The MLA is deeply saddened by the passing of the literary critic, poetry scholar, and teacher Marjorie Perloff, who died on 24 March 2024 in her home in Pacific Palisades, California. Born in 1931 into a Jewish family in Vienna, Perloff and her family fled Vienna in 1938 and settled in the United States. Perloff came to be well-known as one of the most influential scholars of modern poetry.
Perloff received her PhD from Catholic University in 1965, eventually publishing her dissertation, Rhyme and Meaning in the Poetry of Yeats, as a book in 1970. After graduating, Perloff stayed at Catholic University to teach from 1966 to 1971 before moving on to the University of Maryland (1971–76), the University of Southern California (1979–86), and finally Stanford University. Perloff was named the Sadie Dernham Patek Professor of English Literature at Stanford University in 1990, where she taught classes on modern poetry and literature, mentored numerous students who went on to become notable scholars, and organized a pivotal conference on the work of Merce Cunningham and John Cage.
Perloff was a prolific writer, publishing books on the work of Frank O’Hara, futurism, poetry and technology, Austrian literature, the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and more. Perloff’s scholarship paved new paths, veering away from academic trends and offering new perspectives on landmark figures like Samuel Beckett, T. S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound. This invaluable work led to her election as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977 and her induction into the American Philosophical Society in 2002. In 2021, Perloff was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art.
Perloff was a dedicated member of the MLA, first joining the organization in 1960. She served on the MLA Executive Council from 2004 to 2006 and became MLA president in 2006. You can read or listen to “It Must Change,” the presidential address Perloff gave at the 2006 MLA Annual Convention.