cover image New Selected Poems of Marya Zaturenska

New Selected Poems of Marya Zaturenska

Marya Zaturenska. Syracuse University Press, $24.95 (169pp) ISBN 978-0-8156-0717-5

After immigrating from Russia to a downtrodden Manhattan neighborhood at age eight, and quitting school to begin working in factories at 14, Marya Zaturenska (1902-1982) published two poems in Poetry when she was 18 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 for her collection Cold Morning Sky. Now, with New Selected Poems of Marya Zaturenska, editor Robert Phillips presents a range of her work from early poems, some of them uncollected, through selections from her several books and ending with some translations of Italian poetry. Her rhyming, passionate, sometimes precious work proves her a consummate modern lyric poet. Phillips's informative biographical and critical introduction describes her social and intellectual milieu, which included the likes of Willa Cather, the Lewis Mumfords, Muriel Rukeyser and Malcolm Cowley.