephine Jacobsen” (Poetry Society). Accessed April 18, 2016.
  45. ↑ Memorial Mass, September 4, 2003.
  46. ↑ Wolfgang Saxon, “Josephine Jacobsen, 94, Former Poet Laureate,” New York Times, July 12, 2003. Accessed January 18, 2016.
  47. ↑ Memorial Mass, September 4, 2003.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 7/22/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.