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Excellent find, Jansy! Nabokov's knowledge of modern American poetry
was, I suspect, not assiduous or methodical, but what came his way he
could retain and put to wonderful use--like Edsel Ford's poem, too. The
list is an excellent way for discoveries like yours and Matt Roth's of
the Edsel Ford to become known in a flash.
By the way: thanks to Jansy also for her generous report on my Machado
de Assis talk. For the record, I had only two months to read Machado
moderately intensely before the talk. Can't remember whether I have
said this, but Michael Wood has also written on Machado, in the New
York Review of Books, and writes something to the effect that "every
one who has read him knows he is a master, but who has read him?" I
suggest starting with The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (in the
Oxford edition); also translated as Epitaph of a Small Winner.
Brian Boyd