Zaturenska, Marya 1902–

Marya Zaturenska is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Russian-born American poet. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 13-16, rev. ed.)

Reading Marya Zaturenska's Collected Poems has been a genuine pleasure which I would gladly share with as many readers as possible. The difficulty is that she is a literary poet, and the conventions she invokes have for some time been out of favor, and the poets themselves are no longer read. Aside from the influence of a few Italian and English Renaissance poets, the most significant body of poetry behind her work is that of the English decadence, especially that of Swinburne and the Rossettis. Certainly there is nothing wrong in being a literary poet—that is, a poet who derives much of his strength from literary commonplaces—for Sidney, Campion, and Herrick are such poets; for that matter, so are Yeats and Pound. The difficulty with Miss Zaturenska's work is that although her...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass