Macdonald, Cynthia 1928-

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MACDONALD, Cynthia 1928–

PERSONAL: Born February 2, 1928, in New York, NY; daughter of Leonard (a writer) and Dorothy (Kiam) Lee; married E. C. Macdonald, 1954 (divorced, 1975); children: Jennifer Tim, Scott Thurston. Education: Bennington College, B.A., 1950; Mannes College of Music, graduate study, 1951–52; Sarah Lawrence College, M.A., 1970; graduate of Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute.

ADDRESSES: Office—Creative Writing Program, Department of English, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77004.

CAREER: Opera and concert singer, 1953–66; Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, assistant professor, 1970–74, associate professor and acting dean of studies, 1974–75; Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, professor, 1975–79; University of Houston, Houston, TX, consultant, 1977–78, co-director of writing program, 1979–; psychoanalyst in private practice. Clinical research fellow, Houston/Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute; lecturer at universities, seminars, and conferences.

MEMBER: PEN (member of board), Associated Writing Programs (member of board), Critics Circle, American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

AWARDS, HONORS: Grants from MacDowell Colony, 1970, National Endowment for the Arts, 1973, 1979, Yaddo Foundation, 1974, 1976, and 1979, and CAPS, 1976; National Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters award, 1977, for "recognition of the contribution of her poetry"; Rockefeller Foundation fellow, 1978; Guggenheim fellowship; Esther B. Farfel Award, University of Houston; O. B. Hardison Award from Folger Shakespeare Library; Living Wills was chosen as a Notable Book by the New York Times.

WRITINGS:

POEMS

Amputations, Braziller (New York, NY), 1972.

Transplants, Braziller (New York, NY), 1976.

Pruning the Annuals, Bartholomew's Cobble, 1976.

(W)holes, Knopf (New York, NY), 1980.

Alternate Means of Transport, Knopf (New York, NY), 1985.

Living Wills, Knopf (New York, NY), 1991.

I Can't Remember, Knopf (New York, NY), 1997.

OTHER

The Rehearsal (operatic libretto), with music by Thomas Benjamin, first produced in Evanston, IL, at Northwestern University, 1980.

(Lyricist) This Is the Day, music by Judy Collins, Elektra, 1980.

Contributor to numerous anthologies, including New York: Poems, edited by Howard Moss, Avon (New York, NY), 1970, Hair Raising, Kelsey St. Press, 1976, and Cassandra, Feminist Press (New York, NY), 1979.

Contributor of poems, essays, reviews and articles to numerous publications, including Ms., Parnassus, Washington Post Book World, New Yorker, New York Quarterly, American Poetry Review, Georgia Review, and Shenandoah.

SIDELIGHTS: Cynthia Macdonald has had a varied career that has included music, teaching, and poetry. At the age of twelve, she attended her first opera at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. She was taken with the music, and began attending regularly. Later she attended Bennington College, where she earned a major in English and a minor in music. She then returned to New York to study voice. Following her marriage, she sang in small opera companies and music clubs. In the early 1960s, she began to write poetry, a pursuit in which she was encouraged by poet Anne Sexton. Eventually, she began teaching at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and later at the University of Houston, where she founded the creative writing program.

Macdonald's poetry is driven by transformed objects, grotesque images, and dream-like sequences. Drawing on sources as varied as Danish choreography, European art, nursery rhymes, and mythology, she displays a dark sense of humor as she explores the pain of human life. "To appreciate Macdonald," wrote Frances Mayes in the San Jose Mercury News, "one has to be able to enjoy a mad tea party in progress."

Macdonald's first book, Amputations, was praised by many critics for its unnerving imagery and lively wordplay. As the title implies, each poem in the collection features a character with missing body parts, which symbolize inner losses of love and life. The poet renders her grotesque images with dark humor in Amputations, but in Transplants, her next collection, she altered her style. As Elizabeth Stone described it in the Village Voice, "All her people and all her voices are more substantial, more complicated." The characters are still "the targets of [Macdonald's] wit, yes, but also the recipients of her compassion."

