→ → Genevieve Taggard (1894-1948)
Genevieve Taggard was born November 28, 1894, Waitsburg, Washington. She grew up in Hawaii where her parents built and ran a large “Multi-cultural” school, they were missionaries. She obtained a scholarship which allowed her to attend the University of California at Berkeley, she graduated in 1919.
In 1920 she moved to New York, New York. She worked first for an important modernist publisher named B.W. Huebsch and then in 1921 she started her own journal the Measure, with some other young writers, who included Maxwell Anderson. Also that year she married poet and novelist Robert Wolf and gave birth to her only child, Marcia.
In the late ’20s Taggard taught at Mt. Holyoke, whe wrote began writing a biography on Emily Dickinson. Her style of poeticism changed drastically different from the ’20s to ’30s, the Depression had an enormous effect on society during that time, including on her. She divorced from her husband, fellow poet and author Robert Wolf in 1934, Taggard then married journalist Kenneth Durant in 1935.
Throughout Taggard’s life she was involved in many causes and organizations ranging from Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, the United Committee to Aid Vermont Marble Workers, and the North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy. She was the executive council of the League of American Writers, a member of the New York Teachers Union, and the U.S.-Soviet Friendship Committee. She also served on the editorial committee of Young People’s Records, which was scrutinized during the MCathry period.
Her works include:
May Days: Anthology of Verse (1911-1917) (edited)
The Liberator: Anthology of Verse (1919-1924) (edited)
Traveling Standing Still (1928)
The Life and Mind of Emily Dickinson (1930)
Calling Western Union (1936)
Collected Poems 1918-1938 (1938)
Long View (1942)
Due to complications stemming from her blood-pressure, she died November 8, 1948.”