Foreign rights

On the day that poet Laura Jackson died, in 1991, the LondonTimes published the following obituary: “Laura Jackson was a tragic figure and one of this century’s most gifted women. There is no question that literary criticism and history will have to wrestle with her singular achievement.” Laura Jackson’s biography was a series of ruptures which brutally cut up her life like a succession of knife stabs. She left New York to live in Europe; she entered an illicit, long-term affair with poet Robert Graves; their relationship ended abruptly with a double suicide attempt, one day in London, in 1929. The next stab came in 1940 when the poet denounced her art form, penning the most famous denunciation in the history of poetry. Subsequently, she withdrew into silence, finding refuge in a ranch in Florida, and devoted the next thirty years of her life to a voluminous philosophical treatise on poetry. At every turn, Laura lived a different version of herself. It was as if she was afraid of facing the definitive face of her being. At every turn, Laura Jackson became ‘another’ Laura. This is one of her stories, Or, possibly, the story of the deepest cut…