Adrien Stoutenburg

Adrien Stoutenburg. Courtes Minneapolis College of Art & Design.

Adrien Stoutenburg
Born	December 1, 1916 Darfur, Minnesota
Died	April 14, 1982 Santa Barbara, California
Pen name	Lace Kendall
Occupation	poet, writer, librarian
Nationality	United States
Period	1940s-1970s
Notable award(s)	Lamont Poetry Selection

Adrien Pearl Stoutenburg (December 1, 1916 - April 14, 1982) was an American poet and a prolific writer of juvenile literature.

Life

Stoutenburg was born in Darfur, Minnesota. Following her father's death in 1918, she was raised by her paternal grandmother in Hanley Falls, Minnesota.

She finished high school in Minneapolis, and attended the Minneapolis School of Art (now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design) from 1936 to 1938.

She then worked as a librarian and in other capacities near Richfield, Minnesota. In 1943, she published her earliest 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 4 books of children's fiction by 1956. That year 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.

She began to write poetry at Berkeley, under the direction of Laurence Hart, which is why she later chose to deposit her poetry manuscripts and related correspondence at the Bancroft Library there.

Stoutenburg died of cancer in 1982 in Santa Barbara, California.

Writing

Children's books

Over her career, Stoutenburg published about 40 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."

Only 1 of her works, American Tall Tales, remains in print. Upon that book's 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 ...".

Poetry

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Cicada (excerpt)

I lay with my heart under me,
under the white sun,
face down to fields
and a life that gleamed
under my palms like an emerald hinge.
I sheltered him where we lay alive
under the body of the sun.
Trees there dropped their shadows
like black fruit,
and the thin-necked sparrows came
crying through the light.
...

}}

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."

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's poetry has been included in several recent anthologies. A common selection is her poem "Cicada", originally published in 1957 in The New Yorker.

Recognition

At least 5 of Stoutenburg's children's books were Junior Literary Guild selections.

Stoutenburg's debut collection of poetry, Heroes, Advise Us, was the 1964 Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets.

Her next collection, A Short History of the Fur Trade, won a silver California Book Award for 1969, and was a close competitor for the Pulitzer Prize.

Stoutenburg's poems were selected for 9 volumes of the annual Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards anthology.

Publications

Poetry

• Heroes, Advise Us. New York: Scribner, 1964.
• A Short History of the Fur Trade. Boston: Houghton, 1969.
• Greenwich Mean Time. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1979. ISBN 978-0-87480-164-4.
• Land of Superior Mirages: New and selected poems. (edited by David R. Slavitt; with introduction by James Dickey). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. ISBN 978-0-8018-3335-9.

Juvenile

Poems

• The Things That Are (illustrated by Robert Lostutter). 1964.
• A Cat Is (with photographs by Sy Katzoff). New York: Franklin Watts, 1971. ISBN 978-0-531-01969-6

Stories

• The Model Airplane Mystery. Doubleday Doran, 1943.
• Timber Line Treasure. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1951.
• Stranger on the Bay. Westminster, 1955.
• River Duel. Westminster, 1956.
• In This Corner. Westminster, 1957.
• Snowshoe Thompson (with Laura Baker Nelson; illustrated by Victor De Pauw). New York: Scribner, 1957.
• The Blue-Eyed Convertible. Westminster, 1961.
• Window on the Sea Westminster, 1962.
• A Time For Dreaming. Westminster, 1963.
• The Mud Ponies (as "Lace Kendall"; illustrated by Eugene Fern). New York: Coward-McCann, 1963.
• Rain Boat (as "Lace Kendall"; illustrated by John Kaufmann) New York: Coward-McCann), 1965. Stoutenburg called it "One of my favorite books".
• 1966 American Tall Tales (illustrated by Richard M. Powers). 1966; Puffin, 1976. ISBN 978-0-14-030928-7
• The Crocodile's Mouth: Folk-song Stories (illustrated by Glen Rounds). New York: Viking, 1966.
• American Tall-Tale Animals (illustrated by Glen Rounds). New York: Viking, 1968.
• Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum: Friendly and Funny Giants (illustrated by Rocco Negri). Viking, 1969; ISBN 978-0-670-31127-9
• Haran's Journey (illustrated by Laszlo Kubinyi). New York: Dial, 1971.
• The Giant Who Sucked His Thumb (illustrated by Shyam Varma). London: (Deutsch, 1972.
• Where To Now, Blue?. Four Winds Press, 1978. ISBN 0-590-07518-7

Young Adult Fiction

• The Silver Trap. 1954.
• Honeymoon. 1958.
• Four on the Road. 1959.
• Good Bye, Cinderella. Westminster, 1960.
• Walk Into the Wind. 1964.
• Out There. 1971. ("The first major novel of ecological nightmare", from the cover)

Non-fiction

• Wild Animals of the Far West (illustrated by Ruth Robbins). Parnassus Press, 1958.
• Wild Treasure, The Story of David Douglas (with Laura Nelson Baker). 1958.
• Scannon: Dog with Lewis and Clark (with Laura Nelson Baker). 1959.
• Beloved Botanist: The story of Carl Linnaeus (with Laura Nelson Baker). New York: Scribner, 1961.
• Dear, Dear Livy: The Story of Mark Twain's Wife (with Laura Nelson Baker). 1963.
• Explorer of the Unconscious: Sigmund Freud. 1965.
  • published in UK as Freud: Explorer of the unconscious (with Laura Nelson Baker). London: Whitting & Wheaton, 1965.
• A Vanishing Thunder: Extinct and Threatened American Birds. 1967.
• Animals at Bay: Rare and Rescued American Wildlife. 1968.
• Listen, America: A life of Walt Whitman (with Laura Nelson Baker). New York: Scribner's, 1968.
• People in Twilight: Vanishing and Changing Cultures. 1971.

See also 

• List of U.S. poets

References

Fonds

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.

External links

Poems

• Adrien Stoutenburg at the Poetry Foundation

Books

• Adrien Stoutenburg at Amazon.com

About

• Adrien Stoutenburg '38 at Minneapolis College of Art & Design