Barbara Howes

• Name — Barbara Howes • Born — May 1, 1914 • Birthplace — New York City, New York, U.S. • Died — 24 February 1996 • Place of death — Bennington, Vermont, U.S. • Genre — poetry • Alma Mater — Bennington College

She was adopted and raised in Chestnut Hill, attending Beaver Country Day School. She graduated from Bennington College in 1937. She edited the literary magazine Chimera from 1943 to 1947 and lived in Greenwich Village. In 1947 she married the poet William Jay Smith and had two sons, David and Gregory. After divorcing in "the mid-1960s", she lived in Pownal, Vermont. In 1971, she signed a letter protesting proposed cuts to the School of the Arts, Columbia University. Her work was published in: Atlantic, Chicago Review, New Directions, New Republic, New Yorker, New York Times Book Review, Saturday Review, Southern Review, University of Kansas Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Yale Review.

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* * * * * * • Moving, Elysian Press (New York, NY), 1983. *

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* * • The Road Commissioner and Other Stories, illustrated by Gregory Smith, Stinehour Press, 1983.

• New Poems by American Poets, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1957 • Modern Verse in English, Macmillan, 1958 • Modern American Poetry, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1962 • Poet's Choice, Dial (New York, NY), 1962 • Modern Poets, McGraw (New York City), 1963 • Of Poetry and Power, Basic Books (New York City), 1964 • The Girl in the Black Raincoat, edited by George Garrett, Duell, Sloane & Pierce, 1966 • The Marvelous Light, edited by Helen Plotz, Crowell (New York, NY), 1970 • Inside Outer Space, edited by Robert Vas Dias, Anchor Books (New York, NY), 1970.

Reading the Collected Poems, one sees Howes very clearly as a woman writing in one of the oddest but most important traditions of American poetry. Howes stands with Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, and ultimately Emily Dickinson in a lineage of women writers passionately committed to the independence and singularity of the poetic imagination. (To this group one might also add Louise Bogan, Julia Randall, May Swenson, and Josephine Miles). They form an eccentric but eminent sorority.

• "Barbara Howes", Poetry Foundation • Barbara Howes Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.