Josephine Jacobsen

Josephine Jacobsen (19 August 1908 – 9 July 2003) was a Canadian-born American poet, short story writer, essayist, and critic. She was appointed the twenty-first Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1971. In 1997, she received the Poetry Society of America's highest award, the Robert Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry.

Early life and education Jacobsen was born Josephine Boylan on August 19, 1908, in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada. Her American parents were vacationing in Canada and anticipated her arrival several months later. The baby Jacobsen weighed only two-and-a-half pounds and was not expected to survive. However, her mother, Octavia Winder Boylan, was determined that she would survive. Jacobsen was taken to New York at age three months.

Jacobsen's father, a doctor and amateur Egyptologist, died when she was five. Her brother suffered a nervous breakdown; her mother suffered bouts of manic depression. Jacobsen found solace in reading the poetry of Robert W. Service and Rudyard Kipling and they inspired her to begin writing poetry.

After her father's death, Josephine and her mother traveled constantly, which prevented her from going to school. They did not settle in one place long enough for Josephine to go to school. Taught by private tutors, she became a voracious reader.

Jacobsen's mother never went to college, but like her daughter she was a "tremendous reader". Thus, it followed that when her daughter's headmistress suggested that Jacobsen go to college, her mother disagreed, so her daughter never attended college. Instead, Jacobsen "wrote, travelled, and acted with the Vagabond Players (a well-known Baltimore theatre troupe) until 1932 when she married".

Career Jacobsen's literary career began when her first poem was published in the children's St. Nicholas Magazine when she was 11 years old. In her late teens, Jacobsen started publishing in the Junior League magazine Connected.

Jacobsen's first poetry collection, Let Each Man Remember, was published in 1940. However, she did not gain widespread recognition until her 60s. For Jacobsen, it was "the writing itself, not prizes or possible honors, that mattered the most".

Short stories and nonfiction

Jacobsen also wrote short stories, including the collections A Walk with Raschid and Other Stories (1978), On the Island (1989), and What Goes Without Saying (1996).

Much of Jacobsen's best work was done in her sixties, seventies, and eighties. Her friend William Morris Meredith, Jr. told her she was "post-cocious."

Beginning in 1973, Jacobsen received multiple grants, prizes, and awards. MacDowell Colony grant (1973, 1974, 1976, 1981, 1983) Prairie Schooner Award for fiction (1974) Yaddo grant (1775, 1977, 1980, 1982, 1984) American Academy Fellowship (1987) Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize (1987) From 1979 to 1983, she was a member of both the literature panel for the National Endowment for the Arts and of the poetry committee of the Folger Library.

In 1993, Jacobsen received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.

William Jay Smith of The New York Times Book Review praised Jacobsen's "observant eye and varied interest" and her "broad range of skillfully handled stanza forms." After her husband's death and after several falls, Josephine moved from their apartment to assisted living at Broadmead.

A memorial Mass was offered for Jacobsen on September 4, 2003, at the Marikle Chapel of the Annunciation at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland.