Babette Deutsch

1895–1982

Photo courtesy of New Directions

Poet, novelist, editor, and critic Babette Deutsch was born and lived much of her life in New York City. She began to publish poems in journals such as the New Republic while a student at Barnard College, where she earned a BA. Two years after her graduation, she published her first poetry collection, Banners (1919).

Aligned with the Imagist movement, Deutsch typically composed compact, lyrical pieces using crisp visual imagery. Many of her poems are ekphrastic responses to paintings or other pieces of visual art. Deutsch is the author of 10 collections of poetry, two of which are self-selected volumes of her collected work: Collected Poems 1919–1962 (1963) and The Collected Poems of Babette Deutsch (1969).

Deutsch also published four novels, six volumes of children’s literature, four books of prose on poetry, and numerous translations, and edited Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1967). With her husband, Avraham Yarmolinsky, Deutsch translated Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin and Alexander Blok’s The Twelve, edited several anthologies of Russian and German poetry, and compiled two story collections for children.

Deutsch taught at the New School for Social Research and Columbia University, where she also received an honorary doctorate.

Poems by Babette Deutsch

Bibliography

POETRY

Banners, Doran, 1919.
Honey Out of the Rock, Appleton, 1925.
Fire for the Night, Cape & Smith, 1930.
Epistle to Prometheus, Cape & Smith, 1931.
One Part Love, Oxford University Press, 1939.
Take Them, Stranger, Henry Holt, 1944.
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Dutton, 1954.
Coming of Age: New and Selected Poems, Indiana University Press, 1959.
Collected Poems: 1919-1962, Indiana University Press, 1963.
The Collected Poems of Babette Deutsch, Doubleday, 1969.

FICTION

A Brittle Heaven, Greenberg, 1926.
In Such a Night, John Day, 1927.
Mask of Silenus: A Novel about Socrates, Simon & Schuster, 1933.
Rogue's Legacy: A Novel about Francois Villon, Coward, 1942.

NONFICTION

Potable Gold: Some Notes on Poetry and This Age, Norton, 1929.
This Modern Poetry, Norton, 1935, reprinted, Kraus Reprint, 1969.
Poetry in Our Time, Henry Holt, 1952, revised and enlarged edition published as Poetry in Our Time: A Critical Survey of Poetry in the English-Speaking World, 1900-1960, Doubleday, 1963.
Poetry Handbook: A Dictionary of Terms, Funk, 1957, 4th revised and enlarged edition, 1974.

JUVENILE

Heroes of the Kalevala: Finland's Saga, Messner, 1940, reprinted, 1959.
Walt Whitman: Builder for America, Messner, 1941.
It's a Secret!, Harper, 1941.
The Welcome, Harper, 1942.
The Reader's Shakespeare, Messner, 1946.
(Editor and adapter with husband, Avrahm Yarmolinsky) Tales of Faraway Folk, Harper, 1952.
(Editor and adapter with A. Yarmolinsky) More Tales of Faraway Folk, Harper, 1963.
I Often Wish, Funk, 1966.

TRANSLATION

Alexander Bolk, The Twelve, Huebsch, 1920.
(And editor with A. Yarmolinsky) Modern Russian Poetry: An Anthology, Harcourt, 1921, reprinted, Kraus Reprint, 1968, revised edition published as Russian Poetry: An Anthology, International Publishers, 1927.
(With A. Yarmolinsky) Contemporary German Poetry, Harcourt, 1923, reprinted, Books for Libraries, 1969.
K. Chukovsky, Crocodile, Lippincott, 1931.
(Contributor) A. Yarmolinsky, editor, The Works of Alexander Pushkin, Random House, 1936.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Poems from the Book of Hours, New Directions, 1941, reprinted, 1968.
(With A. Yarmolinsky) Nikolai Leskov, The Steel Flea, Harper, 1943, revised edition, 1964.
Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, edited by A. Yarmolinsky, Limited Editions Club, 1943.
(Contributor) A. Yarmolinsky, editor, A Treasury of Russian Verse, Macmillan, 1949, revised edition published as An Anthology of Russian Verse: 1812-1960, Doubleday, 1962, revised and enlarged edition published as Two Centuries of Russian Verse: An Anthology from Lomonosov to Voznesensky, Random House, 1966.
Iwan Goll, Elegy of Ihpetonga, Allen Press, 1962.
Elisabeth Borchers, There Comes a Time, Doubleday, 1969.

Also editor of Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Crowell, 1967. Contributor to various books of criticism; poems represented in numerous anthologies.