UK Poet, Author, and Translator Elaine Feinstein Dies at 88

"[A] leading poet and the bringer of a new internationalism to British verse," Elaine Feinstein—poet, translator, playwright, and novelist—has died at 88, reports The Guardian. "Driven by cultural curiosity, she also helped bring very different, North American traditions of Black Mountain and Beat poetry to Britain," writes Fiona Sampson. More:

In 1959 she founded Prospect magazine (unrelated to the current journal of that name), publishing Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and, among others, Charles Olson, whose Letter to Elaine Feinstein remains today a much anthologised Projectivist text.

Though Projectivism, taking a breath as the poetic unit, may now be consigned to literary history, Prospect’s transatlantic cultural exchange helped create today’s Anglo-American Cambridge school of poetry, with JH Prynne at its centre.

But it is the clear-sighted and profoundly emotionally intelligent character of Elaine’s own verse that has influenced many poets working in English today, as well as delighting readers and audiences around the world: she was a charismatic performer.

Read the full obituary at The Guardian.