The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest (Wesleyan Poetry Series)
Influenced by the same 1950s abstract art scene that forged the improvisational aesthetics of John Ashbery and other New York School poets, Guest (1920–2006) nevertheless eschewed the overt playfulness and "personism" of her male counterparts for more oblique modes that combined, say, Marianne Moore's painterly visual sense with H.D.'s and Gertrude Stein's concern with conceptual experimentation. Venturesome and exploratory throughout, Guest's work suggested directions for both "language" poetry and the postmodern lyricism that followed it, performing "a drama of exacting dimension" that questioned and refocused familiar poetic forms—lyric, narrative, prose poem—as if they were "composed with magic and euphony." In an insightful introduction, Peter Gizzi notes that Guest's poems "evoke the joy of being found," and the appearance of this omnibus, gathering the contents of Guest's published volumes fromThe Location of Things(1960) throughThe Red Glaze(2005), offers a grand occasion for that discovery. Recommended for most collections.—Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., NYCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.