Janet Lewis: Enduring Imagist

In 1997 and 1998, Catherine J. Kordich and I conducted an extensive interview with Imagist poet and novelist, Janet Lewis. The wife of Yvor Winters was famous herself for the short novel The Wife of Martin Guerre, which Evan S. Connell, in the Atlantic Monthly, called “One of the most significant short novels in English.” He also said, “I cannot think of another writer whose stature so far exceeds her public recognition.” Our interview, which we believe to be Janet Lewis’s last, appeared in the first issue of my journal Tundra: The Journal of the Short Poem in July 1999. I’ve just added the complete interview, “Enduring Imagist: An Interview with Janet Lewis (1899–1998),” to the Interviews page, and hope that it might inspire more readers to discover, or rediscover, this fine novelist and surefooted poet, indeed an enduring Imagist.