Not at all what one is used to [electronic resource] : the life and times of Isabella Gardner / Marian Janssen.

ISBN:

9780826272324

Title:

Author:

Janssen, Marian, 1953-

Personal Author:

Janssen, Marian, 1953-

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 377 pages) : illustrations

Contents:

Of Belle -- "The walled garden," 1915-1933 -- "Not at all what one is used to--," 1934-1942 -- "Shapiro Shangri La," 1943-1949 -- "Writing poetry," 1950-1954 -- "On the wing," 1955-1958 -- "Courting lovers," 1958-1961 -- "Book and bed and booze and blunders of the heart," 1962-1965 -- "The unaired flat," 1966-1973 -- "The dead center of all alone," 1974-1981.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Personal Subject:

Gardner, Isabella.

Subject Term:

Women poets, American -- 20th century -- Biography.

Poets, American -- 20th century -- Biography.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

2010

Publication Information:

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
811.54 23	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

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Summary

Born in 1915 to one of New England's elite wealthy families, Isabella Gardner was expected to follow a certain path in life--one that would take her from marriageable debutante to proper society lady. But that plan was derailed when at age eighteen, Isabella caused a drunk-driving accident. Her family, to shield her from disgrace, sent her to Europe for acting studies, not foreseeing how life abroad would fan the romantic longings and artistic impulses that would define the rest of Isabella's years. In Not at All What One Is Used To, author Marian Janssen tells the story of this passionate, troubled woman, whose career as a poet was in constant compromise with her wayward love life and her impulsive and reckless character.

Life took Gardner from the theater world of the 1930s and '40s to the poetry scene of the '50s and '60s to the wild, bohemian art life of New York's Hotel Chelsea in the '70s. She often followed where romance, rather than career, led her. At nineteen, she had an affair with a future president of Ireland, then married and divorced three famous American husbands in succession. Turning from acting to poetry, Gardner became associate editor of Chicago's Poetry magazine and earned success with her best-received collection, Birthdays from the Ocean , in 1955. Soon after, her life took a turn when she met the southern poet Allen Tate. He was married to Caroline Gordon but left her to wed Gardner, who moved to Minneapolis and gave up writing to please him, but after a few short years, Tate fell for a young nun and abandoned her. In the liveliest of places at the right times, Gardner associated with many of the most significant cultural figures of her age, including her cousin Robert Lowell, T.S. Eliot, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Virgil Thomson, Tennessee Williams, and Robert Penn Warren. But famous connections could never save Isabella from herself. Having abandoned her work, she suffered through alcoholism, endured more failed relationships, and watched the lives of her children unravel fatally. Toward the end of her life, though, she took her pen back up for the poems in her final volume. Redeemed by her writing, Gardner died alone in 1981, just after being named the first poet laureate of New York State. Through interviews with many Gardner intimates and extensive archival research, author Marian Janssen delves deep into the life of a woman whose poetry, according to one friend, "probably saved her sanity." Much more than a biography, Not at All What One Is Used To is the story of a woman whose tumultuous life was emblematic of the cultural unrest at the height of the twentieth century.

Author Notes

Marian Janssen serves as head of the International Office of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. She is the author of The Kenyon Review, 1939-1970: A Critical History.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

July 7, 2011, will mark the 30th anniversary of the death of Isabella Gardner at the age of 64. Unlike Dylan Thomas, Robert Lowell, and Allen Ginsberg-all male stars of the American poetry firmament of the 1950s, and Plath, the tragic female among them-Gardner's reputation, Janssen suggests, suffers from not being taken seriously, perhaps not even by herself. Once her fourth marriage collapsed in 1966, the patrician Gardner began to decline, moving into New York's ultra-bohemian (and ultra-rundown) Chelsea Hotel. After her troubled son, Daniel, a prominent photographer and filmmaker in the downtown scene, died under mysterious circumstances, and her daughter Rose, whose drinking had gotten out of hand, admitted herself to an institution, Gardner drifted through a series of alcohol-fueled dead-end relationships in California until finally returning to the Chelsea Hotel to spend a few final years in relative peace. In telling Gardner's story, Janssen avoids the arcane, particularly when dealing with her rebellious years, when Gardner fought against her white-glove upbringing to pursue a career in the theater. But when she became involved with Poetry magazine, she realized her true calling. The association led to her first and best collection, Birthdays from the Ocean, and these narrative threads breathe vivid life into a highly accessible biography. Photos. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Choice Review

In the mid-1950s, Gardner (1915-81) was among a generation of new American poets expected to extend the mantle of modernism. In her journals, Sylvia Plath named Gardner as a worthy competitor. Yet the woman and her work have been undeservedly ignored--in part because Gardner published sporadically and then ceased to publish at the request of her husband, Allen Tate, whom she later divorced. She did resume publication, and interest in her work revived briefly. But then she died and lapsed into obscurity. Janssen highlights the difficult position women had in a power structure that was still male dominated and favored the publication of male poets. Gardner herself contributed to this patriarchal attitude, Janssen reports, by discounting the work of such important predecessors as Amy Lowell and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Though the elegant Gardner played a man's game far too often, she should not be overlooked. Janssen's sensitive biography should help restore Gardner to her rightful place in modern poetry. Based on extensive archival research and on interviews with Gardner's contemporaries, this exemplary biography provides fresh insight into recent American literary history. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. C. Rollyson Bernard M. Baruch College, CUNY