Overview

The most comprehensive collection of writing by award-winning US poet, renowned translator of Sappho, and trailblazing archivist Mary Barnard. Born in the Pacific Northwest, Mary Barnard (1909–2001) struck up correspondence with Ezra Pound in 1933, won Poetry magazine's prestigious Levinson Award in 1935, and moved to New York City the following year. There she met Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams, who proclaimed her writing emblematic of ""what we have been about all these years."" This fully annotated volume makes available Barnard's complete poems for the first time, along with a robust selection of her translations and prose. Most well-known for her bestselling Sappho and her influential role as the inaugural poetry curator at the University at Buffalo, Barnard was a ""second-wave"" modernist and ""late"" Imagist whose regionally grounded writing also anticipated later eco-poetry. The volume's editor, Barnard scholar and biographer Sarah Barnsley, situates Barnard's work within these broader literary and cultural currents. Previously unpublished poems appear alongside Barnard's essays on her creative practice and friendships, illuminating the career, oeuvre, and ethos of this pivotal yet still underappreciated twentieth-century figure. With a foreword by Mary de Rachewiltz (author of Ezra Pound, Father and Teacher) and afterword by Barnard's literary executor Elizabeth J. Bell, Mary Barnard is essential reading for poets, scholars, and translators.

Full Product Details

Author:   Mary Barnard ,  Sarah Barnsley ,  Sarah Barnsley
Publisher:   State University of New York Press
Imprint:   State University of New York Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 3.10cm , Length: 22.90cm
ISBN:  

9798855802658

Pages:   476
Publication Date:   02 December 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   In Print  
Limited stock is available. It will be ordered for you and shipped pending supplier's limited stock.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations and Facsimiles Acknowledgments Foreword: Mary Barnard—American Imagist Mary de Rachewiltz List of Abbreviations Introduction Sarah Barnsley Notes on the Text of This Edition I. POEMS Cool Country (1940) The Rapids Logging Trestle Highway Bridge Cool Country Shoreline Provincial Roots Planks Prometheus Loved Us Blood Ritual The Axe Playroom Storm Cassandra Winter Evening Wine Ship Lethe Chanson Pathetique Lai Adversity and the Generations Drama To a Lie-Adept Provincial II The Tears of Princesses In Praise of Potted Plants Hot Broth The Orchard Spring Fable from the Cayoosh Country Remarks on Poetry and the Physical World Suggested Miracle Note to a Neapolitan A Few Poems (1952) Beds The Fitting Dick Height Is the Distance Down The Whisperer Persephone Fable of the Ant and the Word Anadyomene Encounter in Buffalo Inheritance Midnight The Field from Collected Poems (1979) Ondine The Pleiades They Are Excited The Spring Noon Hour The Solitary Probably Nobody Seedlings Eternal She Fawn Journey Letter from Byzantium A Picture of the Moon Picture Window The Pump Real Estate The River Under Different Lights Two Visits Time and the White Tigress (1986) PROLOGUE FIRST FYTTE — The Year into Halves SECOND FYTTE — The Year into Quarters THIRD FYTTE — Time Slips a Cog FOURTH FYTTE — The Sun in the Well FIFTH FYTTE — Time Standing Still SIXTH FYTTE — Song for the Northern Quarter SEVENTH FYTTE — The Mating Serpents EIGHTH FYTTE — The Jars NINTH FYTTE — La Donna TENTH FYTTE — Song for the Millenium CODA — Song for the New Year NOTES from Nantucket Genesis: The Tale of My Tribe (1988) The Ten Generations A Note on the Name Barnard Introduction The Narrative I. Before Nantucket II. Nantucket III. After Nantucket Uncollected ""I found my grief..."" Thirst Thinking of Yeats The Carver Impassioned Sonnet The Pathetic Fallacy An Evening by the Sea Against Lethe Aquarelle Bay Beach Cream Cupbearer ""Fire, snow, and the night..."" Knight-Errant Moonstone Shriek of Defiance ""... Without whose untender criticism this book..."" Gourmand Before an Oyster Can ""My mind is a hall where walk..."" Sonnet for Dorothy Estuary Alms Bay Road Inspiration Raimon the Singer Reverdie Uninspired to the Uninspiring ""A cloud comes down..."" For a Collection of Suburbiana Letter from the Country Fable Drama Beyond Medusa Cat Dormitory Lament from the Shores of the Boorzh-wah Zee Lyonesse Sub Mare Study Trefoil ""Waiting for a waning moon to rise..."" Of Possession The Colored Stone Cold Heaven Curly Locks Eavesdropper Epicure Mechanism North Window Point of Departure The Silk Leaf Tourist Without Benefit of Tragedy Ursus Parnassius ""The slenderly poised clean shaft of your fir..."" Altitude Road to Xanadu Fire Convalescence The Accounting Crossroads Preacher Travel Notes On Arriving A Dedication Poems Inspired by Sappho The Fool's Serenade ""In the bridal..."" (four fragments) Love Poem Blanchefleur Fatigue 244 ""Tranquil and shallow, spread across the flat stones..."" Commerce Departure Mask A Defense of the Poet's Method Later: Four Fragments Ceremony Chronos Late Roman Now The Rock of Levkas Soft Chains Static II. TRANSLATIONS from Sappho: A New Translation (1958) 1. ""Tell everyone..."" 37. ""You know the place: then..."" 53. ""With his venom..."" 61. ""Pain penetrates..."" 100. ""I have no complaint..."" Other Translations Adonis Dying Book 1 from Homer, The Iliad The First Chorus from Oedipus King, from Sophocles, Oedipus Rex Odysseus Speaking Three Translations from the Greek III. SELECTED PROSE Confessional (1932) Creed (1932) A Note on Poetry (1940) A Communication on Greek Metric, Ezra Pound, and Sappho (1978/79; 1994) Meeting Marianne (1982) Ezra Pound, Sappho, and My Assault on Mount Helicon (1983) William Carlos Williams and the Poetry Archive at Buffalo (1983) Further Notes on Metric (1994) Editor's Notes on the Text Afterword Elizabeth J. Bell Index of Titles and First Lines

