Evanston Poet Daryl Hine Dies At 76

Poet, translator and former Poetry Magazine editor Daryl Hine passed away in his Evanston home at age 76 last week, according to a spokesperson for the publication. 

Born in British Columbia, Hine was known for his skill with difficult poetic forms and for his interest in philosophy and the classics. He published more than a dozen books of poetry in his lifetime, and received several awards for his translations of writers such as Homer, Hesiod and Ovid, according to Poetry Magazine.      

Hine attended McGill University in Canada as an undergraduate, then obtained a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Chicago. He began his affiliation with Poetry in the 1950s and 1960s, when he published several poems in the magazine, then served as editor from 1968-1978. 

During his lifetime, Hine published sixteen volumes of poetry, three plays, a nonfiction work and a novel. He finished working on a final collection of poems earlier this summer, which was scheduled for publication in spring 2013 by the Canadian publishing house Fitzhenry & Whiteside. 

"Our editor is working to ensure that the forthcoming collection, A Reliquary, will be everything that Daryl Hine would have wished," Fithenry & Whiteside publicist Francesco Paonessa wrote in an e-mail. "We want the work to be a faithful to his memory and his gifted talents."

A Reliquary is still set for publication in the spring, but Paonessa said the date could be moved up or pushed back given Hine's passing.

Evan Jones, Hine's editor, told Poetry Magazine that he had spoken to Hine two weeks before his death. His health was “stable,” according to Jones, and he had just bought a new MacBook. Hine was working on his own version of the Greek epic poem Argonautica, which tells the story of Jason and the Argonauts, who travel by sea to find the Golden Fleece. In Hine’s version, however, the poem would be told from the point of view of the ship.