DEUTSCH, BABETTE

DEUTSCH, BABETTE (1895–1982), U.S. poet. Born in New York, Babette Deutsch graduated from Columbia University, where she taught English from 1944. Her first poems were published while she was still a college student; two early books of verse were Banners (1919) and Honey out of the Rock (1925). Other volumes of poetry include Fire for the Night (1930), Epistle to Prometheus (1931), One Part Love (1939), and Coming of Age (1959). She published some novels, a number of children's books, and translations of German and Russian verse. One of the most notable of these translations was the version of Aleksandr Blok's epic poem about the Soviet Revolution, Dvenadtsat ("The Twelve," 1918), which she and her husband, avrahm yarmolinsky , produced together in 1920. A sensitive and emotional writer whose poems often touch on social problems, Babette Deutsch also won distinction as a critic with such works as Potable Gold (1929), This Modern Poetry (1935; revised as Poetry in Our Time, 1952), and The Reader's Shakespeare (1946). Her later verse collections include Animal, Vegetable, Mineral (1954) and Collected Poems, 1919–1962 (1963). A new edition of her Collected Poems, covering the years 1919–1969, appeared in 1969. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Kunitz and H. Haycraft, Twentieth Century Authors (1942), 375–6, and supplement (1955), 277–8. (Sol Liptzin)