Sophie Cabot Black

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Sophie Cabot Black
Sophie Cabot Black, was an American prize winning poet.
Born (1958-04-18) 18 April 1958 (age 65)
EducationMarlboro College (BA, 1980)
Columbia University (MFA, 1984)
Parent(s)David Black
Linda Cabot Black

Sophie Cabot Black (born 18 April 1958)[1][2] is an American prize-winning poet who has taught creative writing at Columbia University.[3]

Early life[edit]

Cabot was born in New York, New York and raised on a small farm in Wilton, Connecticut.[4] Her father is David Goldmark Black (b. 1931), a Broadway producer, actor, teacher, writer and artistic director.[5] Her mother is Linda (Cabot) Black, cofounder of Opera Company of Boston and Opera New England.[6] She has two siblings: actor Jeremy Black, who appeared as the boy Hitler clones in Boys from Brazil,[7] and Alexander Black. She also has two daughters. Her maternal great-grandfather was industrialist and philanthropist Godfrey Lowell Cabot.[8]

In 1980, Black received her Bachelor of Arts from Marlboro College. In 1984, she graduated from Columbia University with a Master of Fine Arts.[9]

Ancestry[edit]

Cabot family coat of arms

Sophie Cabot Black is part of the Cabot family of the Boston Brahmin also known as the "first families of Boston."

The status of the Cabot family is hinted from the widely known toast given in 1910 at a College of the Holy Cross alumni dinner: "Here's to dear old Boston, The home of the bean and the cod, Where Lowells speak only to Cabots, And Cabots speak only to God."[10]

Career[edit]

Black's poetry has appeared in publications including AGNI,[11] The Atlantic Monthly,[12] Boston Review,[13] The Paris Review, Poetry, Fence, APR, Bomb, The New Yorker,[14] and The New Republic. Various anthologies have also included her work, such as More Light: Father & Daughter Poems, The Best American Poetry 1993 (edited by Louise Glück), and Looking for Home: Women in Exile.[15]

Black's translations of Latin American poets have been included in the anthologies You Can't Drown the Fire and Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology.

Her essays appear in Wanting a Child and First Loves. One of her poems was used in a song on an album by Akiko Yano.

Black has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony (1988), the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (1988), and, most recently, the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College.[15] As of late 2003, she was teaching at Columbia.[4]

Bibliography[edit]

Poetry[edit]

Collections
  • The Misunderstanding of Nature. Graywolf Press. 1994.[16]
  • The Descent: poetry (2004) Graywolf Press; 73 pages, ISBN 1-55597-406-6 (paperback)
  • The Exchange (2013), Graywolf Press; 88 pages, ISBN 1-55597-641-7 (paperback)
List of poems
Title Year First published Reprinted/collected
Chorus and Anti-Chorus 2017 Black, Sophie Cabot (May 8, 2017). "Chorus and Anti-Chorus". The New Yorker. Vol. 93, no. 12. pp. 50–51.

Awards[edit]

  • Grolier Poetry Prize, 1988
  • John Masefield Award from the Poetry Society of America, 1989[15]
  • Emerging Poets Award from Judith's Room, 1990[15]
  • Connecticut Book Award for Poetry, 2005

Personal life[edit]

Black lives in New York and Wilton, Connecticut.[4]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Profile of Sophie Cabot Black
  2. ^ https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/black-sophie-cabot-1958
  3. ^ "Creative Writing". Columbia College. Retrieved February 14, 2012.
  4. ^ a b c "Potash Hill The Magazine of Marlboro College: Alumni News, '80". Marlboro College. 2004. Archived from the original on February 11, 2010. Retrieved July 30, 2011. Pg. 34
  5. ^ The World Who's who of Women. Melrose Press. 1990. ISBN 9780948875106.
  6. ^ "Linda Black Is Married". New York Times. January 29, 1989. Retrieved July 30, 2011.
  7. ^ [1] Internet Movie Data Base Web site, Web page titled "Jeremy Black (I)", accessed October 28, 2006
  8. ^ "Linda Black is Married". The New York Times. 29 January 1989.
  9. ^ "Sophie Cabot Black". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved February 14, 2012.
  10. ^ Andrews, Robert, ed. (1996). Famous Lines: A Columbia Dictionary of Familiar Quotations. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-10218-6. {{cite book}}: External link in |title= (help)
  11. ^ "Sophie Cabot Black". AGNI. Retrieved February 14, 2012.
  12. ^ "The Tree". The Atlantic Monthly. June 2000. Retrieved February 14, 2012.
  13. ^ "It Never Goes Away". Boston Review. September–October 2008. Retrieved February 14, 2012.
  14. ^ "Private Equity". The New Yorker. May 17, 2010. Retrieved February 14, 2012.
  15. ^ a b c d "Sophie Cabot Black - Biography". Artemis Project. Retrieved July 30, 2011.
  16. ^ Received the Poetry Society of America Norma Farber First Book Award.

External links[edit]