Alison Croggon wrote:
>
> Why have we forgotten the incomparable Djuna Barnes?
>
Have we? Or that other who came to the aid of the party at one time,
and is finally starting to sound contemporary 60, 70 years later, Mina
Loy? On Barnes - Canadian poet Karen Mac Cormack says in the Line/break
interview (audio) at the Electronic Poetry Center
(http://www.buffalo.edu/epc/linebreak) that Djuna Barnes was her only,
if I recall correctly, influence.
On Loy: read & contemplate (yes, she was off-putting & impossible with a
curious anti-career streak) what champions she being he might have had.
Finally the work has emerged. Kenneth Rexroth in the 30's & 40's then
Jonathan Williams in 1958 & again in 1982 kept her before us and,
despite its scholarly lapses which Thom Gunn & others have loudly
lamented, that 1982 book is a marvel as object. The new FSG doesn't
hold a candle as a book. And Jonathan Williams becomes another
overlooked wonder himself.
Ah well, a keen weather eye to us all lest too many of our own period's
Loys perish for want of recognition!
Best wishes, Pete.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|