Bink Noll: The House and Other Poems

Bink Noll was born in Orange, New Jersey, on April 15, 1927. He graduated from Princeton University in 1948, after serving in the Merchant Marine from August 1945 to January 1947. He earned his MA degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1950 and his PhD in English Literature from the University of Colorado in 1956. His dissertation focused on the lyrical achievement of Abraham Cowley. After teaching at Beloit College in 1953-54, he taught for six years on the English faculty at Dartmouth College. In 1960-61 he lectured on American language and literature at Zaragoza, Spain, on a Fulbright Fellowship. He returned to Beloit College in 1961 and was promoted to full professor in 1969. He received a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant in 1974. Noll published three volumes of poetry. His first book, The Center of the Circle was published by Harcourt, Brace & World in 1962. Already his poetry had appeared in leading periodicals, including The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, and The Nation. During the following decade his career was interrupted by illness. His third book, The House, appeared in 1984. It is a mature performance by an accomplished poet. In The House the formality of his earlier style is softened, but the verse is still informed by a subtle awareness of sound. The poems explore the triumphs and tragedies of domestic life.A second volume of verse, The Feast, followed in 1967.

"Having shed even his most unwanted associations, Noll is ripe for re-evaluation, and there is much to admire in this generously portioned Selected Poems ... the later poems are mature, well-made studies of domesticity, divorce and self-aware privilege. The Lowellesque 'Emptying the Birthplace' has brittle mournfulness, and ends movingly. Though he wrote well about contentment, middle-aged drinking sessions and the comfort of married routine, Noll never allowed himself to slip into cosiness - largely thanks to an always perceptible psychic darkness ... Never fashionable, as yet, he deserves to fare better this time around." - Declan Ryan, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT