Craft: Richard Hazley

Richard Hazley (1927-1993) was part of a trio of poets who traveled to Paris in 1948 to develop their writing skills. The other two were Jack Gilbert and Gerald Stern.

Stern said of this group:

There are too many writing schools, too much conformism. Too much everybody acting like everybody else. Make some mistakes, waste ten years. I wasted twenty-five years. I have regrets about it. I wasted a lot of time. When I was twenty-two, I could’ve gone to Iowa, Stanford, Bennington, like many of my contemporaries. Phil Levine went to Iowa, Donald Justice. Some did, some didn’t. Later on, everyone went to school. It just struck me and my friends—Jack Gilbert and Richard Hazley, who was the third one among us, and by the way, the best poet, though he didn’t have the will, the stubbornness to make it, which is really what counts, forget about being gifted—that Iowa was ridiculous—God gave us this talent, the muse. What, we’re going to submit to a group of idiots who say, “Take out the second line and make a different ending there, don’t make that rhyme?” What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China? But that reticence comes out of shyness and arrogance. Pure arrogance.

Hazley went on to become a Professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. What does it mean to be “the best poet….without the will, the stubbornness to make it?” Looking at Hazley’s book, A Hive for Bees, his natural facility for language is self-evident. No wonder he stunned Gilbert and Stern.