Not at All What One Is Used To: The Life and Times of Isabella Gardner

Abstract

Unlike Dylan Thomas, Robert Lowell, and Allen Ginsberg--all male stars of the American poetry firmament of the 1950s, and Plath, the tragic female among them-- Isabella Gardner (1915-1981) has suffered from not being taken seriously as poet and editor, perhaps not even by herself. Once her fourth marriage collapsed in 1966, the patrician Gardner began to decline, moving into New York's ultra-bohemian (and ultra-rundown) Chelsea Hotel. After her troubled son, Daniel, a prominent photographer and filmmaker in the downtown scene, died under mysterious circumstances, and her daughter Rose, whose drinking had gotten out of hand, admitted herself to an institution, Gardner drifted through a series of alcohol-fueled dead-end relationships in California until finally returning to the Chelsea Hotel to spend a few final years in relative peace. In telling Gardner's story, Janssen avoids the arcane, particularly when dealing with her rebellious years, when Gardner fought against her white-glove upbringing to pursue a career in the theater. But when Gardner became involved with POETRY magazine, she realized her true calling. The association led to her first and best collection, BIRTHDAYS FROM THE OCEAN. Because of Janssen's many interviews with Gardner intimates and extensive archival research NOT AT ALL WHAT ONE IS USED TO: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ISABELLA GARDNER is much more than a biography: it is the story of a woman whose tumultuous life was emblematic of the cultural unrest in the Unites States at the height of the twentieth century.