Make Forever Now

Make Forever Now: A Biography of Jean Garrigue is a critical biography about Jean Garrigue (1912-1972), one of the best poets of her generation. Born in Evansville, Indiana, she moved to Greenwich Village at age 27, and by the following fall her first poem appeared in The Partisan Review. Twenty-two years later, her fifth book, Country Without Maps, made the short list for the National Book Award. Between these two events, her work appeared in most of the major journals of the day, was published by two of the most prominent houses for poetry, New Directions and Macmillan, and won a large share of the country's major fellowships and awards. The story of how Jean Garrigue came to be one of the best poets of the mid twentieth century is, first of all, how and why Gertrude Louise Garrigus changed her name to Jean Garrigue and then what sort of apprenticeships she undertook to prepare for the move as a writer to New York City. All of these changes took place in the state of her birth, Indiana, though quite liberally seasoned with periods of travel with her sister and brother-in-law to Greenwich Village and later to Spain, France and England, and finally the University of Chicago and beyond for her education.