You recall treatments
        of 'being' and 'nothingness'
        illuminations apt
        to appear from variable directions --
        they are orderly as motors
        floating on the waterway,

        so silence is pictorial
        when silence is real.

from 'An Emphasis Falls on Reality'

Barbara Guest is one of our finest poets; a toughened imagery, a limpid
sound, the world seen clearly and the particles of seeing welded into a
fluent whole. From an experiential knowledge of Dadaism and Surrealism she
has moved on to create her own lyricism. Her images seem to feed from her
hand like birds, and then to take wing again.
James Schuyler

Once associated with the poets of the 'New York School', Barbara Guest's
collections of poetry, scattered among many imprints, begin with The
Location of Things (1962). Her books include Moscow Mansions (1973), the
award-winning Fair Realism (1978), the novel Seeking Air (1978), and
Defensive Rapture (1993).
    
In the 1970s her poetics gained in distinction. Her biography,
Herself Defined: the poet H.D. and her world, was published in 1984.
Clearly she learned from her H.D. Though her work in Fair Realism may have
been useful to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, Guest has moved from the post-modern
into the purer air, the stricter disciplines, of Modernism.

    Eve stands by her cypress,
    a quiet nude studied by Cranach,

    The solid body is led through crocuses. from 'The Nude'