Dilys Laing

Dilys Bennett Laing (1906 in North Wales – 1960) was an American poet.

Education

She was educated in England and Canada. She married Alexander Laing, a Dartmouth College graduate, and later professor, in 1936 and became an American citizen. They had one son.

Career

She was a writer, poet, and artist. She was admired by such contemporary poets as Robert Lowell. She died in 1960.

She was included in the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women.

Her papers are held at Dartmouth College.

Quotes

Women receive the insults of men with tolerance, having been bitten in the nipple by their toothless gums.

To be a woman and a writer is double mischief, for the world will slight her who slights “the servile house,” and who would rather make odes than beds.

Reviews

• Our Life in Poetry: Selected Essays and Reviews, M. L. Rosenthal, Persea Books (May 1991), ISBN 978-0-89255-149-1
• Theology Today:

This is a good book to hold in one's hand, a good book to take up and put down, to contemplate. It does not speak the jargon of the "contraceptive woman" of current journalism but the language of one in whom love developed human relationships in many ways. Wallace Stevens once wrote of "those who move about the world with the love of the real in their hearts." This poet did.