April Twilights
![]() First edition cover | |
Author | Willa Cather |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Poetry |
Publisher | The Gorham Press |
Publication date | 1903 |
Publication place | United States |
April Twilights is a 1903 collection of poems by Willa Cather. It was reedited by Cather in 1923 and 1933.[1] The poems were first published in many literary reviews,[2] often under pen names.[3]
Literary significance and criticism
Cather's influences for the poems were, among others, Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Oscar Wilde, Richard Wagner, Virgil's Georgics, William Shakespeare, François Villon, Pierre-Jean de Béranger, John Keats's Endymion and Hyperion, Alphonse Daudet's Kings in Exile, Heinrich Heine's The Gods in Exile and The North Sea, and Edward Coley Burne-Jones.[4]
Cather's favourite poems were Grandmither, Mills of Montmartre and The Hawthorn Tree.[5]
At the time of publication, the collection received mixed reviews; the Pittsburgh Gazette, the New York Times Saturday Review, Academy and Literature, the Criterion, the Bookman, the Chicago Tribune, and the Poet Lore praised it; The Dial thought it was bland.[6] Cather decided to buy the remaining copies and burn them.[5]
Mark Twain praised her poem The Palatine.[7]
It has been noted that Cather broaches 'the enduring aura of a homosexual myth' as she alludes to Antinous several times in her poems.[8]
References
- ^ Bernice Slote, 'Bibliography', Willa Cather, April Twilights, University of Nebraska Press, 1968, page 75
- ^ Bernice Slote, 'Bibliography', Willa Cather, April Twilights, University of Nebraska Press, 1968, pages 53-58
- ^ Bernice Slote, 'Bibliography', Willa Cather, April Twilights, University of Nebraska Press, 1968, page 59
- ^ Bernice Slote, 'Willa Cather and Her First Book', Willa Cather, April Twilights, University of Nebraska Press, 1968, pages xxv-xxviii
- ^ a b Bernice Slote, 'Willa Cather and Her First Book', Willa Cather, April Twilights, University of Nebraska Press, 1968, page xxiii
- ^ Bernice Slote, 'Willa Cather and Her First Book', Willa Cather, April Twilights, University of Nebraska Press, 1968, pages xxi-xxiii
- ^ Bernice Slote, 'Willa Cather and Her First Book', Willa Cather, April Twilights, University of Nebraska Press, 1968, page xliii
- ^ John P. Anders, Willa Cather's Sexual Aesthetics and the Male Homosexual Literary Tradition, University of Nebraska Press, 2002, p. 21
External links
- Full Edition at the Willa Cather Archive
April Twilights public domain audiobook at LibriVox
- v
- t
- e
- "Peter"
- "Lou, the Prophet"
- "The Elopement of Allen Poole"
- "A Tale of the White Pyramid"
- "A Son of the Celestial"
- "The Clemency of the Court"
- "The Fear That Walks by Noonday"
- "On the Divide"
- "A Night at Greenway Court"
- "Tommy, the Unsentimental"
- "The Princess Baladina – Her Adventure"
- "The Count of Crow's Nest"
- "The Burglar's Christmas"
- "The Strategy of the Were-Wolf Dog"
- "A Resurrection"
- "The Prodigies"
- "Nanette: An Aside"
- "The Way of the World"
- "The Westbound Train"
- "Eric Hermannson's Soul"
- "The Dance at Chevalier's"
- "The Sentimentality of William Tavener"
- "The Affair at Grover Station"
- "A Singer's Romance"
- "The Conversion of Sum Loo"
- "Jack-a-Boy"
- "El Dorado: A Kansas Recessional"
- "The Professor's Commencement"
- "The Treasure of Far Island"
- "A Death in the Desert"
- "A Wagner Matinee"
- "The Sculptor's Funeral"
- "Flavia and Her Artists"
- "The Garden Lodge"
- "The Marriage of Phaedra"
- "Paul's Case"
- "The Namesake"
- "The Profile"
- "The Willing Muse"
- "Eleanor's House"
- "On the Gulls' Road"
- "The Enchanted Bluff"
- "The Joy of Nelly Deane"
- "Behind the Singer Tower"
- "The Bohemian Girl"
- "Consequences"
- "The Bookkeeper's Wife"
- "The Diamond Mine"
- "A Gold Slipper"
- "Ardessa"
- "Scandal"
- "Her Boss"
- "Coming, Eden Bower!"
- "Uncle Valentine"
- "Double Birthday"
- "Neighbour Rosicky"
- "Two Friends"
- "The Old Beauty"
- "Before Breakfast"
- "The Best Years"
collections
- April Twilights
- A Lost Lady (1934 film)
- O Pioneers! (1992 film)
- My Antonia (1995 film)
- The Song of the Lark (2001 film)
- O Pioneers! (2009 opera)