Helen Hoyt facts for kids
Helen Lyman, better known as Helen Hoyt or Helen Hoyt Lyman (born January 22, 1887 – died August 2, 1972), was an American poet. She wrote many poems and helped edit important poetry magazines during her time.
About Helen Hoyt
Helen Hoyt was born in Norwalk, Connecticut, on January 22, 1887. Her parents were Gould and Georgiana (Baird) Hoyt.
She went to Miss Baird's School for Girls in Norwalk, Connecticut. This school was owned by her aunt, Cornelia F. Baird. Later, she studied at Barnard College and earned her degree in 1909.
In 1921, Helen married another poet named William Whittingham Lyman Jr. After her marriage, she was also known as Mrs. W.W. Lyman or Helen Hoyt Lyman.
Her Work as a Poet and Editor
Early in her career, Helen Hoyt was an Associate Editor for a famous magazine called Poetry. She had many articles and poems published in this magazine from 1913 to 1936.
She also edited a special edition of Others: A Magazine of the New Verse in September 1916. This edition was focused on women's writing. Other magazines that published her work included The Egoist and The Masses.
Besides her own books of poetry, her work appeared in popular collections of poems. These included The New Poetry: An Anthology (1917) and The Second Book of Modern Verse (1920). A special collection for young readers, Silver Pennies: Modern Poems for Boys and Girls (1925), also featured her poems. Other anthologies were May Days (1926) and The Best Poems of 1931.
Some of her well-known poems are Ellis Park, Memory, Lamp Posts, and Rain At Night.
In 1932, she wrote the introduction for a book called California Poets: An Anthology of 244 Contemporaries.
Helen Hoyt was a friend and colleague of other important poets like Marianne Moore and Mina Loy. She also wrote letters to writers such as Idella Purnell Stone and Clark Ashton Smith.
A Thought from Helen Hoyt
Helen Hoyt once shared an important idea about women's voices in poetry. In 1916, she wrote in Others: A Magazine of the New Verse:
"At present most of what we know, or think we know, of women has been found out by men,
we have yet to hear what woman will tell of herself, and where can she tell more intimately than in poetry?"
This means she believed that women should tell their own stories and feelings through poetry, because men had mostly written about women up until then.
