April Twilights
 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (January 2010) |
 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
[edit]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
[edit]- ^ 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
[edit]- Full Edition at the Willa Cather Archive
April Twilights public domain audiobook at LibriVox
