Bink Noll ─ The House and Other Poems

Bink Noll is all but forgotten now, and his three books are out of print. But for those few who remember him or know his work, he remains the Vermeer of American poetry, with a delicacy of hand and eye that again and again presents us with domestic perceptions that have what Melville called ?the shock of recognition”. One of a notable group of American poets who graduated from Princeton University in the 1940s and early ’50s, Noll published three acclaimed collections in his lifetime. Here we have a selection from his first two volumes, while his third, The House, an extended meditation on the domestic individual, is rendered in its entirety. In a voice that is rich and accomplished, Noll offers us lessons in alertness that are, unlike most lessons, delightful. David R. Slavitt, poet and novelist, has distilled and presented the very best of Moore’s work from amongst the many published and unpublished poems available. This ?re-introduction’ will help establish Merrill Moore as an overlooked master of form and fluency in the modern American poem. Bink Noll: Selected Poems is part of the Memento series: a collection of under-appreciated poets published by Little Island Press. Other poets in the series include: Sadakichi Hartmann, Merrill Moore, Lola Ridge and William Plomer.

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. A second volume of verse, The Feast, followed in 1967. In 1968, he signed the ?Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.[1] 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. In 1929, shortly after his father’s death, Moore accepted a position at Boston City Hospital. Later, while in private practice, he taught at the prestigious Harvard Medical School. There and in his private practice, he was particularly interested in alcoholism and suicide, about which he published many articles. Moore married Anne Nichols in 1930 and the couple had four children: Adam, John, Leslie, and Hester. He served in a medical capacity in the U.S. Army during World War II both in New Zealand and the South PaciWc and earned a Bronze Star and an Army Commendation medal. At one point he served as a personal physician to the Nationalist Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek. He died of cancer on 20 September 1957, in Quincy, Massachusetts. David R. Slavitt is the author of more than 116 books ? novels, poetry, reportage, and translations. He was the movie reviewer for Newsweek in the sixties and was co-editor of the Johns Hopkins Complete Roman Drama as well as the Penn Complete Greek Drama.