A Critical Friendship: Donald Justice and Richard Stern, 1946-1961

Notes

NOTES ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES CS Dana Gioia and William Logan, eds. Certain Solitudes: On the Poetry of Donald Justice. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1997. DJ Donald Justice RS Richard Stern SA Donald Justice. The Summer Anniversaries. Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1960. INTRODUCTION 1. Richard Stern, “A Very Few Memories of Don Justice.” 2. Stern, What Is What Was, 42. 3. Stern never published a collection of his poetry, nor Justice the novels he began to draft. 4. Stern, What Is What Was, 45. 5. RS to DJ, February 7, 1946. 6. DJ to RS, February 29 [1948]. 7. DJ to RS, February 27 [1955]. 8. See Harp, For Us, What Music?; Charles Wright, “Jump Hog or Die,” in CS; Mark Strand, “A Reminiscence,” in CS; and Strand, “Mark Strand on Donald Justice.” Unlike others who have written about Justice’s competitive streak, Strand insists that it did not find its way into the classroom or workshop. 9. Stern published twenty-two books, including novels and collections of short stories, essays, and what he called “orderly miscellany.” 190 NOTES TO PAGES xix–9 10. For example, his early novels Europe; or, Up and Down with Schreiber and Baggish (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961) and Stitch (New York: Harper and Row, 1965). 11. Peter Taylor was married to Jean’s sister Eleanor Ross Taylor, becoming Justice’s brother-in-law in 1947. Through Taylor, Justice was introduced to the poets Ransom, Tate, and Robert Lowell as well as others associated with the Fugitive group. 12. Cowan, Fugitive Group, xv–xxiii. 13. Searle, “New Criticism.” 14. CS, xviii. 15. Justice, “Fugitive-Agrarian Myth.” 16. DJ to RS, February 15, 1949. 17. DJ to RS, April 14, 1949 (Stern Papers, Regenstein Library, 56:2). 18. Justice was awarded not a fellowship but a teaching assistanceship, a position that paid little and demanded much. 19. See CS, 206; see also David Galler’s review “Four Poets,” originally published in Sewanee Review 69, no. 1 (1961) (reprinted in CS, 212–13) and George P. Elliott’s “Donald Justice” from Perspective 12, no. 4 (1962) (reprinted in CS, 214–15). 20. RS to DJ [February 1949] (Private TS). 21. DJ to RS, December 27, 1948. 22. DJ to RS, June 14 [1955]. 23. RS to DJ, Tuesday [May 1949]. 24. DJ to RS, June 14 [1955]. 25. Eliot’s early poems “Ode” and “Before Morning.” See “Correspondence of 1949 to 1950,” note 30. CORRESPONDENCE OF 1946 TO 1947 1. This being the first extant letter, which book he refers to is unclear. Justice worked on several novels during his correspondence with Stern, though none were ever published. 2. Justice was born in Miami, Florida, on August 12, 1925. He died in Iowa City on August 6, 2004. 3. The rhymes of this idiom are reminiscent of his poem “Women in Love” (SA). 4. Stern’s “showyily” is a playful misspelling. Both writers took pleasure in wordplay and enjoyed the puns and exaggerated meanings that sometimes resulted from typographical errors. NOTES TO PAGES 10–15 191 5. At the time of this letter, English poet, critic, editor, and playwright Stephen Spender (1909–95) was the author of several books of poems, including Twenty Poems (London: Blackwell, 1930) and The Still Centre (London: Faber, 1939). See also DJ to RS, October 1 [1951]. 6. Virginia Hunter was Justice’s girlfriend during the semester he spent as an undergraduate at Chapel Hill. 7. Justice’s “Poe and Virginia.” See DJ to RS, February 5, 1946. 8. To the right of the original Gothic letterhead, Stern wrote, “I wanted these letters to be Gargoyles—they did the best they could.” 9. Auden’s poem “Petition,” lines 13–14, lends Stern his metaphor: “Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at / New styles of architecture, a change of heart.” 10. Justice met Jean Catherine Ross in a graduate Chaucer class at Chapel Hill. They were married on August 22, 1947. 11. After working briefly at a clothing store in Evansville, Indiana, Stern took a job with Paramount in New York City. There he did publicity work while training to join the international sales force. In a later letter he describes working alongside the grandson of Paramount founder Adolf Zukor (1873–1976). 12. Stern was engaged to Jo Bledsoe following graduation. Her mother disapproved and ended the engagement. 13. The reason for the omission of a...