Barbara Guest (1920-2006) was an American poet and a member of the New York School of poetry – part of the larger New York School of arts and literature that emerged in the early 1950s and continued to promote an avant-garde and surreal approach to the arts throughout the 1960s. Having written 15 books of poetry, she was awarded the 1999 Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the Poetry Society of America. She also wrote a critically acclaimed biography of the poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Herself Defined: The Poet H.D. and Her World (1984). Guest was also an artist and worked as an editor for ARTnews from 1951-1959, during her time of association with the New York School. Guest’s poetry is marked by an abstract approach to her subject matter playing against her use of vivid language. She saw composition as a matter of spontaneous interplay between imagination and the act of writing.
Barbara Guest (1920-2006) was an American poet and a member of the New York School of poetry – part of the larger New York School of arts and literature that emerged in the early 1950s and continued to promote an avant-garde and surreal approach to the arts throughout the 1960s. Having written 15 books of poetry, she was awarded the 1999 Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the Poetry Society of America. She also wrote a critically acclaimed biography of the poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Herself Defined: The Poet H.D. and Her World (1984). Guest was also an artist and worked as an editor for ARTnews from 1951-1959, during her time of association with the New York School. Guest’s poetry is marked by an abstract approach to her subject matter playing against her use of vivid language. She saw composition as a matter of spontaneous interplay between imagination and the act of writing.
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