Adrien Stoutenburg
Encyclopedia
Adrien Stoutenburg was an American poet and a prolific writer of juvenile literature. Her poetry collection Heroes, Advise Us was the 1964 Lamont Poetry Selection.
. She finished high school in Minneapolis, and attended the Minneapolis School of Art
from 1936 to 1938. She then worked as a librarian and in other capacities near Richfield, Minnesota
. In 1943, she published her first book of children's fiction, The Model Airplane Mystery. Stoutenburg later wrote, "After publishing in many magazines, I seriously settled down to writing books in 1951. She had published four books of children's fiction by 1956, when she moved to California to become an editor at Parnassus Press, a publisher of children's literature. She held the position at Parnassus Press until 1958. Over her career, Stoutenburg published about forty books of juvenile fiction and non-fiction. Several of the works were co-authored with Laura Nelson Baker, with whom Stoutenburg lived. Stoutenburg also published under the pseudonyms Barbie Arden, Lace Kendall, and Nelson Minier. At least five of Stoutenburg's books were Junior Literary Guild
selections. Only one of her works, American Tall Tales, is currently in print; upon its publication in 1966, the New York Times included it on a listing of recommended volumes for children, summarizing it as "Eight tales, tough, sentimental, and bold, about American's folk heroes ...".
Stoutenburg's first volume of poetry, Heroes, Advise Us, was the 1964 Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets; each year, this award honored and supported one poet's first published book. Her second collection, A Short History of the Fur Trade, won a California Book Award (silver) for 1969, and was a close competitor for the Pulitzer Prize
. Her third collection, Greenwich Mean Time, was published in 1979. James Dickey
has written of her poetry, "If I were to characterize the tone of voice, I would call it that of sensitive outrage, quivering, powerful, and delicate. Delicate: therefore powerful..."
Stoutenburg died of cancer in 1982 in Santa Barbara, California. At Stoutenburg's request, David R. Slavitt subsequently edited and published a selection of her poetry. The volume, Land of Superior Mirages, includes a number of poems that had been unpublished at her death. In his review, Robert von Hallberg wrote, "Adrien Stoutenburg's poems deserve much more attention than they have received." Some of Stoutenburg's papers, and also those of Laura Nelson Baker, are archived at the University of Minnesota Children's Literature Research Collection. Papers relating to Stoutenburg's career as a poet are housed at The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley
.
Stoutenburg's poems were selected for nine volumes of the annual Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards
, and have been included in several more recent anthologies. One common selection is her poem "Cicada", originally published in 1957 in The New Yorker.
Life
Stoutenburg was born in Darfur, Minnesota. Following her father's death in 1918, she was raised by her paternal grandmother in Hanley Falls, MinnesotaHanley Falls, Minnesota
Hanley Falls is a city in Yellow Medicine County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 304 at the 2010 census.Hanley Falls has two grain elevators run by the local farmers co-op and is the site of an annual thresher show.-Geography:...
. She finished high school in Minneapolis, and attended the Minneapolis School of Art
Minneapolis College of Art and Design
Minneapolis College of Art and Design is a private, nonprofit four-year and postgraduate college specializing in the visual arts. Located in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, MCAD currently enrolls approximately 1,000 students offering curriculum that includes...
from 1936 to 1938. She then worked as a librarian and in other capacities near Richfield, Minnesota
Richfield, Minnesota
As of the census of 2000, there were 34,439 people, 15,073 households, and 8,727 families residing in the city. The population density was 4,993.9 people per square mile . There were 15,357 housing units at an average density of 2,226.9 per square mile...
. In 1943, she published her first book of children's fiction, The Model Airplane Mystery. Stoutenburg later wrote, "After publishing in many magazines, I seriously settled down to writing books in 1951. She had published four books of children's fiction by 1956, when she moved to California to become an editor at Parnassus Press, a publisher of children's literature. She held the position at Parnassus Press until 1958. Over her career, Stoutenburg published about forty books of juvenile fiction and non-fiction. Several of the works were co-authored with Laura Nelson Baker, with whom Stoutenburg lived. Stoutenburg also published under the pseudonyms Barbie Arden, Lace Kendall, and Nelson Minier. At least five of Stoutenburg's books were Junior Literary Guild
Junior Literary Guild
The Junior Literary Guild was the name of a commercial book club devoted to juvenile literature that has become the contemporary Junior Library Guild. It was created in 1929 as one of the enterprises of the Literary Guild, which was an adult book club created in 1927 by Samuel W. Craig and Harold...
selections. Only one of her works, American Tall Tales, is currently in print; upon its publication in 1966, the New York Times included it on a listing of recommended volumes for children, summarizing it as "Eight tales, tough, sentimental, and bold, about American's folk heroes ...".
Stoutenburg's first volume of poetry, Heroes, Advise Us, was the 1964 Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets; each year, this award honored and supported one poet's first published book. Her second collection, A Short History of the Fur Trade, won a California Book Award (silver) for 1969, and was a close competitor for the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
The Pulitzer Prize in Poetry has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. However, special citations for poetry were presented in 1918 and 1919.-Winners:...
. Her third collection, Greenwich Mean Time, was published in 1979. James Dickey
James Dickey
James Lafayette Dickey was an American poet and novelist. He was appointed the eighteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1966.-Early years:...
has written of her poetry, "If I were to characterize the tone of voice, I would call it that of sensitive outrage, quivering, powerful, and delicate. Delicate: therefore powerful..."
