June 5, 1911 - November 11, 2003

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(Text from the back cover of her last book) 

Helen Friedman Blackshear(1911-2003) was Alabama's eighth poet laureate. A native of Tuscaloosa, she lived in Montgomery for almost seventy years. She had three daughters, eight grandchildren, and fourteen great-grandchildren. A graduate of Agnes Scott College, she also earned an MA from the University of Alabama.

She was the author of :

• Robert Loveman; Belated Romanticist [Masters Thesis]
  - University, Ala.; - University of Alabama Press (1932)
• Tuscaloosa Sketches - Montgomery, Ala.; - Parker Advertising Co. (1967)
• With a Quiet Eye - Montgomery (1967)
• Mother was a Rebel: In Praise of Gentle People - Adams Press (1973)
• The Creek Captives and Other Alabama Stories - Montgomery Alabama
  - John M Patterson Technical College (1975)
• Random Runes (Poems) - Montgomery AL - s.n. (1975)
• Southern Smorgasbord - Wells Printing (1982)
• Along Alabama Roads - Wells Printing (1983)
• Alabama Album: Collected Poems - Black Belt Press (1996)
• Montgomery:  Andrew Dexter’s Dream City - Montgomery (1996)
• From Peddlar to Philanthropist: The Friedman Story
   - Montgomery, Ala. (334 Felder Ave., Montgomery 36104) : H.F. Blackshear- (1994)
• Editor of These I Would Keep: Selected Poems by the Poets Laureate of Alabama
  - NewSouth Press (2000)
• Silver Songs - Montgomery - Court Street Press (2001)
• (Preceding list from http://www.lib.ua.edu/Alabama_Authors/?cat=4&paged=4)

She also edited These I Would Keep, an anthology of poems by Alabama's first through ninth poet laureates. She had been treasurer and vice-president of the Alabama Poetry Society and president of the Alabama Writers' Conclave. She was Poet of the Year in 1986 and received the Distinguished Service Awar from the Conclave in 1987.

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Vanished in the Unknown Shade: Poet Sidney Lanier's Montgomery Years
by Helen F. Blackshear with Foreword by Dot Moore.

(This was Helen's last book. It was finally published in 2016 by New South Books - Montgomery

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TUSCALOOSA NEWS

By Mark Hughes Cobb / Staff Writer

Posted Nov 12, 2003 at 12:01 AM

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Helen Friedman Blackshear, who in words plain and poetic uplifted the lives of women in beauty salons and men in hardware stores, died Tuesday at her Tuscaloosa home after a rare complaint of feeling unwell.

The former poet laureate of Alabama was 92.

In a career spanning seven decades, Blackshear wrote or edited about a dozen books, including collections of poetry, memoirs, history, and fiction.

Her final book-length work, a biography of the poet Sidney Lanier, is due next month from NewSouth Books in Montgomery, which published four of her previous works.

“She was one of Alabama’s great literary treasures, a woman who was interested in a lot of different things,” said Randall Williams, editor-in-chief at NewSouth. “She wrote about history, popular culture and fine art in ways that touched people and moved people.”

Her friend and fellow eclectic artist Kathryn Tucker Windham of Selma said Blackshear never faltered in her mental faculties.

“The last time I saw her, she was sharper than anybody else in the group,” Windham said.

Blackshear’s capacity for enjoyment drove her to always seek new challenges.

“She expected good things,” Windham said. “I don’t think she ever thought of herself as an old person. She always kept a young outlook, was always looking forward to a new adventure.

“I know she would welcome death as the greatest adventure of all.”

Born in Tuscaloosa on June 5, 1911, Blackshear grew up in the Battle-Friedman Home, where she learned a love of words from her uncle, the writer, and poet Robert Loveman.

After graduating from Agnes Scott College, she earned her master’s from the University of Alabama in 1931 with a thesis, “Robert Loveman: Belated Romanticist,” which became her first published book, although she published poetry throughout college.

Helen Friedman married William Mitchell Blackshear in 1934, living in Tuscaloosa before moving to his hometown of Montgomery in 1942. She worked as a teacher and social worker here and taught English in Montgomery for 35 years.

Her books spanned the gamut from the Loveman thesis to “Mother Was a Rebel,” a recently republished (by NewSouth) memoir of her early years in Tuscaloosa, to “The Creek Captives and Other Alabama Stories,” which Blackshear wrote as adventure fiction to try to interest young boys in the state’s history.

Her poetry collections run from “Alabama Album” to the 2001 “Silver Songs.” She also edited “These I Would Keep,” featuring works selected from all of Alabama’s poet laureates.

Her poem “Search and Destroy” appeared in this year’s “Poets Against the War” (Nation Books) anthology, alongside the works of nationally known writers such as Robert Bly, Robert Pinksy, Ursula K. LeGuin and W.S. Merwin.

Governor Fob James commissioned Blackshear as Poet Laureate of Alabama in 1995, a position she held until 1999. The state’s poet laureates are designated by the Alabama Writers’ Conclave, an organization that Blackshear was president of in 1986. She was also a Poet of the Year for the Alabama State Poetry Society and served in numerous other writers and arts groups, including some in Tuscaloosa, where she had relocated with her daughter, Sue Reid Blackshear, in June.

“Last night (Monday) she was reading, writing poetry, sitting at her typewriter, writing up something or other,” Sue Reid Blackshear said.

They had gone to the doctor Monday after Blackshear voiced a rare complaint.

“This morning (Tuesday), she got up, made up her bed, fell unconscious and that was that,” Sue Blackshear said.

Her mother’s outlook had always been that the glass was half-full, rarely fussing about pains and always looking to help out young writers, she said.

“She always saw the possibilities, rather than the things that stood in the way,” she said, adding that her mother wrote about the lives of ordinary people.

Because she also often wrote on the beauty of nature, the poet in her would have loved the sunny day on Tuesday.

“She’d say, ‘What a beautiful day to die!’,” her daughter said.

Tentative plans are for a service Saturday in Montgomery, where she will be buried next to her husband,

Blackshear is survived by three daughters, Len Stevenson and Sue Reid Blackshear of Tuscaloosa and Anne B. Spragins-Harmuth of Destin, Florida.; two sons-in-law, Tommy Stevenson of Tuscaloosa and Henning Spragins-Harmuth of Destin; eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

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Reach Mark Hughes Cobb at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com or 722-0201.

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