Katherine Anne Porter's Poetry

by Darlene Harbour Unrue

Katherine Anne Porter's Poetry makes available for the first time the complete poetic canon of one of America's most-celebrated writers. Revered for her award-winning short stories, Porter published just thirty-two poems and poetry translations, although she composed―and subsequently destroyed―hundreds. From fragmentary notes and letters found among Porter's papers, Darlene Harbour Unrue has recovered and edited eighteen unpublished poems. It is a significant addition to the Porter canon, the newly found poems join Porter's published verse, including the entire text of the now-rare Katherine Anne Porter's French Song-Book, to create a unique commentary on the writer's life and work.

Interspersed with photographs of Porter, the volume includes a substantial critical and biographical essay in which Unrue explains the significance of the poems and describes the relationship between Porter's poetry and fiction.

Porter's pleasant, original lyrics and translations serve as an index to the stages of her intellectual development and, in some cases, an intermediate phase in her creative process. According to Unrue, the value of the poems lies in their service as emblems for the crucial experiences of Porter's life and for the subjects, forms, themes, images, and symbols of her exquisitely wrought fiction.

Genres: Poetry

188 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1996

Reviews

[Grady Ormsby · Rating 2 out of 5]

Katherine Anne Porter’s Poetry edited by Darlene Harbour Unrue is a rather obscure volume that focuses on Porter’s verse. Not many people are familiar with her poetry. There are two reasons. There are only a few dozen poems and they are far from first-rate. Editor Unrue is a professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. I’m sarcastically suggesting she wrote the book because no one else had. It’s easy to be the world’s leading authority on a subject in which there is virtually no interest. My failure to be impressed by Porter’s poetry should in no way imply that I am not impressed by her skills as a writer. Her novel Ship of Fools, her novellas and collections of short stories easily qualify her as one of America’s premier authors.