Gardner, Isabella [Stewart]

Gardner, Isabella [Stewart]( 1915–81),
Massachusetts-born poet, whose lively and loving lyrics written in diverse forms appear in Birthdays from the Ocean (1955), The Looking Glass (1961), and the collectionWest of Childhood (1965). Edith Sitwell said, “the poems arise from her personality,” and the author herself said, “they are the poems of a poet who is woman first and poet second…. My poems celebrate and affirm life, but they are also elegiac. My central theme is the …failure of the I–Thou relationship.” She was married to Allen Tate (1959–66) and was an associate editor of Poetry (1952–56).