First Awakenings
The Early Poems of Laura Riding
Laura Riding
 

When Laura Riding sailed for England in 1925 she left many of her possessions with a friend for safekeeping. Among the items was a box containing the typescripts of more than two hundred poems. These poems remained in storage until they were discovered in storage and returned to Laura (Riding) Jackson in 1979.
Rediscovering these poems of her youth, Jackson saw in them “a precise anticipation of an envisaged whole of poetry.” Readers will find here the same confident authorial presence that permeates the “sell-determining canon” of her poetic work, many of the themes developed in her later work, and a characteristic freshness of vision and scrupulosity of word-use. These poems are experiments in what poetry can do.
Those familiar with the poetry of Laura Riding will read First Awakenings with the delight of enlarged recognition, and those new to her work will find direction for the mind’s journey.

“...this is the early work of an important poet, one who could conjure the musicality of thought and fit the eccentric orbits of ideas into the taut logic of her verse.”
—Publishers Weekly

Laura (Riding) Jackson (1901-1991) is the author of more than forty books of poetry, criticism, and story. In 1991, just months prior to her death, she was awarded the Bollingen Prize for lifelong service to poetry.

Hardcover / $29.95 / ISBN 978-0-89255-179-8 / 280 pages / Poetry