June 12, 1892

Djuna Barnes, (June 12, 1892 to June 18 1982) the American writer and artist, was the product of multiple generations of artists; she had an avante garde childhood in upstate New York. She managed to be at the centers of artistic progress during the first half of the last century. Barnes is better known now than during her lifetime and she made a splash THEN. Barnes's interview of James Joyce was published in Vanity Fair magazine, in 1922. She was subsidized off and on by the art patron Peggy Guggenheim. T. S. Eliot was so impressed with her novel, Nightwood, (1936), a classic of lesbian art, that he edited it, wrote an introduction for it, and made sure Faber and Faber published it.

Here is the ending of a poem she titled "Suicide":
....
They gave her hurried shoves this way
And that
Her body shock-abbreviated
As a city cat.
She lay out listlessly like some small mug
Of beer gone flat.

This is from The Book of Repulsive Women, published in 1915.