David Morton


David H. Morton was an American poet.
Born in Elkton, Kentucky, he graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1909. Morton played on the varsity football team. After a decade of newspaper work, starting at the Louisville Courier-Journal, he became a teacher in the high school at Morristown, New Jersey. Beginning in 1924, he taught at Amherst College.
His work appeared in Harper's Magazine. He is noted for having written a fan letter to Dashiell Hammett.

Awards

Poetry

Nocturnes and Autumnals 1928 publisher Knickerbocker Press

Criticism

What is there in David Morton's verse that seems to save it, that intervenes in moments of irritation with its punctional urbanity? There is not an original line in it. Not one cry, one intense expression comes from it; one vision that the poet has kept from his privileged dreaming, which can draw the mind an inch out of even the shallowest rut.