HYDE, (W.) Lewis 1945-

PERSONAL: Born October 16, 1945, in Boston, MA; son of W. Lewis (a physicist) and Elizabeth Lee (a librarian; maiden name, Sanford) Hyde; married Patricia Auster Vigderman (an editor and teacher), November 27, 1981; children: (stepson) Matthew. Education: University of Minnesota, B.A., 1967; University of Iowa, M.A., 1972.

ADDRESSES: Office—Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing, Bailey House, 11, Kenyon College, Gambier, OH 43022. E-mail—hyde@kenyon.edu.

CAREER: University of Iowa, Iowa City, instructor in literature, 1969-71; Cambridge Hospital, Cambridge, MA, alcoholism counselor, 1974-76; Harvard University, Boston, MA, researcher in the study of adult development, 1976, lecturer in expository writing, 1983-85, Briggs-Copeland assistant professor of English, 1985-89; Kenyon College, Gambier, OH, Luce Professor of Art and Politics, beginning 1989, became Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing. Tufts University, Medford, MA, Experimental College, visiting lecturer, 1977; poet in residence for public schools in Cohasset, Hopkinton, Lexington, and Nantucket, MA, 1981-83.

MEMBER: PEN American Center, Authors Guild, National Writers Union, Lepidopterists Society.

AWARDS, HONORS: Academy of American Poets Prize, University of Minnesota, 1966; National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, 1976-77 and 1982; Columbia University Translation Center Award, 1978; National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for Independent Study and Research, 1979; fellowship in poetry from the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, 1980; MacArthur fellow, 1991-96; Getty Scholar, 1993-94; Lannan Foundation fellowship, 2002.

WRITINGS:

(Editor and translator, with Robert Bly) Twenty Poems of Vicente Aleixandre, Seventies Press, 1977.

(Editor and translator, with others) A Longing for the Light: Selected Poems of Vicente Aleixandre, Harper (New York, NY), 1979.

(Translator, with David Unger) Vicente Aleixandre, World Alone (poems), Penmaen Press, 1982.

The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, Random House (New York, NY), 1983.

(Editor) On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1984.

Alcohol and Poetry: John Berryman and the Booze Talking, Dallas Institute Publications (Dallas, TX), 1986.

This Error Is the Sign of Love (poems), Milkweed Editions (Minneapolis, MN), 1988.

Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1998.

(With Jennifer R. Gross) Lee Mingwei: The Living Room (exhibition catalog), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, MA), 2000.

(Editor) The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau, North Point Press (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor of articles to periodicals, including Corona, American Poetry Review, Working Papers, Colorado State Review, Kenyon Review, Fifth Estate, CoEvolution Quarterly, New York Times, The Lamp in the Spine, and Nation. Contributor of translations and poetry to periodicals and anthologies, including Hawaii Review, American Poetry Review, New York Times, and Paris Review.

SIDELIGHTS: Lewis Hyde has published works of criticism, translations from Spanish, and his own poetry. He has been instrumental in bringing the verse of Spanish poet and Nobel Prize winner Vicente Aleixandre to readers of English, has edited a volume of criticism about famed beat poet Allen Ginsberg, and has discussed the value of creative power in his 1983 The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. Hyde's Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art examines the role of the trickster character in cultures worldwide.

Hyde's efforts in bringing Aleixandre's poetry to a wider audience, particularly in A Longing for the Light: Selected Poems of Vicente Aleixandre, were praised by Jascha Kessler in the Los Angeles Times because Aleixandre is a poet who "shows himself tenderly erotic, passionate, brooding, deeply pessimistic—and a prophet of human existence, and destiny." Kessler also noted Hyde's "varied selection" of Aleixandre's work, which allows the reader to know the poet's "spirit through his vision."

