In Paris in 1924 Ernest Hemingway noted: "Djuna Barnes who, according to her publishers is that legendary personality that has dominated the intellectual night-life of Europe for a century is in town. I have never met her, nor read her books, but she looks very nice." Written long before her best-known production--the novel Nightwood (1936), this comment, ambiguous in tone, still sums up Barnes's literary standing. She has often seemed more a slightly pretentious legend than an author read and respected for her genuine achievements--her sophisticated literary skill and her tragic vision.

Since Barnes's present reputation is for fiction, it may seem strange--despite Faulkner's references to her as "a fine one"--to approach her as poet. Yet her writing career began in 1911 with two poems in Harper's Weekly; her last sizable creation, The Antiphon (1958), is a verse play; and her later writing--largely unpublished--is poetry. In fact, except for Nightwood, all...