{{Short description|American poet and illustrator}} {{infobox person | name = Mary Fabilli | other names = | image = | caption = | birth_name = Mary Louise Fabilli | birth_date = February 16, 1914 | birth_place = Gardiner, New Mexico | death_date = {{death date and age|2011|9|2|1914|2|16}} | death_place = Oakland, California | education = University of California, Berkeley, A.B., 1941 | occupation = Poet, illustrator, art teacher, museum curator | parents = Vicenzo and Giacinta (Pone) Fabilli | spouse = William Everson, 1948 (annulled) | children = | organizations = | footnotes = }}
'''Mary Fabilli''' (February 16, 1914 − September 2, 2011)<ref name="Fabilli obit">{{cite news|title=Mary Fabilli|url=https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/mary-fabilli-obituary?pid=153508432|access-date=September 12, 2019|newspaper=San Francisco Chronicle|date=September 8, 2011|via=Legacy.com}}</ref> was an American poet and illustrator who for many years made her living as an art teacher and curator at the Oakland Museum in Oakland, California. She was for a time married to poet William Everson and was close friends with poet Robert Duncan, both associated with the Berkeley Renaissance and the San Francisco Renaissance in nearby San Francisco. Fabilli's published work centered on her personal experiences, particularly those related to her Italian heritage and her Roman Catholic faith, and she did not consider herself to be a Beat poet.<ref name="Contemporary Authors">{{cite web|title=Mary Fabilli|work=Contemporary Authors Online|publisher=Gale|year=2005|url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1000126223/BIC?u=|access-date=September 12, 2019|url-access=subscription}}</ref>
==Personal history== Fabilli was the daughter of farmers, Vicenzo and Giacinta (Pone) Fabilli,<ref name="Contemporary Authors"/> who had immigrated from Pacentro, Italy, to the coal-mining company town of Gardiner, New Mexico (now a ghost town, whose area is part of Vermejo Park Ranch in Colfax County), before Fabilli's birth in 1914. The family moved several more times before buying a {{convert|12|acre|ha|adj=on}} farm near Delano, California, where Fabilli grew up, eventually enrolling at the University of California, Berkeley. To help pay for college, she worked for the National Youth Administration (NYA) in Berkeley and then on art project for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in Oakland. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in art and a minor in English in 1941. During World War II, Fabilli worked swing shift as a laborer in the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, California. When the war ended, Fabilli taught art to seventh-graders in Berkeley and to adults at the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) in Oakland, and did clerical work for the ''East Bay Labor Journal'' before starting a career of almost 30 years teaching art and California history at the Oakland Museum. She became associate curator of the museum's history department before retiring in 1977.<ref name="Women of the Beat Generation">{{cite book|last=Knight|first=Brenda|title=Women of the Beat Generation: The Writers, Artists and Muses at the Heart of a Revolution|chapter=Mary Fabilli: Farmer's Daughter|publisher=Conari Press|location=Berkeley, California|year=1996|pages=117–122|isbn=978-1-57324-138-0}}</ref> She was also involved with Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker movement.
Fabilli married Everson on June 12, 1948,<ref name="Contemporary Authors"/> and, influenced by her religious devotion, he converted to Catholicism. In 1951 he joined the Dominican Order as a lay brother, and the marriage was annulled.<ref name="Catholic Legacy">{{cite web|last=Ripatrazone|first=Nick|title=The Straightforward Catholic Legacy of Poet Artist Mary Fabilli|url=https://angelusnews.com/news/nick-ripatrazone/the-straightforward-catholic-legacy-of-poet-artist-mary-fabilli|website=Angelus News|date=July 1, 2019|access-date=September 14, 2019}}</ref> Fabilli died in 2011 in Oakland.<ref name="Fabilli obit"/>
==Work== In addition to her books of poetry, prose, and illustrations, Fabilli illustrated Duncan's “Heavenly City, Earthly City” (1947), and created woodblocks for Everson's ''A Privacy of Speech'' (1949) and ''Triptych for the Living: Poems'' (1951). Everson posed for two of the saints in her collection ''Saints: Nine Linoleum Blocks'' (1960).<ref name="Catholic Legacy"/> Her book-length compilation of text and illustrations by artist Ray Boynton was completed for the Oakland Museum in 1976. Fabilli contributed poetry to anthologies and collections, including ''New Directions 8'' (1944); ''Perspectives on William Everson'' (1992); ''Dark God of Eros: A William Everson Reader'' (2003), and ''Light Dark Wind Moon'' (2004), and to periodicals, including ''Occident'', ''Circle Magazine'', ''Talisman'', ''Epitaph'', ''Berkeley Miscellany'', ''Ritual'', and ''Experimental Review''.<ref name="Contemporary Authors"/>
The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, has a collection, "Mary Fabilli papers, circa 1936–2009" that includes correspondence, diaries, notebooks, and other material.<ref>{{cite web|title=Mary Fabilli papers, circa 1936–2009|url=https://oac.cdlib.org/search?style=oac4;Institution=UC%20Berkeley::Bancroft%20Library;titlesAZ=M;idT=UCb163108250|website=Online Archive of California|access-date=September 15, 2019}}</ref>
==Bibliography== ===Poetry=== *''The Old Ones'' (written and illustrated by Fabilli) (1966) *''Aurora Bligh and Early Poems, 1935–1949'' (poetry and prose) (1968) *''The Animal Kingdom: Poems, 1964–1974'' (1975) *''Winter Poems'' (1983) {{oclc|12956821}} * ''Pilgrimage'' (1985) {{oclc|12956839}} * ''My Body'' (1985) {{oclc|1044058296}} * ''Simple Pleasures'' (1987) {{oclc|21805132}} * ''Shingles and Other Poems'' (1990) {{oclc|27177691}} *''Pious Poems'' (2001) {{oclc|56932376}}
===Prose=== *''Aurora Bligh 2000'' (2000) {{oclc|56932369}}
===Illustrations=== * ''Saints: Nine Linoleum Blocks'' (1960) {{oclc|7206164}}
===Compilations=== * ''Ray Boynton and the Mother Lode : The Depression Years : [exhibition], May 4 through August 15, 1976, the Oakland Museum, History Special Gallery'' (text and illustrations compiled by Mary Fabilli in 1976) {{oclc|2523247}}
==References== {{reflist}}
{{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fabilli, Mary}} Category:1914 births Category:2011 deaths Category:20th-century American women artists Category:20th-century American women poets Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:American women illustrators Category:Writers from Oakland, California Category:21st-century American women artists Category:21st-century American women writers Category:American women curators Category:American curators Category:American poets of Italian descent Category:Catholics from California Category:21st-century American illustrators Category:20th-century American illustrators