Reviews

""Mary Barnard is a quietly eminent poet whose candor and accessibility belie her erudite poetics, evident just below the surface of her often disarming verse. Sarah Barnsley has made Barnard's lifelong work as a poet and translator available for readers to explore fully for the first time—in an edition well-informed by historical, literary, and theoretical notes that locate each poem in its context and offer insights into her poetics. As Barnard writes in 'Eavesdropper,' 'These vines have put their roots through me without / Marring the silence where the nerves / Twitch.' But with the publication of this volume, her poems' 'stirring sibilant answers' can now be 'heard / Through an open doorway.'"" — John Gery, Director, Ezra Pound Center for Literature, University of New Orleans ""Barnard's poetry is lucid, precise, and full of metrical subtlety. Through careful research and thoughtful editing, Barnsley's collection of her work presents a rich portrait of a dedicated person of letters, thoroughly demonstrating 'how a poet can travel for sixty years / and still be always almost arriving.' Mary Barnard will help both students and scholars thicken and nuance their understanding of American modernism and may even serve as inspiration to aspiring poets."" — Michael Leong, author of Contested Records: The Turn to Documents in Contemporary North American Poetry ""What a gift to have all of Barnard's poetry in one volume. The kind of archival recovery work Barnsley has undertaken is not only exciting and surprising but also vitally essential. With Barnard's voice now more fully available to us, we can better hear the history of conversations in literary modernism as they happened."" — Alison Fraser, the Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo

Author Information

Sarah Barnsley is an award-winning poet, scholar, and critic. Her books include Mary Barnard, American Imagist, also by SUNY Press.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Countries Available

All regions