Craft: Joan Murray

Joan Murray (1917-1942) was always a young poet. Dead at only 25 from rheumatic fever, her poems were advanced when she made them, and still feel so now. W.H. Auden selected her book, Poems, for the Yale Younger Poets prize in 1946. I believe this was the only time a judge picked a deceased person for the prize. Nonetheless, he apparently felt that none of the other manuscripts he was given were as important as Murray’s.

Murray, c. 1940: “We have loved the self, each other, and the rounded slope”

Murray was born in London, but eventually moved to New York City, where she was Auden’s student at the New School. Her poems are oddly familiar, yet consistently surprising and otherworldly. Her observations are taut and her insights are illuminating.