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One of the most notable members of the New York School--and its best-known woman--Barbara Guest began writing poetry in the 1950s in company that included John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara, and James Schuyler. And from the beginning, her practice placed her at the vanguard of American writing. Guest's poetry, saturated in the visual arts, extended the formal experiments of modernism, and played the abstract qualities of language against its sensuousness and materiality. Now, for the first time, all of her published poems have been brought together in one volume, offering readers and scholars unprecedented access to Guest's remarkable visionary work. This Collected Poems moves from her early New York School years through her more abstract later work, including some final poems never before published. Switching effortlessly from the real to the dreamlike, the observed to the imagined, this is poetry both gentle and piercing--seemingly simple, but truly and beautifully dislocating. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Quiet here
Must say I'm shocked no one in the poetry world has taken the time to acknowledge Guest's astounding poetic accomplishments here....moving thru painterly NY School to her own brand of abstract lyrical surrealism, she is/was truly a quiet giant, but one that seemed to confound most in the poetry world. The collected poems of Jack Spicer came out at the same time and seemed to capture all the attention...unfortunate. Once again it looks as though Barbara's work will be ignored. ... Read more

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Since her involvement with the group of writers known as the New York School in the 1960s, Barbara Guest’s writing has been admired for its elegance and lucidity. Especially prolific in the last decade, with each new publication she both refines and surprises, such that her influence is now felt across generations of writers and artists.

Spanning three decades of work, this compilation of essays and talks comprises Barbara Guest's most comprehensive commentary to date on writing and poetics. In this volume, Guest uses a wide range of techniques--academic, aphoristic, lyrical, personal, biographical--to explore the phenomena of reading, writing, and thinking, and, in the process, she expands our understanding of what expository writing can do. ... Read more

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Dawn is "the red gaze." It unburdens itself through poetry and its colors. ... Read more

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Precise nostalgic modernism
Guest offers us an eliptical vision of artistic modernity through a nostalgic lens.Her poetic language is precise and elegant.The poems are not quite as elliptical as those in other recent books of hers.My favorite is "Imagined Room"

Do not forget the sky has other zones.

Let it rest on the embankment, closethey eyes... ... Read more

Product Description
This is an anthology of the poems of Barbara Guest. Once associated with the poets of the "New York School", Guest's collections of poetry began with "The Location of Things" (1962). Her books include "Moscow Mansions" (1973), the award-winning "Fair Realism" (1978), the novel "Seeking Air" (1978), and "Defensive Rapture" (1993). In the 1970s her poetics gained in distinction. Her biography "Herself Defined: the poet H.D. and her world", was published in 1984. She has moved on from the postmodern to the stricter discipline of Modernism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

No Soap Radio
Very disappointing. This poetry is all defense, no rapture. Guest has managed to go from unsung to overrated without a proper period of acknowledged mediocrity.

Best introduction to Guest
This is a beautifully produced book that provides the best entry into the strange and elusive poetry of Barbara Guest, one of the original "New York" poets who has only in the past 10 years come to be more widelyrecognized. Readers attuned to innovative poetry appreciate Guest for hercharmed, ethereal elegance and her elliptical narratives.Check out"A Handbook of Surfing" and "The Emphasis Falls onReality." ... Read more

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Poetry.ETRUSCAN READER VI gathers new work from three poets: Robin Blaser, who, along with Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan, was at the heart of the San Francisco Renaissance; Barbara Guest, whose poems "follow distances, some short and some long, through an autobiographical surface"; and Lee Harwood, whose collage-like poetry is an attempt, in words, at creating a four-dimensional world. ... Read more

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Prose. "When I was a girl in Los Angles," Barbara Guestwrites, "the city became a haven for emigres of World War II. Peopleof the arts and film, experts in languages, arrived. The brothersMann, the composers Mahler and Schoenberg. In the studios were Lang,Milestone, Lubitsch. Camermen, story writers. They were people ofexperience and imagination. They were sad with a different kind ofsadness. They did not know about our maturing under their guidance,abstract as it might be. It was an emigr climate we never lost. THECONFETTI TREES grew strange leaves and feathers." Now Guest surprisesagain with a new work that is both fiction and short, poeticallyconceived scenarios for film. In her artful fantasies Guest bequeathsa necessary life to the act of film making. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

No way, Jose, can you see
There is a certain dimension of ironic cleverness that we have a right to expect from soi-disant language writers, but lacking here is that joie de vivre that enlivens language. I'm afraid that a gust of Guest, blowing hard, won't do much more than huff and puff.

Poetic evocation of classic hollywood
Guest is an important poet, but this book of prose sketches or "movie stories" can be appreciated by those who might not find their way into her more ethereal verse.What really comes through is a tremendouslysubtle sensibility both to language and to the visual arts, expressed witha sharp, intelligent sense of humor. ... Read more

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Poetry. Winner of the American Awards in Literature in1996 ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (21)

For Mid-Teens
This book immediately starts with the hard stuff, reproductive organs (male and female), but at a juvenile. I had a hard time trying to determine at what age a girl would want to read this.

good book, with montoring
I would definately read the book first, to make sure you think it's appropriate for your child.My step-daughter is nine, and there are some subjects that are a little too in depth.However, you can't keep people at school from talking about stuff, and this book has given back up to the facts behind our parental guidance.

At least a few times a week she is reading it for information rather than watching TV which is a plus...and everytime she reads it, she consults her mom to make sure she understands, and what is going on.It's allowed for much more open communication in our house about what is happening and will happen as she grows up and goes through puberty.

Wow
Very well written. Helped me understand puberty, the authors did an awesome job! I recomend this for girls' puberty books!

good basics
This was a good introductory book for me and my daughter to "break the ice" on her growing up and approaching puberty

A perfect fit
My neice's daughter is will be 12 this week and really doesn't have anyone to talk to about "girl things."So, I purchased this book for her. She enjoyed it so much that she read straight through it, coming very close to finishing it the same day she received it. ... Read more

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Poetry. "Lifts a spare shadow/ encircling vine,/ does nottarnish bauble/ from overseas and out of silver mine,/ drop in clamorand volume" ("Valorous Vine"). This new book is the first individualcollection of poetry by Guest to be published in Britain.One of thelast living representatives of New York School poetry, Guest'sdelicate imagery and enigmatic phrasing continue to produce work thatis -- all at once -- widely appealing, wildly mysterious andwonderfully distinctive. ... Read more

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A collaboration between poet Barbara Guest and painterLaurie Reid. Its methods are playful and its forms elegant.

In this book poet and artist meet in a "room of liberal fountains/ theimage as it changes," and words -- "wool," "fable," "sails," "speech,""spirit," "flame," "thread," -- all changed on the mysteriouscontinuum of the page. The poems are printed in 3-dimensionalletterpress, while Reid's lines are lithographically reproduced, aprocess that is more sympahtetic to the shifts of water, color, andpaper. ... Read more

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A first collaboration between poet Barbara Guest and artist Anne Dunn. Longtime friends, each has enjoyed a distinguished career in her own field. Certainly Guest is one of the most respected and influential contemporary poets in the US. STRIPPED TALES brings the same crystallizing impulses found in her poetry to a series of poetic narratives. ... Read more

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In Musicality, the poet Barbara Guest and painter June Felter capture the rhythm and tone of a changing landscape. In the smallest half tone and slightest breeze we glimpse what we knew in that moment before all is transformed. The magic of Musicality is the orchestration of a shifting sky and the elusive images that brush our minds in passing. ... Read more