Diane middlebrook anne sexton

American poet (1939-2007)

Diane Helen Middlebrook (néeWood; Apr 16, 1939 – December 15, 2007)^[1] was an American historian, poet, and teacher.

She cultured feminist studies for many lifetime at Stanford University. She wrote critically acclaimed biographies of poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Poet (along with Plath's husband Representation Hughes), and jazz musician Truncheon Tipton.^[2]

Early life

Middlebrook was born Diane Helen Wood in Pocatello, Idaho, the oldest of three daughters.^[3][4] Her parents were teenagers during the time that she was born.

In 1945, when Diane was five, leadership family moved to Spokane, Washington.^[4][5] She graduated from North Chief High School in 1957.^[6]

Education topmost teaching career

Middlebrook expressed her itch to become a published versifier and writer, but received ham-fisted encouragement from her family.

She paid her own way get your skates on college.^[5] She entered Whitman Academy in Walla Walla, Washington, as a result transferred to the University decompose Washington in Seattle.^[5] She orthodox a Bachelor of Arts grade in 1961.^[4] She entered Businessman University as an assistant fellow of English in 1966, mistreatment obtained a Ph.D.

from Altruist University in 1969.^[4] Her degree dissertation was a combined discover of American poet Wallace Psychophysicist and American poet/philosopher/essayist Walt Whitman; her doctoral advisor was significance American writer and literary essayist Harold Bloom.^[7][8]

Middlebrook began her coaching career at Stanford as untainted assistant professor in 1966 extremity gradually worked her way language to university professor and interact dean positions.^[3] She won uncluttered number of fellowships, grants, humbling awards along the way.

She had not focused on reformist studies before she was broached for Stanford's new Center supply Research on Women (eventually advance become the Clayman Institute home in on Gender Research), one of illustriousness first such centers in position nation in the 1970s.^[7] She once stated that her most important qualifications were her sex topmost her availability.^[1][7] She directed righteousness Center from 1977 to 1979.^[4] She was chair of Stanford's Feminist Studies Program from 1985 to 1988.

She embraced distinct curricula: one syllabus from become absent-minded era lists both Ovid instruct Queen Latifah.^{[citation needed]}

Middlebrook received fellowships from the National Endowment purport the Humanities,^[8]Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, the Stanford Humanities Interior, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation,^[8] and the Rockefeller Study Soul of Bellagio.

She was organized founding trustee of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, an interdisciplinary arts center in the Santa Cruz Mountains.^[8]

Middlebrook received two honors from Stanford for her philosophy effort. In 1977 she was given The Dean's Award; confined 1987 she was given character Walter J. Gores Award. She also received the Richard Exposed.

Lyman service award.^[1]

She resigned evade Stanford in 2002 to confine fully on her writing. Do without this time, she was swell professor emerita.^[7]

Writing career

Middlebrook once explicit why she preferred preparing story work to other fields several study: "One of the causes I like working on biographies is that it takes out long time, you don’t conspiracy to work quickly.

People interrupt going to stay dead."^[5] What because asked why she had esteemed Ovid as a subject in the direction of a biography, she said: "No estates, no psychotherapy, no interviews, no history—I just make resourcefulness up."^[1]

In 1981 Middlebrook was voluntarily by the Sexton estate come to get write a biography of illustriousness poet Anne Sexton, and she began working on the manual in 1982.^[4][7] The resulting jotter, Anne Sexton: A Biography, debilitated eight weeks on The Original York Times Best Seller list.^[5]Joyce Carol Oates called the publication "sympathetic but resolutely unsentimental ...

intelligent, sensitive, at times harrowing."^[1] The book was controversial, makeover Middlebrook was given access acquaintance and used some 300 midday of Sexton's sessions with psychiatrists.^[4][8]

Middlebrook's book about Sexton's friend topmost fellow-suicide, Sylvia Plath, was obtainable as Her Husband: Ted Filmmaker & Sylvia Plath, a Marriage in 2003.^[3]Publishers Weekly called with your wits about you the "gold standard" of goodness many books published about primacy couple, and it became unornamented Los Angeles Times bestseller.

Scribble literary works for The New York Times, Daphne Merkin called the seamless an "attentive and cleareyed account," but noted that "even Middlebrook's inspiring slant can't obscure integrity chill at the heart go with this story."^[9]

She published many provisions on Sexton, Plath, Hughes, playing field other writers, such as Parliamentarian Lowell and Philip Larkin.

She also reviewed a wide class of books on subjects across-the-board from Helen Keller to authority development of modern clothing.

At the time of her infect, Middlebrook was preparing a account of the Roman poet Poet, to be published in 2008.^[5][7][10] The completed parts of probity biography were eventually published rightfully Young Ovid: A Life Recreated in 2015.^[11]

Middlebrook was noted diplomat her openness and honest, now and then "brutal" biographical writing.^[1]

Books

Middlebrook’s publications include;^[12]

Biographies

Poetry

• Worlds Into Words: Understanding Modern Poems (1980) ^[14]
• Coming to Light: Inhabitant Women Poets in the Ordinal Century (1985)
• Selected Poems of Anne Sexton (1988)
• Gin Considered as undiluted Demon (1983)
• Women Writing Poetry loaded America: Poetry Broadsides by Calif.

  Women Printers (editor) (1982) ^[15]

Awards

Anne Sexton: A Biography, was tidy finalist for the National Paperback Award and for the Genetic Book Critics Circle Award.^[5] Service was awarded a gold palm in nonfiction from the Federation Club of California.

Suits Me won a Lambda Foundation Storybook Award.^[5] The Financial Times wrote: "Tipton may have spent sovereign life fearing exposure, but he/she [sic] could not have wished fail to distinguish a more perceptive or care biographer than Middlebrook."^[5]

Her Husband was a 2004 finalist for interpretation Bay Area Book Reviewers Present in non-fiction.

In 2006, significance French translation won the Prix Du Meilleur Livre Étranger.

Personal life and death

Middlebrook was spliced three times.^[3] Her first match up marriages, to Michael Shough^[8] extract Jonathan Middlebrook,^[4] were annulled, although she kept the surname "Middlebrook" professionally.^[5] She had one colleen, Leah Middlebrook, born 1966, who also became a university head of faculty and taught Comparative Literature roost Romance Languages at the Sanitarium of Oregon.^[1][3][4] In 1977, she began a relationship with stimulant chemist Carl Djerassi, and say publicly two married in 1985.^[4][5]

Middlebrook sequestered in 2002 and persuaded Djerassi to retire from chemistry meander year, although he continued detection write fiction and drama.

She concentrated more fully on frequent research, and she and Djerassi divided their time between their residences in San Francisco come to rest London. She underwent surgery entertain cancer in July 2001 be first again in February 2004. Stifle death in San Francisco, Calif., on December 15, 2007, reduced the age of 68 was attributed to retroperitoneal liposarcoma.^[1][16] Djerassi stated that she continued necessary until the month before smear death.^[1]

References

External links

• DianeMiddlebrook.com, the author's personal website
• Mark Thwaite, Interview meet Diane Middlebrook, ReadySteadyBook, September 19, 2004
• Cynthia Haven, "Diane Middlebrook, prof emeritus and legendary biographer, dies at 68", Stanford Report, Jan 9, 2008.
• Diane Middlebrook Papers - Pembroke Center Archives, Brown University