Her third book, (W)holes, prompted Doug Lang, a reviewer for the Washington Post Book World, to complain about Macdonald's flippant attitude toward her characters' suffering; he stated: "The world of pain and isolation and grief with which this poet is concerned is far too heavy for such flimsy attitudes." Yet Vernon Young, a reviewer for the New York Times Book Review, depicted Macdonald as "a fairly brilliant coiner and collector of phrases."

Discussing Macdonald's progression as a poet, a Dictionary of Literary Biography essayist commented that Macdonald's later work has demonstrated "a marked change from the flippant humor and sensationalism of the first books," and exhibits a "developing poise and integrity." Liz Rosenberg, a reviewer for the New York Times Book Review, also saw Macdonald's body of work as one that showed much change. Discussing the collection Alternate Means of Transport, Rosenberg called it "a marked departure from her earlier work" that is "even more powerful." The collection Living Wills, Rosenberg believed, further "reveals the poet's new, brighter, richer, more various palate."

The collection I Can't Remember shows Macdonald at her "inventive and buoyant" best, telling stories in verse, using poetic forms "skillfully and unobtrusively," and creating poems that are "like bright, hard-edged puzzles that snap smartly into place," wrote Donna Seaman in Booklist. I Can't Remember is "an active engagement of Freudian cliche" that "works here toward playful self-revelation," remarked Poetry contributor Michael Scharf. I Can't Remember reveals the poet's quest to find the source of her inspiration, according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, who added: "Macdonald addresses what she does not know with lyric wit and clarity."

In addition to her teaching and writing, Macdonald also practices as a psychoanalyst specializing in treatment of patients with writer's block. Her clients include not only professional writers, but workers in other fields who cannot write the reports and documentation required by their jobs. "All people who really want to write and can't, or who really need to write and can't, have real conflict and real oppositions," Macdonald was quoted as saying in a Houston Chronicle article by Thom Marshall. "One part of them is saying you have to do this, you want to do this, and the other part is saying you're not allowed to."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Brown, Cheryl L., and Karen Olson, editors, Feminist Criticism: Essays on Theory, Poetry and Prose, Scarecrow Press (Lanham, MD), 1978, pp. 188-197.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 13, 1980, Volume 19, 1981.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 105: American Poets since World War II, second series, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1991, pp. 151-157.

PERIODICALS

American Poetry Review, May-June, 1979, pp. 29-33.

Artful Dodge, fall-winter, 1990.

Booklist, September 15, 1997, Donna Seaman, review of I Can't Remember, p. 199.

Harper's Magazine, August, 1984, review of Naming the Land, p. 37.

Houston Chronicle, October 13, 1991, p. S3; February 22, 1998, Fritz Lanham, review of I Can't Remember, p. 20; November 15, 1998, Thom Marshall, "Psychoanalyst Gives Blockbuster Advice," p. 37.

Houston Post, December 22, 1985, p. 2F.

Hudson Review, autumn, 1980, pp. 455-468.

Library Journal, January 15, 1980, Margaret Gibson, review of (W)holes, p. 209; October 1, 1985, Fred Muratori, review of Alternate Means of Transport, p. 103; October 1, 1997, Graham Christian, review of I Can't Remember, p. 86.

Los Angeles Times, December 29, 1985.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, February 10, 1980.

Mademoiselle, June, 1980, Joyce Carol Oates, review of (W)holes, p. 52.

Ms., February, 1980, pp. 36-39.

New York Times Book Review, March 2, 1980, pp. 16-17; June 30, 1991, p. 26.

Parnassus, Number 2, fall-winter, 1973, pp. 77-86; Number 8, 1980, pp. 210-228; Number 12, 1985, pp. 407-421.

Poetry, January, 1974, pp. 241-245; February, 1977, pp. 285-295; February, 1999, Michael Scharf, review of I Can't Remember, p. 318.

Publishers Weekly, August 2, 1985, review of Alternate Means of Transport, p. 63; September 22, 1997, review of I Can't Remember, p. 76.

Review of Metaphysics, March, 2000, Tadeusz Szubka, review of Knowing Our Own Minds, p. 739.

San Francisco Chronicle, January 12, 1986, pp. 3-4.

San Jose Mercury News, January 19, 1986, p. 21.

Southern Review, spring, 1992, Robert Hosmer, review of Living Wills: New and Selected Poems, p. 431.