Drafts, Fragments, and Poems

<p><strong>The first appearance of this award-winning writer's work since the 1940s, this collection, which includes an introduction by John Ashbery, restores Joan Murray's striking poetry to its originally intended form.</strong><br /><br />Though John Ashbery hailed Joan Murray as a key influence on his work, Murray's sole collection, <em>Poems</em>, published after her death at the early age of twenty-four and selected by W. H. Auden for inclusion in the Yale Series of Younger Poets, has been almost entirely unavailable for the better part of half a century. <em>Poems </em>was put together by Grant Code, a close friend of Murray's mother, and when Murray's papers, long thought to be lost, reappeared in 2013, it became clear that Code had exercised a heavy editorial hand. This new collection, edited by Farnoosh Fathi from Murray's original manuscripts, restores Murray's raw lyricism and visionary lines, while also including a good deal of previously unpublished work, as well as a selection of her exuberant letters.</p>