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Rachel Hadas (born November 8, 1948) is an American poet, teacher, essayist, and translator. Her most recent essay collection is Piece by Piece: Selected Prose (Paul Dry Books, 2021),[1] and her most recent poetry collection is Ghost Guest (Ragged Sky Press, 2023).[2][3] Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Ingram Merrill Foundation Grants,[4] the O.B. Hardison Award from the Folger Shakespeare Library, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.[5]
The daughter of noted Columbia University classicist Moses Hadas and Latin teacher Elizabeth Chamberlayne Hadas, Hadas grew up in Morningside Heights, New York City. She received a baccalaureate at Radcliffe College in classics, a Master of Arts (1977) at Johns Hopkins University in poetry, and a doctorate at Princeton University in comparative literature (1982).[5]
Living in Greece after her undergraduate work at Radcliffe, Hadas became an intimate of poet James Merrill, a strong influence on her early work.[5][6] Her subject matter combines her roots in the classics with the intimately personal, with memory and elegy recurring themes throughout her work.[5] Her late husband George Edwards’s illness with early-onset dementia gave rise not only to her 2011 memoir Strange Relation but also to an involvement in the field of medical humanities.[7][8] During the height of the AIDS crisis, she led poetry workshops for those afflicted, and edited an anthology of poems produced there, Unending Dialogue: Poems from an AIDS Poetry Workshop (1993).[9]
Hadas is also a translator, specializing in Classical Greek and Latin, and has translated the works of Euripides and Nonnus.[10][11][12] Her translations of writers including Tibullus, Charles Baudelaire, and the Greek poet Konstantinos Karyotakis, were collected in Other Worlds Than This (1994).[13] Hadas currently serves as Original English Verse Editor of the journal Classical Outlook.
Hadas taught English at the Newark campus of Rutgers University from 1981 to 2023; in 2001 she was named Board of Governors Professor of English.[14] Hadas lives in New York City and Danville Vermont and is married to the visual artist Shalom Gorewitz, with whom she collaborates on poetry and video.[15][16][17] She was married to composer George Edwards until his death in 2011.[18] Hadas has a son, Jonathan Hadas Edwards (born 1984), an acupuncturist, herbalist, and writer.[19][17]
Poetry and Prose
- Collections
- Ghost Guest, Ragged Sky Press, 2023, ISBN 978-1-933974-52-1
- Pandemic Almanac, Ragged Sky Press, 2022, ISBN 978-1933974453
- Love and Dread, Measure Press, 2021, ISBN 978-1939574329
- Piece by Piece, Paul Dry Books, 2021, ISBN 9781589881556
- Poems for Camilla, Measure Press, 2018, ISBN 1939574250
- Questions in the Vestibule: Poems, Northwestern University Press, 2016, ISBN 978-0-8101-3317-4
- The golden road: poems. Evanston, Ill.: TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press. 2012. ISBN 9780810128590.
- Strange Relation, Paul Dry Books, 2011, ISBN 978-1-58988-061-0
- The Ache of Appetite, Copper Beech Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-914278-84-9
- River of Forgetfulness, David Robert Books, 2006, ISBN 978-1-933456-24-9; (WordTech Communications, 2006)
- Laws, University of Nebraska Press, 2004), ISBN 978-1-932023-13-8
- Merrill, Cavafy, poems, and dreams. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. 2000.
- Indelible. Wesleyan University Press. 2001. ISBN 978-0-8195-6440-5.
- Halfway Down the Hall. (Wesleyan University Press. 1998. ISBN 978-0-8195-2251-1.
- The Double Legacy: Reflections on a Pair of Deaths (Faber & Faber, 1995)
- The Empty Bed. Wesleyan University Press. 1995. ISBN 978-0-8195-1225-3.
- Mirrors of Astonishment (Rutgers University Press, 1992)
- Living in Time (Rutgers University Press, 1990)
- Pass It On, Princeton University Press, 1989, ISBN 978-0-691-01454-8
- A Son from Sleep. Wesleyan University Press. 1987. ISBN 978-0-8195-1140-9.
- Slow Transparency (Wesleyan University Press, 1983)
- Chapbooks
- Starting from Troy (David R. Godine, 1975)
- "Two Poems" (Dim Gray Bar Press, 2000)
Translations
- Tales of Dionysus, University of Michigan Press, 2022 ISBN 9780472038961
- The Iphigenia Plays of Euripides, Northwestern University Press 2018, ISBN 9780810137233
- Other Worlds Than This, Rutgers University Press, 1994
Anthologies edited
- The Waiting Room Reader II, CavanKerry Press, 2013, ISBN 978-1-933880-34-1
- The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present (W.W. Norton, 2010; Eds., Peter Constantine, Rachel Hadas, Edmund Keeley, Karen Van Dyck)
- Unending Dialogue: Voices from an AIDS Poetry Workshop (Ed. with Charles Barber, Faber & Faber, 1991)
Essay collections
- Classics: Essays (Textos Books, 2007)
- Merrill, Cavafy, Poems, and Dreams (University of Michigan Press, 2000)
- Form, Cycle, Infinity: Landscape Imagery in the Poetry of Robert Frost & George Seferis. Bucknell University Press. 1985. ISBN 978-0-8387-5073-5.
Memoirs
- Strange Relation: A Memoir of Marriage, Dementia, and Poetry. Paul Dry Books. 2011. ISBN 978-1-58988-061-0.
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