Barbara Guest
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.
Also recorded as Barbara Guest Higgins · Barbara Pinson
Barbara Guest
Onehandclapping · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Full name
- Barbara Pinson.
- Born
- 1920 · North Carolina.
- Died
- 2006 · Berkeley.
- Nationality
- United States
- Occupation
- poet · writer · playwright · novelist
- Education
- University of California and Berkeley
- Honours
- PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award · Robert Frost Medal
- Languages
- English
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Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q807448 · wikipedia · Barbara Guest
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The documentary record
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Institutions cited
Bibliothèque nationale de France · Deutsche Nationalbibliothek · Getty Union List of Artist Names
Complete reading chain (JSON)In this article
Early life and education
Early life and education
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 collages 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).
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.
Documentary record
Barbara Guest (6 September 1920 – 15 February 2006) was a writer, artist and poet. The birth of Barbara Guest is recorded on 6 September 1920 in Wilmington, and the death on 15 February 2006 in Berkeley.
Poetry
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." 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. 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."
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
North Carolina and New York City
Residences
North Carolina.
Birth place
Berkeley.
Death place
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- “Barbara Guest”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q807448: Barbara Guest
Reputable secondary · Wikidata
scholarly publication
- Barbara Guest (1923), The New American Poetry, 1945–1960, 1999
Scholarly · Crossref registry · 1999
Selected bibliography
Poetry • The Location of Things (Tibor de Nagy, 1960) • Poems: The Location of Things, Archaics, The Open Skies (Doubleday & Company, 1962) • The Open Skies (1962) • The Blue Stairs (Corinth Books, 1968) • I Ching, with lithographs by Sheila Isham (Mourlot Graphics, 1969). • Moscow Mansions (Viking, 1973) • The Countess from Minneapolis (Burning Deck Press, 1976) • Seeking Air (Black Sparrow, 1977; reprint, Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1997; Grand Iota, 2021) • The Türler Losses (Montréal: Mansfield Book Mart, 1979) • Biography (Burning Deck, 1980) • Quilts (Vehicle Edition, 1981) • Herself Defined: The Poet H. D. and Her World (Doubleday & Company, 1984) • Musicality, with June Felter (1988) • Fair Realism (Sun & Moon Press, 1989) • The Nude, Warren Brandt (Art Editions, New York, 1989) • Defensive Rapture (Sun & Moon Press, 1993) • The Altos, with artist Richard Tuttle (San Francisco: Hank Hine Publisher, 1993) • Selected Poems (Sun & Moon Press, 1995) • Stripped Tales, featuring art by Anne Dunn (Kelsey St. Press, 1995) • Quill Solitary, Apparition (The Post-Apollo Press, 1996) • Seeking Air (Sun & Moon Press, 1997) • Etruscan Reader VI (with Robin Blaser and Lee Harwood) (1998) • Outside of This, That is, with illustration by Trevor Winkfield (Z Press, 1999). • Strings, with artist Ann Slacik (Paris, France, 1999) • The Luminous, with artist Jane Moorman (Palo Alto, California, 1999) • Rocks on a Platter (Wesleyan, 1999) • If So, Tell Me (Reality Street Editions, UK, 1999) • The Confetti Trees (Sun & Moon, 1999) • Symbiosis, with artist Laurie Reid (Berkeley: Kelsey Street Press, 2000) • Miniatures and Other Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2002) • Forces of Imagination: Writing on Writing (Kelsey Street Press, 2003) • Durer in the Window: Reflexions on Art (Roof Books, 2003) • The Red Gaze (Wesleyan University Press, 2005) • Fallschirme, Gebliebter. Ausgewählte Gedichte (German, Bilingual Edition, luxbooks, 2008) • The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008) Prose • Mediations: The Assorted Prose of Barbara Guest, edited with an introduction by Joseph Shafer (Wesleyan University Press, 2025) • Forces of Imagination: Writing on Writing (Kelsey Street Press, 2003). • 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." • Michael Palmer
Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Barbara Guest, revision 1370966798 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Guest, Hadley Haden. The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest. Wesleyan University Press. xviii. 2008. 978-0-8195-6860-1.
- 2.Guest, p. xvii
- 3.Guest, p. xviii
- 4.Haven, Cynthia. PoetryFoundation.org: "When I Say The Word Home, I Almost Whisper It". Lpl.arizona.edu. 1920-09-06.
Bibliography printed in the source article · 38
- The Location of Things (Tibor de Nagy, 1960)
- Poems: The Location of Things, Archaics, The Open Skies (Doubleday & Company, 1962)
- The Open Skies (1962)
- The Blue Stairs (Corinth Books, 1968)
- I Ching, with lithographs by Sheila Isham (Mourlot Graphics, 1969).
- Moscow Mansions (Viking, 1973)
- The Countess from Minneapolis (Burning Deck Press, 1976)
- Seeking Air (Black Sparrow, 1977; reprint, Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1997; Grand Iota, 2021)
- The Türler Losses (Montréal: Mansfield Book Mart, 1979)
- Biography (Burning Deck, 1980)
- Quilts (Vehicle Edition, 1981)
- Herself Defined: The Poet H. D. and Her World (Doubleday & Company, 1984)
- Musicality, with June Felter (1988)
- Fair Realism (Sun & Moon Press, 1989)
- The Nude, Warren Brandt (Art Editions, New York, 1989)
- Defensive Rapture (Sun & Moon Press, 1993)
- The Altos, with artist Richard Tuttle (San Francisco: Hank Hine Publisher, 1993)
- Selected Poems (Sun & Moon Press, 1995)
- Stripped Tales, featuring art by Anne Dunn (Kelsey St. Press, 1995)
- Quill Solitary, Apparition (The Post-Apollo Press, 1996)
- Seeking Air (Sun & Moon Press, 1997)
- Etruscan Reader VI (with Robin Blaser and Lee Harwood) (1998)
- Outside of This, That is, with illustration by Trevor Winkfield (Z Press, 1999).
- Strings, with artist Ann Slacik (Paris, France, 1999)
- The Luminous, with artist Jane Moorman (Palo Alto, California, 1999)
- Rocks on a Platter (Wesleyan, 1999)
- If So, Tell Me (Reality Street Editions, UK, 1999)
- The Confetti Trees (Sun & Moon, 1999)
- Symbiosis, with artist Laurie Reid (Berkeley: Kelsey Street Press, 2000)
- Miniatures and Other Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2002)
- Forces of Imagination: Writing on Writing (Kelsey Street Press, 2003)
- Durer in the Window: Reflexions on Art (Roof Books, 2003)
- The Red Gaze (Wesleyan University Press, 2005)
- Fallschirme, Gebliebter. Ausgewählte Gedichte (German, Bilingual Edition, luxbooks, 2008)
- The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008)
- Mediations: The Assorted Prose of Barbara Guest, edited with an introduction by Joseph Shafer (Wesleyan University Press, 2025)
- Forces of Imagination: Writing on Writing (Kelsey Street Press, 2003).
- Dürer in the Window (Roof Books, 2003).
References
Citations
References
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scholarly publication
Barbara Guest (1923), The New American Poetry, 1945–1960, 1999Crossref registry
Institutional witnessreference work
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
39,529 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
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- Bárbara HeliodoraAuthor
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