Craft: Laura Riding

Laura Riding:

I recommend that the poems be read as a report of what it is like to live by the sense of life one finds in one as a being of the human kind—this meaning a sense of total community: to try to speak as oneself not fearing to be overheard, whatever there is to say, wherever, whenever.

Laura Riding (1901-1991) sometimes known as Laura (Riding) Jackson or Laura Riding Gottschalk, was a major poetic voice and remains underrated. She created some of the peak Modernist poems in English and is one of the most important poets of the 20th century. She was initially associated with The Fugitive magazine, which existed between 1922-1925 and published at Vanderbilt University. Her passionate, stark, immediate, spare, and uncompromising poems should be read by all of us.