Hull, Lynda 1954–1994

PERSONAL:

Born December 5, 1954, in Newark, NJ; died of injuries sustained in a car accident, March 29, 1994, in Plymouth, MA; second marriage to David Wojahn (a poet and professor), 1984. Education: University of Arkansas at Little Rock, B.A., 1983; Johns Hopkins University, M.A., 1985.

CAREER:

Indiana University—Bloomington, instructor in English, 1985-87; Vermont College, Montpelier, VT, member of field faculty, 1987-94; taught at De Paul University.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Four Pushcart Prizes, including 1985, for poem "Tide of Voices"; Juniper Prize, University of Massachusetts Press, 1986, for Ghost Money; Edwin Ford Piper Award, 1990, and Carl Sandburg Award, Friends of the Chicago Public Library, 1991, for Star Ledger; fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Illinois Arts Council.

WRITINGS:

Ghost Money (poems), University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst, MA), 1986.

Star Ledger: Poems, University of Iowa Press (Iowa City, IA), 1991.

The Only World: Poems, edited with a foreword by husband, David Wojahn, HarperPerennial (New York, NY), 1995.

Collected Poems ("Re/View" series), edited by Mark Doty, with David Wojahn, introduction by Yusef Komunyakaa, Graywolf Press (Saint Paul, MN), 2006.

Poetry editor of Crazyhorse.

SIDELIGHTS:

Poet Lynda Hull was a teacher and prizewinning poet who died at the age of thirty-nine of injuries sustained in a car crash on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Hull did not have the opportunity to reach her full potential, and collections published during her lifetime include Ghost Money and Star Ledger: Poems, her most honored volume. The Only World: Poems was published after her death, and a final volume, Collected Poems, was published more than ten years later.

Hull, who was born in New Jersey, married a Chinese immigrant from Shanghai, and the couple resided in Chinatowns across the United States for approximately ten years. Hull lived in a number of American and European cities, and while attending the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, she met poet David Wojahn, whom she later married. Hull's work was influenced by jazz musicians, some of whom she references in her poems, and by Hart Crane. She reportedly memorized Crane's long poem "The Bridge." A profile on the Web site of the Academy of American Poets states: "Hull wrote poems charged with lyric exuberance and haunted by ecstatic references to drugs and material decadence."

In reviewing Star Ledger, Publishers Weekly contributor Penny Kaganoff noted that Hull's own life is the subject of many of the poems, along with her search for the connection between people and other things that give that life meaning. "Hull confronts the essential loneliness of the human condition," commented Kaganoff, who described this book as being "an intensely felt, finely wrought body of work."

The Only World was edited by Wojahn. Like her previous collections, it portrays people whose lives have been torn apart. New York Times Book Review contributor William Ferguson wrote that Hull's language is "richly musical, somewhat archaic, and highly conceptual." The opening poem is set in the 1960s and is about three adolescent girls who pretend to be the Supremes and the Vandellas. A year later, one has been gang raped, leaving her pregnant. Hull also writes of people she never actually met, including her mother's family, Polish Jews who suffered as a result of the Holocaust.

In reviewing the collection in Ploughshares, reviewer Diann Blakely Shoaf wrote: "Hull loses herself again and again in The Only World's coruscating but gritty panoply of subjects. Junkies and whores, the imprisoned, the beggared homeless of our urban landscapes, those dying or dead from AIDS, do not merely ‘appear’ in these poems, they become past or future selves, alternate selves, feared selves." A Publishers Weekly reviewer called this a "glittering, elegiac collection."

Collected Poems is the first volume of editor Mark Doty's "Re/View" series, which Doty has established to preserve poetry that might otherwise be lost. Chronicle of Higher Education contributor Richard Byrne wrote: "Hull's work still resonates with readers, and it remains particularly influential on her fellow poets." A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote that "her power to depict emotional extremes, justifies the high regard in which she is held."

OBITUARIES:

PERIODICALS

American Poetry Review, May, 1992, review of Star Ledger: Poems, p. 46.

Book World, November 5, 2006, Robert Pinsky, review of Collected Poems, p. 12.

Chronicle of Higher Education, December 1, 2006, Richard Byrne, review of Collected Poems.

Gettysburg Review, January 1, 1996, Dorothy Barresi, review of The Only World: Poems, p. 69.

Hudson Review, March 22, 1992, Mark Jarman, review of Star Ledger, p. 165.

Internet Bookwatch, February, 2007, review of Collected Poems.

Iowa Review, spring, 1999, Laurence Goldstein, "Coruscating Glamour: Lynda Hull and the Movies."

Library Journal, October 1, 1986, Louis McKee, review of Ghost Money, p. 100; June 1, 1995, Christine Stenstrom, review of The Only World, p. 22.

Massachusetts Review, March 22, 1990, "Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets," p. 287.

New York Times Book Review, April 28, 1996, William Ferguson, review of The Only World.

Parnassus: Poetry in Review, March 22, 1997, Calvin Bedient, review of The Only World, p. 282.

Ploughshares, September 22, 1995, Diann Blakely Shoaf, review of The Only World, p. 237.

Poetry, May, 1987, Sandra M. Gilbert, review of Ghost Money, p. 104; February, 1992, David Baker, review of Star Ledger, p. 282; January 1, 1996, Ben Downing, review of The Only World, p. 229.

Prairie Schooner, September 22, 1994, Tim Martin, review of Star Ledger, p. 161.

Publishers Weekly, February 22, 1991, Penny Kaganoff, review of Star Ledger, p. 215; May 29, 1995, review of The Only World, p. 78; October 16, 2006, review of Collected Poems, p. 34.

Washington Post Book World, November 5, 2006, Robert Pinsky, review of Collected Poems, p. 12.

ONLINE

Academy of American Poets Web site,http://www.poets.org/ (January 6, 2008), profile of the author.