Nardi, Marcia

Marcia Nardi, American poet, was born Lilian Massell in Boston and attended Girls' Latin School and Wellesley College, which she left in 1921 to live in Greenwich Village and to write. During this period Nardi contributed poetry and book reviews to publications such as the Nation, New Republic, Quarterly Review of Literature, the New York Times, and the New York Herald Tribune . In 1926 her son Paul was born, and Nardi was forced to take a variety of jobs to support him and herself. In 1942 she began a correspondence with William Carlos Williams, who used long sections of her letters in Books I and II of Paterson . Her Poems was published by Alan Swallow in 1956, and she received a Guggenheim fellowship in the following year. 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.

From the guide to the Marcia Nardi collection, 1949-1983, (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

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