Stoutenburg died of cancer in 1982 in Santa Barbara, California. At Stoutenburg's request, David R. Slavitt subsequently edited and published a selection of her poetry. The volume, Land of Superior Mirages, includes a number of poems that had been unpublished at her death. In his review, Robert von Hallberg wrote, "Adrien Stoutenburg's poems deserve much more attention than they have received." Some of Stoutenburg's papers, and also those of Laura Nelson Baker, are archived at the University of Minnesota Children's Literature Research Collection. Papers relating to Stoutenburg's career as a poet are housed at The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
.
Stoutenburg's poems were selected for nine volumes of the annual Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards
Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards
The Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards was an annual series of poetry anthologies first published in 1949. The poems were selected from those published in a given year in English-language magazines and books; in each volume, individual poems were designated as first, second, or third place in a...
, and have been included in several more recent anthologies. One common selection is her poem "Cicada", originally published in 1957 in The New Yorker.
Poetry Collections
- 1964 "The Things That Are". Reilly & Lee, (Chicago). (Illustrated by Robert LostutterRobert LostutterRobert Lostutter is a Chicago-based artist. He was a member of the Chicago Imagists, a breakaway group of surrealist iconoclasts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who showed in the Hyde Park Art Center in 1969 and later....
) - 1964 Heroes, Advise Us. Scribner (New York, NY).
- 1969 A Short History of the Fur Trade. Houghton (Boston, MA).
- 1979 Greenwich Mean Time. University of Utah Press (Salt Lake City, UT). ISBN 9780874801644.
- 1986 Land of Superior Mirages: New and Selected Poems. David R. Slavitt, editor; James Dickey, introduction. Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD). ISBN 9780801833359.
Young Adult Fiction
- 1954 The Silver Trap
- 1958 Honeymoon
- 1959 Four on the Road
- 1960 Good Bye, Cinderella (Westminster)
- 1964 Walk Into the Wind
- 1971 Out There ("The first major novel of ecological nightmare", from the cover)
Children's Fiction and Poetry
- 1943 The Model Airplane Mystery (Doubleday Doran)
- 1951 Timber Line Treasure (Westminster)
- 1955 Stranger on the Bay (Westminster)
- 1956 River Duel (Westminster)
- 1957 In This Corner (Westminster)
- 1957 Snowshoe Thompson (with Laura Baker Nelson; illustrated by Victor De Pauw) (Scribner)
- 1961 The Blue-Eyed Convertible (Westminster)
- 1962 Window on the Sea (Westminster)
- 1963 A Time For Dreaming (Westminster)
- 1963 The Mud Ponies: Based on a Pawnee Indian Myth (Lace Kendall, pseud.; illustrated by Eugene Fern) (Coward-McCann, New York)
- 1964 The Things That Are (poetry; illustrated by Robert LostutterRobert LostutterRobert Lostutter is a Chicago-based artist. He was a member of the Chicago Imagists, a breakaway group of surrealist iconoclasts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who showed in the Hyde Park Art Center in 1969 and later....
) - 1965 Rain Boat (Lace Kendall, pseud.; John Kaufmann, illustrator; Coward-McCann). Stoutenburg called it "One of my favorite books".
- 1966 American Tall Tales (Richard M. PowersRichard M. PowersRichard M. Powers was a science fiction illustrator.- Life and work :Born in Chicago 1921 into a Catholic family, Richard Michael Gorman Powers spent most of his early life supported by his mother and aunt. His father left the family when Powers was young...
, illustrator) (Puffin, 1976; ISBN 978-0-14-030928-7). - 1966 The Crocodile's Mouth: Folk-song Stories (Glen Rounds, illustrator) (Viking)
- 1968 American Tall-Tale Animals (Glen Rounds, illustrator; Viking)
- 1969 Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum: Friendly and Funny Giants (Rocco Negri, illustrator) (Viking, 1969; ISBN 978-0-670-31127-9)
- 1971 Haran's Journey (Laszlo Kubinyi, illustrator; Dial)
- 1971 A Cat Is (poetry; photographs by Sy Katzoff) (Franklin Watts, New York; ISBN 978-0-531-01969-6)
- 1972 The Giant Who Sucked His Thumb (illustrated by Shyam Varma) (Deutsch, London)
- 1978 Where To Now, Blue? (Four Winds Press; ISBN 0-590-07518-7)
Non-fiction
- 1958 Wild Animals of the Far West (Ruth Robbins, illustrator; Paranassus Press)
- 1958 Wild Treasure, The Story of David Douglas (with Laura Nelson Baker)
- 1959 Scannon: Dog with Lewis and Clark (with Laura Nelson Baker)
- 1961 Beloved Botanist: The Story of Carl Linnaeus (with Laura Nelson Baker)
- 1963 Dear, Dear Livy: The Story of Mark Twain's Wife (with Laura Nelson Baker)
- 1965 Explorer of the Unconscious: Sigmund Freud
- 1967 A Vanishing Thunder: Extinct and Threatened American Birds
- 1968 Animals at Bay: Rare and Rescued American Wildlife
- 1968 Listen, America: A Life of Walt Whitman (with Laura Nelson Baker; Scribner's)
- 1971 People in Twilight: Vanishing and Changing Cultures