Deutsch, Babette (1895–1982)

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Deutsch, Babette (1895–1982)

American poet, novelist, critic and translator. Name variations: Babette Deutsch Yarmolinsky. Born Sept 22, 1895, in New York, NY; died Nov 13, 1982, in New York, NY; dau. of Melanie Fisher and Michael Deutsch; Barnard College, BA, 1917; attended Columbia University; m. Avrahm Yarmolinsky (chief of the Slavonic Division of NY Public Library); children: 2 sons.

Began career teaching at New School for Social Research and publishing poems in North American Review and New Republic; poetry collections include Banners (1919), Honey Out of the Rock (1925), Fire for the Night (1930), Epistle to Prometheus (1932), One Part Love (1939), Animal, Vegetable, Mineral (1954), and The Collected Poems of Babette Deutsch (1969); also translated poems by Rilke, Pushkin, Pasternak, and others, often with husband; wrote works of criticism, Poetry in Our Time (1952) and Poetry Handbook: A Dictionary of Terms (1957), which were considered standard texts in American universities; critical studies also include Potable Gold (1929), Heroes of the Kalevala, Finland's Saga (1940), Walt Whitman, Builder for America (1941) and The Reader's Shakespeare (1946); novels include the semi-autobiographical A Brittle Heaven (1926), In Such a Night (1927), Mask of Silenus (1933) and Rogue's Legacy (1942).