The Diaries of Marya Zaturenska, 1938-1944

The poet Marya Zaturenska kept diaries throughout her adult life. The years recorded in this selection were critical in her personal and professional development. It was a time when she and her husband, the poet Horace Gregory, were at the epicenter of the New York literary scene, a scene transformed and invigorated by the influx of writers and artists fleeing Hitler's Europe; when their apartment on Riverside Drive became a regular port of call for poets of several generations.
During these years Marya Zaturenska dealt with increasing anxieties about her health, domestic tensions and upheavals, and an ambivalent relationship with the literary establishment. Friendships formed and abandoned play an important part in the narrative, as do her critical responses to her own work and that of others. During this period, in spite of self-doubts and near despair, Zaturenska reached maturity as a poet and laid the groundwork for her future accomplishment.
As a chronicle of the time - a vivid firsthand account of literary New York during World War II - and as a candid self-portrait of a complex, tormented, and remarkably gifted woman, these diaries constitute a significant contribution to American autobiographical literature.

Marya Zaturenska, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Cold Morning Sky, published eight books of poetry and the biography Christina Rossetti: A Portrait with Background. With her husband, Horace Gregory, she wrote A History of American Poetry, 1900-1940 Mary Beth Hinton is a writer and editor for Syracuse University