ZATURENSKA, Marya

Born 12 September 1902, Kiev, Russia Married Horace Gregory, 1925

Marya Zaturenska emigrated to the U.S. with her parents and a younger brother in 1909; the family settled in New York City. At fourteen, she began working in a factory by day and attending high school at night. She also worked briefly as a newspaper reporter. Her education, at Valparaiso University and the University of Wisconsin, where she spent her last year (1925) in the library school, was financed by scholarships. Her husband was a poet and critic.

Zaturenska's poems are traditional in form and meter. Because of the delicate, abstract quality of much of her work, they have little emotional impact unless a number of poems are read together, allowing for an accumulation of insight and feeling. An extensive reading also reveals how she uses stock images, usually drawn from nature—suns, moons, water, gardens—to form pastoral and dreamlike landscapes. Characters from myth, literature, art, and history people Zaturenska's poems; she has written only a few "personal" poems, in which the persona and the poet seem to be one. These poems, such as "The Invaders," about children growing up and away from their parents, and "Another Snowstorm," in which the poet's faith reconciles her to approaching death (both from The Hidden Waterfall, 1974), seem timeless. However, the ones that lean heavily on tradition too often seem mere exercises, and those that remain abstract seem hollow or cryptic.

Frequently, Zaturenska's poems are about a romantic and mysterious character who, renouncing passion, has become a recluse or whose lover is lost or dead. This interest in romantic figures lies behind the choice of subjects for her prose studies as well: she has written on Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Siddal, and Algernon Charles Swinburne.

A sense of loss pervades much of Zaturenska's poetry—not only the loss of love but the loss of homeland, innocence, youth, and joy. She has a gift for capturing a sense of the duality of human experience. The girl in "Girl and Scarecrow" (Cold Morning Sky, 1937) exults in the joy of beauty and youth while the "face of a scarecrow sorrow-worn and sick" lurks behind her mirror. In "Rare Joy" (Cold Morning Sky), she shows that the price of peace is a loss of passion. Such a loss may not be great, since passion can be disturbing, but it is accompanied by nostalgia or yearning.

For over 40 years, Zaturenska has polished her craft. She has received a number of awards, the most prestigious being the Pulitzer Prize, which she received in 1938 for Cold Morning Sky. While highly dependent on the past, she is, as she herself puts it, "an independent"—true to her own interests, her own voice, and her own vision.

Other Works:

Threshold and Hearth (1934, 1983). The Listening Landscape (1941). The Golden Mirror (1944). A History of American Poetry, 1910-1940, with H. Gregory (1946). Christina Rossetti: A Portrait with Background (1949). Selected Poems (1954, 1983). Terraces of Light (1960). The Crystal Cabinet: An Invitation to Poetry, with H. Gregory (1962) Collected Poems (1965).

Bibliography:

Axelrod, L. S., Moonsongs: Seven Poems For Soprano and Piano (musical score, 1986).

Reference works:

Contemporary Poets (1975).

Other references:

NYT (3 May 1938). Poetry (Feb. 1935, Sept. 1941, May 1975).

—JEANNINE DOBBS