Barbara Guest, née Barbara Ann Pinson (September 6, 1920 – February 15, 2006), was an American poet and prose stylist. Guest first gained recognition as a member of the first generation New York School of poetry. Guest wrote more than 15 books of poetry spanning sixty years of writing. In 1999, she was awarded the Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the Poetry Society of America.
Guest also wrote art criticism, essays, a novel, biography, plays, and other prose pieces since collected in Meditations: The Assorted Prose of Barbara Guest. Her Collage appeared on the covers of several of her books of poetry. She was also well known for her biography of the poet H.D., Herself Defined: The Poet H.D. and Her World (1984).
Early life and education
Born in Wilmington, North Carolina and raised in
California, Guest attended UCLA,
and then earned a B.A. in General Curriculum-Humanities in 1943 at UC Berkeley. She worked as an editorial associate at
ARTnews magazine from 1951 to 1959.
Poetry
Barbara Guest wrote more than 15 books of poetry spanning sixty years of writing. "Her poems begin in the midst of action," wrote
Peter Gizzi in his introduction to a collection of her work, "but their angle of perception is oblique."
[Guest, p. xvii] Her poems are known for their abstract quality, vivid language, and intellectualism. She believed that the subject of the poem finds itself through the writing of the poem and through the poet's imagination. "Disturbing the conventional relations of subjects and objects, of reality and imagination, is one of Guest's signature gestures," noted Gizzi.
[Guest, p. xviii]
Among her most well-known poems are "Parachutes, My Love, Could Carry Us Higher," (MP3) "Wild Gardens Overlooked by Night Lights, (MP3)" "Roses," and "Photographs."
Quotes
Selected bibliography
Poetry
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The Location of Things (Tibor de Nagy, 1960)
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Poems: The Location of Things, Archaics, The Open Skies (Doubleday & Company, 1962)
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The Open Skies (1962)
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The Blue Stairs (Corinth Books, 1968)
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I Ching, with lithographs by Sheila Isham (Mourlot Graphics, 1969).
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Moscow Mansions (Viking, 1973)
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The Countess from Minneapolis (Burning Deck Press, 1976)
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Seeking Air (Black Sparrow, 1977; reprint, Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1997; Grand Iota, 2021)
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The Türler Losses (Montréal: Mansfield Book Mart, 1979)
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Biography (Burning Deck, 1980)
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Quilts (Vehicle Edition, 1981)
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Herself Defined: The Poet H. D. and Her World (Doubleday & Company, 1984)
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Musicality, with June Felter (1988)
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Fair Realism (Sun & Moon Press, 1989)
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The Nude, Warren Brandt (Art Editions, New York, 1989)
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Defensive Rapture (Sun & Moon Press, 1993)
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The Altos, with artist Richard Tuttle (San Francisco: Hank Hine Publisher, 1993)
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Selected Poems (Sun & Moon Press, 1995)
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Stripped Tales, featuring art by Anne Dunn (Kelsey St. Press, 1995)
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Quill Solitary, Apparition (The Post-Apollo Press, 1996)
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Seeking Air (Sun & Moon Press, 1997)
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Etruscan Reader VI (with Robin Blaser and Lee Harwood) (1998)
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Outside of This, That is, with illustration by Trevor Winkfield (Z Press, 1999).
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Strings, with artist Ann Slacik (Paris, France, 1999)
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The Luminous, with artist Jane Moorman (Palo Alto, California, 1999)
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Rocks on a Platter (Wesleyan, 1999)
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If So, Tell Me (Reality Street Editions, UK, 1999)
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The Confetti Trees (Sun & Moon, 1999)
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Symbiosis, with artist Laurie Reid (Berkeley: Kelsey Street Press, 2000)
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Miniatures and Other Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2002)
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Forces of Imagination: Writing on Writing (Kelsey Street Press, 2003)
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Durer in the Window: Reflexions on Art (Roof Books, 2003)
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The Red Gaze (Wesleyan University Press, 2005)
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Fallschirme, Gebliebter. Ausgewählte Gedichte (German, Bilingual Edition, luxbooks, 2008)
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The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008)
Prose
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Mediations: The Assorted Prose of Barbara Guest, edited with an introduction by Joseph Shafer (Wesleyan University Press, 2025)
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Forces of Imagination: Writing on Writing (Kelsey Street Press, 2003).
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Dürer in the Window (Roof Books, 2003).
- "To speak with Barbara Guest about poetry was always to be in the presence of a fiercely uncompromised vision of the art and its obligations. Her insights continually astonished me. They were beholden to no one. And the work itself, of a lyric intelligence entirely her own. For whatever reasons, and I can sadly imagine many, it has not received its full due, but it will. The music insists."
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Michael Palmer |
See also
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List of poets from the United States
External links
