Frederick Morgan, 81; Founder, Editor of Hudson Review Literary Magazine

Frederick Morgan, a founder of the Hudson Review, one of America’s leading literary magazines and its editor for 55 years, has died. He was 81.

Morgan, a highly regarded poet as well as an editor, had a blood disorder and was hospitalized at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, where he died Friday of pneumonia, Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and a longtime friend of Morgan, said Tuesday.

Morgan launched the quarterly magazine in 1947 with fellow Princeton graduates Joseph Bennett and William Arrowsmith.

Using their own money, they published the earliest issues in the New York City apartment of Morgan’s parents. The review soon earned a reputation as an unerring showcase of the most important poets, novelists and essayists. Works by e.e. cummings and Wallace Stevens were featured in the first issue, as was W.S. Merwin’s first published poem.

Two issues later, the journal previewed a chapter from “Dr. Faustus” by Thomas Mann before the book was published in English. Over the years, works by T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, Tennessee Williams, Sylvia Plath, Saul Bellow, Eudora Welty and Seamus Heaney appeared in its pages.

The magazine survived primarily on grants and private donations, and circulation never climbed beyond 4,000 -- all of which agreed with Morgan. He wanted the Hudson Review to be an alternative to competitors that focused on a particular literary movement, a geographic region or academic institution.

“The Hudson Review was remarkably rare for the way it published a broad range of poetry and literature,” said Jay Parini, professor of English at Middlebury College in Vermont, whose poetry and reviews often appeared in the journal. “It became home to a wide range of authors.”

Morgan made a point of publishing writers who were not getting the attention he felt they deserved.

“Fred Morgan was one of the great editors of American letters,” said Gioia, a poet and critic who has been a contributor to the magazine. “He had a gift for discovering talent and, even more rare, for trusting talent.” Morgan was open to writers’ ideas about subjects and how to approach them, Gioia added.

As a young editor, Morgan looked for mentors, he recalled in an interview. He went to meet the poet Ezra Pound at the hospital where Pound had been confined to a ward for the criminally insane after being accused of subversive activities in World War II.

“It is fair to say that [Pound] opened my eyes to ... the possibilities of publishing translations from foreign literatures,” Morgan said. One of the first translations that appeared in the Hudson Review was Pound’s version of “The Analects of Confucius.”

On the other hand, Morgan said, “I disregarded almost all the specific advice he favored me with over the next several years. He wanted to tell me exactly what to do, issue by issue.”

Born and raised in New York City, Morgan enrolled in the creative writing program at Princeton in 1939, when it was one of the only programs of its kind in the country. His professor, the poet and critic Allen Tate, encouraged him to pursue a literary career.

As his magazine brought him wide recognition, he suffered from a series of personal tragedies. His college sweetheart and first wife, Constance Canfield, died at the age of 40, leaving Morgan with their six children. His second marriage, to Rose Fillmore, ended in divorce.

One of his sons, John, committed suicide by leaping from the Oakland Bay Bridge. Another, Seth, became a drug addict and alcoholic. Serving a prison term for robbery, he completed a novel, “Homeboy,” that critics praised in 1990. The same year, he died in a motorcycle crash.

Morgan, who had written occasional poems for some years, finished his first anthology, “A Book of Change,” in 1972. Memories of personal loss were a theme in his work for some time. A poem from 1977 commemorated his son John’s suicide:

“Your youngest brother’s passed you by at last: he’s older now than you.

“And all our lives have ramified in meanings which you never knew.”

He went on to complete more than a dozen books of his own verse and translations of other poets’ work. Critics were complimentary, but Morgan was wary of praise.

“My position as an editor made it hard for someone to say, ‘Look here, Fred, I know what you are trying to do but this poem is a lot of junk,’ ” he said in a 1998 interview.

One collection, “Poems for Paula” (1995), is Morgan’s tribute to his third wife, Paula Dietz. They married in 1969, two years after she joined the magazine as associate editor.

Dietz introduced several new traditions for the magazine, starting with a 20th anniversary special issue in 1968, followed by others every five years. When Morgan retired in 1998, she became the journal’s editor in chief, a position she still holds. The other founding partners, Arrowsmith and Bennett, left the publication in the 1960s.

Until recently, Morgan remained as a consultant for the magazine and he walked to the office several times each week.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by two daughters, one son and five grandchildren.