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Henry Rago 1915-1969
Poet and Professor
Henry Rago was a poet and editor of Poetry Magazine for 14 years from
1955-1969. He was also a Professor of Theology and Literature at
the University of Chicago, jointly in the Divinity School and in the
New Collegiate Division, since 1967. His seminars and research
explored the relations between poetry and religion, among other
interdisciplinary concerns. He was also Co-chairman of the new
program in the History and Philosophy of Religion in the New Collegiate
Division.
He. died at age 53 on May 26, 1969 in Chicago. Rago had, just
that year, resigned his editorship at Poetry to take a year of
lecturing and writing on a grant from the Ford Foundation to be
followed by a full time position at the University of Chicago. He was
at work on a book titled �The Vocation of Poetry.�
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His poems were widely published in magazines and newspapers
during his
lifetime, beginning at age 16 in Poetry Magazine. His book of
poems, A Sky of Late Summer, was published by Macmillan in
1963.
Stanley
Kunitz wrote: "Henry Rago's
special gift permits him to strike for the absolute as an act of
meditation, and yet to remain wakeful for the surprises of
poetry. The
best of his poems, of which "The Knowledge of Light" is representative,
reach an astonishing depth of simplicity. They achieve a kind of
claritas, the splendor of the true."
Hayden Carruth writes:
These
are rare and beautiful poems by an
exceedingly rare poet. I mean that Henry Rago, who began with a
surpassing lyrical talent and a mind as quick as a fish, has stood off
the blandishments of his own abilities; which is a more particular way
of saying that he has resisted the temptations of poetry. His
poems
are natural, sure and right, without one surrender to the siren of
virtuosity. Hence they have a grace and purity, which come only
from
true things, and a trueness, which comes only to, tempered things. In
these splendid, almost unbelievable poems, Rago brings back the
crystalline, Arielesque quality that poets forty years ago considered
indispensable compression without density, harmony without
artifice.
I find these poems continually rewarding.
He has recorded poems
for the
archives of the Library of Congress and
for the Lamont Library at Harvard among the many places throughout the
world he lectured on literature and philosophy, and read his poems.
Henry Rago was married
to the
painter, Juliet Rago, and is father to
Maria Christina, Maria Carmela, Anthony Pascal, and Maria Martha.
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