Grace Goldin

Grace Goldin (September 13, 1916–July 18, 1995) was an American poet, medical historian, and photographer. She wrote poetry about aging and published research on the history and architecture of hospitals.

Early life and education Grace Goldin (née Aaronson) was born in 1916 and grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in an Orthodox Jewish household. Her parents were Alfred Enoch Aaronson and Millicent Lubetkin Aaronson. She graduated from Barnard College in 1937, and in 1938 married the scholar and rabbi Judah Goldin, with whom she spent decades in academic communities across the United States.

Early literary career At age 28, Goldin published Come Under the Wings, a long narrative poem based on the biblical Book of Ruth. The book won the National Jewish Book Award and was adapted for radio. She collaborated intellectually with her husband, noting that many evenings were spent developing the poem’s characters together.

Despite its success, she experienced what she later described as a “35-year case of writer’s block” before returning to poetry in her sixties.

Her major publications included: The Hospital: A Social and Architectural History (1975), co-authored with John D. Thompson, for which she wrote most of the text and contributed extensive photographs and architectural documentation.

Goldin maintained that American culture needed truthful depictions of aging rather than euphemisms.

Selected works Poetry Come Under the Wings: A Midrash on Ruth (1958) Winter Rise: Poems of Aging (1981) To Love That Well: More Poems of Aging (1991) Speak Out for Age (1991)

Medical history The Hospital: A Social and Architectural History (1975) Historic Hospitals of Europe, 1200-1981 (1984) Work of Mercy: A Picture History of Hospitals (1994)