Marcia Nardi (1901–1990), born Lillian Massell in Boston, Massachusetts, was an American poet.

Biography

Wellesley College Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficial g ...

but decided to drop out of university in 1921, at which time she moved to

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

and remade herself as the poet Marcia Nardi. During this period, Nardi contributed poetry and book reviews to publications such as ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...

'', ''

The New Republic ''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hum ...

'', ''Quarterly Review of Literature'', ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', and the ''

New York Herald Tribune The ''New York Herald Tribune'' was a newspaper published between 1924 and 1966. It was created in 1924 when Ogden Mills Reid of the ''New-York Tribune'' acquired the ''New York Herald''. It was regarded as a "writer's newspaper" and competed ...

''. The birth of Nardi's son, Paul, in 1926 and the responsibilities of motherhood required Nardi to curtail her writing in order to earn a living through odd jobs (such as clerking at a department store, waitressing, and proofreading). In 1942, Nardi met

William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician practicing both pedia ...

with whom she began a correspondence. Williams used Nardi's letters, which discuss the difficulties of being a female poet in contemporary literary circles, in his epic poem '' Paterson''. Williams also encouraged Nardi to publish her poetry, an endeavor that came to fruition with Nardi's first book ''Poems'' published by

Swallow Press Ohio University Press (OUP), founded in 1947, is the oldest and largest scholarly press in the state of Ohio. It is a department of Ohio University that publishes under its own name and the imprint Swallow Press. History The press publishes a ...

in 1956. In the 1940s, Nardi married painter and writer John Charles Lang and the couple resided in a community of artists called Maverick Colony. Nardi worked extensively with John Edmunds between 1972 and 1983, with the intention of publishing a collection of her poetry; however this project did not result in a publication before Nardi's death in 1990.

Sources

The Marcia Nardi Papers
are at th
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
* Oliphant, Dave, ed. ''Rossetti to Sexton: Six Women Poets at Texas''. Austin, Texas: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, 1992. * O’Neil, Elizabeth Murrie, ed. ''The Last Word: Letters Between Marcia Nardi and William Carlos Williams''. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1994. * Nardi, Marcia. ''Poems''. Denver: A. Swallow, 1956.

External links

* Marcia Nardi Collection. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Nardi, Marcia 1901 births 1990 deaths 20th-century American poets American literary critics American women literary critics American women poets 20th-century American women writers American women non-fiction writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers Boston Latin Academy alumni