Hildegarde Flanner — Young Girl and Later Poems

3 June 1899, Indianapolis, Indiana – 27 May 1987, Calistoga, California

Hildegarde Flanner wrote across nearly seven decades, moving from the brilliant, myth-haunted lyrics of her Berkeley years to poems shaped by Southern California streets, machines, deserts, fires, gardens, and threatened open land. Time’s Profile gathered the work that first made her nationally visible; If There Is Time placed her in James Laughlin’s New Directions series during the Second World War; In Native Light returned to western landscape in collaboration with her husband, the architect and engraver Frederick Monhoff. Her late poems could be comic, apocalyptic, ecological, familial, and startlingly experimental. This edition resets the seven substantial poetry witnesses now available in the archive, keeping each book as its own chronological section and retaining repeated poems when Flanner herself republished or revised them. It preserves lineation, stanza divisions, subtitles, dedications, and sequence while removing page furniture, scan noise, and unmistakable OCR damage. The one-act play Mansions and the prose essays in At the Gentle Mercy of Plants are documented but not folded into the poetry text.

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Catalogue

Independent Los Angeles Modernisms

Associations

Architecture Art and Visual Culture Homes, Gardens, and Salons Los Angeles Book Arts Modernism Nature, Science, and Environment Powell–Ritchie Circle

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Bibliography

Flanner, Hildegarde. Young Girl and Other Poems. H. S. Crocker, 1920.

———. Mansions: A Play in One Act. Stewart & Kidd, 1920.

———. This Morning. Frank Shay, 1921.

———. A Tree in Bloom and Other Verses. J. Daniel, 1924.

———. Valley Quail. Ward Ritchie Press, 1929.

———. Time’s Profile. Macmillan, 1929.

———. If There Is Time. New Directions, 1942.

———. In Native Light. Privately printed, 1970.

———. The Hearkening Eye. Ahsahta Press, 1979.

———. “Atlantis Rises,” “The Letters of Robert Oppenheimer: Postscript,” “Just Between You and Me,” and “A.P.T.W.H.B.A.” Anthology 81. Ikuta Press, 1981.

———. Brief Cherishing: A Napa Valley Harvest. 1982.

———. At the Gentle Mercy of Plants: Essays and Poems. John Daniel, 1986.

———. Different Images: Portraits of Remembered People. 1987.

———. Poems Collected and Selected. John Daniel, 1988. Foreword by Janet Lewis.

Works About the Author

The Bancroft Library. “A Gift to California.” Bancroftiana, no. 93, Jan. 1987.

Online Archive of California. Hildegarde Flanner Papers, 1923–1983, bulk 1923–1953. Huntington Library finding aid.

———. Hildegarde Flanner Papers. Bancroft Library finding aid.

Indiana Historical Society. Hildegarde Flanner Papers collection guide.

Library of Congress. Janet Flanner and Solita Solano Papers finding aid.

Bird, Grace V. “Oral History Recollections of Hildegarde Flanner, Frederick Monhoff, and Clarence Greenhood in the Porter Garnett Circle.”

Miles, Josephine. Oral history, Poetry, Teaching, and Scholarship.

Murray, William. “Family Memoir Concerning the Flanner Family.” Excerpt.

Williams, Oscar. Reviews and notices of Flanner’s early poetry in Poetry.

California Arts and Architecture. Review of Time’s Profile, Nov. 1929.

“Bancroft Library digital copy of Bancroftiana 93.” Institutional biographical essay, portrait, and account of the Flanner papers.

“Huntington Library finding aid.” Eleven poem manuscripts, Flanner’s recollections of Olive Percival, 120 Percival letters, and 52 letters to Ethel Hamilton Hinkle.

“Poetry magazine historical index.” Title-level index to Flanner’s poems and reviews in Poetry from 1921 forward.

“Sept. 1927 issue of Poetry.” Seven-poem group including the Berkeley-fire sequence.

“Jan. 1934 issue of Poetry.” Six-poem group including “The Ballad of Santa Monica.”

“Library of Congress finding aid.” Janet Flanner and Solita Solano Papers, including Hildegarde Flanner writings and correspondence.

“Internet Archive scan of Young Girl and Other Poems.” Complete public-domain scan of the 1920 prize volume.