Janet Loxley Lewis

Janet Loxley Lewis (August 17, 1899 – November 30 or December 1, 1998) was an American novelist and poet.

Janet Lewis was a very prolific poet of the Chicago circle, having taught at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkley. Lewis was not only a poet, but also a writer of short stories, novels, and libretti.

Biography

Lewis was born in Chicago, Illinois, and was a graduate of the University of Chicago, where she was a member of a literary circle that included Glenway Wescott, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, and her future husband Yvor Winters. She was an active member of the University of Chicago Poetry Club. She taught at both Stanford University in California, and the University of California at Berkeley.

Lewis’s poetry is distinctly American in subject matter. Her first collection of verse, The Indians in the Woods of 1922, stemmed from a childhood fascination with Native Americans. This fascination continued even into her late volumes of poetry, such as The Ancient Ones of 1979, which Suzanne Doyle of Southern Review referred to as “a temperamental affinity of the poet for the Indian consciousness.”

Lewis also collaborated with composer Alva Henderson on song texts (as well as libretti).

Theodore Roethke wrote in Poetry that Lewis’s poetry “is marked by an absolute integrity of spirit and often by the finality in phrasing that can accompany such integrity.”

Poetry

• The Indians in the Woods. Published by Monroe Wheeler, as Manikin Number One, Bonn, Germany, n.d..
• The Wheel in Midsummer Lynn, Mass, The Lone Gull, 1927.
• The Earth-Bound' Aurora, New York, Wells College Press, 1946
• Poems 1924 – 1944 Denver, Alan Swallow, 1950
• The Ancient Ones Portola Valley, California: No Dead Lines, 1979
• The Indians in the Woods 2nd edition with new preface, Palo-Alto California, Matrix Press, 1980.
• Poems Old and New 1918 – 1978 Chicago/Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press / Ohio University Press 1981
• Late Offerings Florence, Ky, Robert L. Barth, 1988
• Janet and Deloss: Poems and Pictures San Diego, Brighton Press 1990
• The Dear Past and other poems 1919 – 1994 Edgewood Ky, Robert L. Barth, 1994
• The Selected Poems of Janet Lewis thens Ohio, Swallow Press / Ohio University Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0-8040-1023-8.