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  • Hilda Raz:A Celebration
  • James Engelhardt (bio)

When I first came to UNL, I was terrified and energized to meet Hilda Raz. She had a staggering reputation as an editor and writer, and I wanted to learn those practices from her, so I signed up to read for Prairie Schooner during my first week of school. Also in that first week I joined her workshop. During the workshops that year (many of the members followed her into the spring semester workshop too), students had work accepted into Poetry and published chapbooks. It was a strong group, but we all had an unwavering attention to Hilda. And she had an unwavering attention to our work, even if that work was nothing like her own.

As devoted as Hilda was as a teacher, she was as fierce a defender of writers. She reminded us at every turn that the journal, this journal, was here to serve writers, and that any of the thousands of submissions we read could contain the next "Prufrock" or "Howl." And that she would invoke such disparate poems should tell you something about her wide-ranging aesthetic. At the same time, she encouraged the readers to relax. She offered this anecdote from early in her editorial career: She noticed that a story she had rejected had been published in the New Yorker. She pointed out her mistake to Bernice Slote, the editor-in-chief at the time, who replied, "That's the reason why there's more than one magazine in the world." Hilda always tried to find the very best, but she never mourned—at least not for long—the ones that got away. Through it all, she worked to further the careers and work of anyone who was "one of ours."

Over the years, I moved up the reading hierarchy, took a stint as the book prize coordinator, and then found—much to my astonishment—that I was in the right place at the right time to become managing editor. As I moved into the job, Kelly Grey Carlisle, my predecessor, said, "Your relationship with Hilda will change." I thought this couldn't possibly be true. I'd worked with Hilda as my teacher, supervisor, and graduate committee director already. But Kelly was right.

I wish I could say that Hilda showed me the special editor handshake that let me into the front ranks of the editorial secret society. It would be funny if that were true, but the truth is closer to sentimentality. At least, that's what I was going to write until I read the essay that Alicia Ostriker has contributed to this celebration. Ostriker starts her essay with a line that resonates through [End Page 6] other pieces collected here: "Sometimes I think she is the mother of us all." I couldn't agree more.

Hilda's respect for and evocation of the editors that ran the magazine before she did is like that of a devoted daughter, and her concern for and awareness of Prairie Schooner authors is almost familial. And it is that family—in part—that has assembled here, to bear witness to the fierce intelligence, sharp eye, and deep, deep love for literature and its writers. Throughout the memories and celebrations runs the bittersweet knowledge that we are losing a great editor but gaining a great writer. And you'll find that her love is returned. We will all miss her.

James Engelhardt

James Engelhardt's poems have appeared in Lilies and Cannonballs Review, Hawk and Handsaw, Alligator Juniper, Saranac Review, and Painted Bride Quarterly. Work is forthcoming in the Fourth River and other journals. His ecopoetry manifesto is at octopusmagazine.com. He is the managing editor of Prairie Schooner.

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