Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems is a book of poems written by Eli Siegel, founder of the philosophy of Aesthetic Realism. [1] It was one of 13 finalists in the poetry category of the National Book Award in 1958, the year its author was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. [2]
The title poem first received national attention in 1925, when it won The Nation's esteemed annual poetry prize. [3] The magazine's editors described it as "the most passionate and interesting poem which came in—a poem recording through magnificent rhythms a profound and important and beautiful vision of the earth on which afternoons and men have always existed." [4] [5] "In Hot Afternoons," Siegel later explained, "I tried to take many things that are thought of usually as being far apart and foreign and to show, in a beautiful way, that they aren't so separate and that they do have a great deal to do with one another." [6] [7] The poem begins:
For the full text of this poem see aestheticrealism.net.
The poem has been translated into Italian and French
After the publication of the title poem in 1925, the author devoted much of his time to developing the philosophy of Aesthetic Realism. [8] Consequently, Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems was the first volume of his poems to be published. It contained, among other poems, what has been called "the shortest poem in the English language," a two-word poem which first appeared in the Literary Review of the New York Evening Post in 1925, although it was later anthologized without proper attribution to the author. [9] The poem is:
One Question
I —
Why?
Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems includes a letter written in 1951 by William Carlos Williams to Martha Baird, the wife of Eli Siegel, in which Dr. Williams wrote, "I can't tell you how important Siegel's work is in the light of my present understanding of the modern poem. He belongs in the very first rank of our living artists." See full text of Williams' 1951 letter.
Reviewing this book of poems in the Saturday Review, Selden Rodman wrote of Eli Siegel, "He comes up with poems like 'Dear Birds, Tell This to Mothers,' 'She's Crazy and It Means Something,' and 'The World of the Unwashed Dish' which say more (and more movingly) about here and now than any contemporary poems I have read." See full text of Rodman's 1957 review.
In 2005, the title poem, as read by the author, was made into an award-winning film by Ken Kimmelman.
The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually for Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first presented in 1922, and is given for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author, published during the preceding calendar year.
Eli Siegel was a poet, critic, and educator. He founded Aesthetic Realism, a philosophical movement based in New York City. An idea central to Aesthetic Realism—that every person, place or thing in reality has something in common with all other things—was expressed in the title poem of his first volume, Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems. His second volume was Hail, American Development.
American literature is literature predominantly written or produced in English in the United States of America and its preceding colonies. Before the founding of the United States, the Thirteen Colonies on the eastern coast of the present-day United States were heavily influenced by British literature. The American literary tradition thus began as part of the broader tradition of English-language literature. However, a small amount of literature exists in other immigrant languages and Native American tribes have a rich tradition of oral storytelling.
Gerald Stern is an American poet, essayist and educator. The author of twenty collections of poetry and four books of essays, Stern has taught literature and creative writing at Temple University, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Raritan Valley Community College, and Iowa Writers' Workshop. Since 2009, Stern has been distinguished poet-in-residence and a member of the faculty of Drew University's graduate programme for a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in poetry.
Mark Van Doren was an American poet, writer and critic. He was a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, Whittaker Chambers, and Beat Generation writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He was literary editor of The Nation, in New York City (1924–1928), and its film critic, 1935 to 1938.
Aesthetic Realism is a philosophy founded in 1941 by the American poet and critic Eli Siegel (1902–1978). He defined it as a three-part study: "[T]hese three divisions can be described as: One, Liking the world; Two, The opposites; Three, The meaning of contempt."
Sharon Olds is an American poet. Olds won the first San Francisco Poetry Center Award in 1980, the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. She teaches creative writing at New York University and is a previous director of the Creative Writing Program at NYU.
Charles Kenneth "C. K." Williams was an American poet, critic and translator. Williams won many poetry awards. Flesh and Blood won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1987. Repair (1999) won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was a National Book Award finalist and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The Singing won the National Book Award, 2003 and in 2005 Williams received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. The 2012 film Tar related aspects of Williams' life using his poetry.
Jack Gilbert was an American poet. Gilbert was acquainted with Jack Spicer and Allen Ginsberg, both prominent figureheads of the Beat Movement, but is not considered a Beat Poet; he described himself as a "serious romantic." Over his five-decade-long career, he published five full collections of poetry.
Louis Aston Marantz Simpson was an American poet born in Jamaica. He won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his work At the End of the Open Road.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
New religious movements and cults have appeared as themes or subjects in literature and popular culture, while notable representatives of such groups have themselves produced a large body of literary works.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Wesleyan University Press is a university press that is part of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. The Press is currently directed by Suzanna Tamminen, a published poet and essayist.
Doren Robbins is a contemporary American poet, prose poet, fiction writer, essayist, mixed media artist, and educator. As a cultural activist, he has organized and developed projects for Amnesty International, the Salvadoran Medical Relief Fund, the Romero Relief Fund, and poetsagainstthewar.org. Robbins has lived most of his life in California and Oregon.
The Terrain Gallery, or the Terrain, is an art gallery and educational center at 141 Greene Street in SoHo, Manhattan, New York City. It was founded in 1955 with a philosophic basis: the ideas of Aesthetic Realism and the Siegel Theory of Opposites, developed by American poet and educator Eli Siegel. Its motto is a statement by Siegel: "In reality opposites are one; art shows this."
Chaim Koppelman was an American artist, art educator, and Aesthetic Realism consultant. Best known as a printmaker, he also produced sculpture, paintings, and drawings. A member of the National Academy of Design since 1978, he was president of the Society of American Graphic Artists (SAGA), which presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004. He established the Printmaking Department of the School of Visual Arts in 1959, and taught there until 2007.
Ken Kimmelman is an American filmmaker, animator, and Aesthetic Realism consultant. He is the president of Imagery Film, Ltd. and is known for his films opposing racism and prejudice, including The Heart Knows Better, a public service film for which he received a National Emmy Award and Brushstrokes, produced for the United Nations. Both films were inspired by Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy whose founder, Eli Siegel, identified contempt, "the addition to self through the lessening of something else" as the cause of racism and all human injustice. Kimmelman is also noted for his Poetry film, Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana, based on the prize-winning poem by Eli Siegel. Historian Howard Zinn said of this film, "It matches, in its visual beauty, the elegance of Siegel's words, and adds the dimension of stunning imagery to an already profound work of art."
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.