In Hyde's 1983 work of criticism The Gift, he discusses the concept of creative work "in at least three different senses," reported Fred Moramarco in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. "There is the initial gift given to the artist 'by perception, experience, intuition imagination, a dream, a vision, or by another work of art'…. Next is the artist's ability to do the labor required to bring the work of art into existence…. Finally, there is the finished work itself—the artist's gift to the world." Hyde examines the problems of the artist in the western commodity-based society—where a specific price is placed on a work of art—and postulates what life would be like for artists in other gift-based societies, such as the Tobriand Islanders. He also considers the works of poets Walt Whitman and Ezra Pound in the light of his concept of art as gift. Iain McGilchrist, in the Times Literary Supplement, hailed The Gift as "a well-written and unpretentious book," noting that "the subject is an important and interesting one." While Donald Hall in the National Review observed that "reporting on The Gift is like trying to paraphrase the seasons," he concluded that "one would not want to call this book 'literary criticism.' It is about how to live our lives."

Hyde edited a collection of criticism of the poetry of Allen Ginsberg in 1984. Ginsberg shocked critics when he began writing in the 1950s with his frank discussion of topics such as homosexuality and electroshock therapy, and opinion of his merit has been divided ever since. Hyde includes in his collection On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg both those who belittle Ginsberg's genius, such as literary figures Marianne Moore and Diana Trilling, and those who celebrate it, such as Paul Berman. The volume of criticism was labeled an "invaluable compendium" by Lachlan Mackinnon in the Times Literary Supplement.

In Trickster Makes This World, Hyde examines the role of the trickster character in cultures throughout the world. A trickster is a character who subverts the assumptions of his inherited culture, thus exposing its limits in dealing with the real world. The trickster character is personified by such figures as the Norse Loki, the Native American Coyote, and the Indian Krishna. A multitude of other variations on the character are found in literature into the present day, Hyde shows, citing such examples as Herman Melville's The Confidence Man. The trickster is also found in the work of such artists as Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp. Hyde argues that these tricksters "keep our world lively and give it the flexibility to endure." Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, reviewing the book for the Spirituality and Health Website, found that "this erudite and scholarly work ranges freely all over the landscape of Western culture." The critic for Publishers Weekly praised Hyde's "impeccable and fascinating research," while in Booklist Alice Joyce concluded that Trickster Makes This World is "erudite, thought-provoking, and richly literate."

Hyde once told CA: "My continuing concern is the imagination, and how to keep it lively."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Hyde, Lewis, Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1998.

periodicals

American Poetry Review, January-February, 1998, p. 45.

Book, May, 1999, review of Trickster Makes This World, p. 81.

Booklist, December 1, 1997, Alice Joyce, review of Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art, p. 590.

Book World, February 8, 1998, review of Trickster Makes This World, p. 4.

Commonweal, December 2, 1994, review of The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, p. 28.

Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 1997, review of Trickster Makes This World, p. 1623; February 15, 2002, review of The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau, p. 246.

Los Angeles Times, September 23, 1979, Jascha Kessler, review of A Longing for the Light, p. 10.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 29, 1983, Fred Moramarco, review of The Gift, p. 4; January 25, 1998, reviews of Trickster Makes This World and The Gift, p. 7.

National Review, April 15, 1983, Donald Hall, review of The Gift, pp. 448-449.

New Yorker, March 16, 1998, review of Trickster Makes This World, p. 78.

New York Times Book Review, February 15, 1998, review of Trickster Makes This World, p. 18.

Observer (London, England), April 11, 1999, review of The Gift, p. 14.

Publishers Weekly, November 24, 1997, review of Trickster Makes This World, p. 63.

Times Literary Supplement, January 27, 1984, Iain McGilchrist, review of The Gift, p. 77; May 24, 1985, Lachlan Mackinnon, review of On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg, p. 574.

Village Voice, January 29, 1985, p. 42.

Whole Earth Review, spring, 1998, review of The Gift, p. 56; summer, 1998, Suzie Rashkis, review of Trickster Makes This World, p. 95.

online

Bookfolk Website, http://www.lanset.com/bookfolk/ (February 10, 2003), Thomas Christensen, review of Trickster Makes This World.

Kenyon College Web site, http://www.kenyon.edu/ (February 10, 2003).

Spirituality and Health Website, http://www.spiritualityhealth.com/ (February 10, 2003), Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, review of Trickster Makes This World.*