Drafts, fragments, and poems : the complete poetry
/ Joan Murray ; preface by John Ashbery ; edited and with an introduction by Farnoosh Fathi.
- New York : New York Review Books , c2017
- xxxiii, 256 pages ; 18 cm.
The first appearance of this award-winning writer's work since the 1940s, this collection, which includes an introduction by John Ashbery, restores Joan Murray's striking poetry to its originally intended form. When John Ashbery hailed Joan Murray as a major influence in an essay in 2003, her sole collection Poems, had been out of print for decades. Joan Murray hit the literary scene as a bright talent in American poetry just before her death of a heart condition in 1942. She was only in her twenties. After her death, W.H. Auden selected Murray for the 1946 Yale Younger Poets Prize. As she left behind no definitive edition of her work, her Poems were compiled by Grant Code, a close friend of Murray's mother. Code heavily edited the manuscript, often streamlining Murray's raw lyricism, and left out dozens of poems--Provided by publisher.