May 20, 2005

RIP: Elizabeth McFarland Hoffman . .

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Elizabeth McFarland Hoffman, “who as poetry editor of Ladies’ Home Journal sandwiched the work of W. H. Auden, Adrienne Rich and Sylvia Plath in between ‘Is Your Marriage a Masquerade?’ and ‘Bing Crosby’s Kitchen for His Bride,'” has died of complications after cardiac surgery at age 83. As Margalit Fox details in a New York Times obituary, “While Ms. Hoffman was at Ladies’ Home Journal, from 1948 to 1962, the magazine published at least a half-dozen poems in each monthly issue. Major 20th-century writers whose verse appeared there included Marianne Moore, John Ciardi, Mark Van Doren, Randall Jarrell, Maxine Kumin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Walter de la Mare, Galway Kinnell, Maxwell Anderson and John Updike.” The juxtapositions were often startling: “In the August 1950 issue, ‘Secrets,’ by Auden, follows an ad for Velveeta Hoffman, a published poet herself, left the magazine when it was taken over by new owners who ended the magazine’s inclusion of poetry.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.

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