Book excerpt: Katherine Anne Porter's Poetry makes available for the first time the complete poetic canon of one of America's most-celebrated writers. Widely known and revered for her award-winning short stories, Porter published just thirty-two poems and poetry translations during her lifetime, although she composed - and subsequently destroyed - hundreds. Her poetry is virtually unknown even by her most devoted followers. From fragmentary notes and letters found among Porter's papers, Darlene Harbour Unrue has recovered and edited eighteen unpublished poems. In a significant addition to the Porter canon, these newly found poems join Porter's published verse - including the entire text of the now-rare Katherine Anne Porter's French Song-Book - to create a unique commentary on the writer's life and work. Interspersed with photographs of Porter from the years and places in which she composed the poems, the volume features a substantial critical and biographical essay in which Unrue explains the significance of individual poems and details the relationship between Porter's poetry and fiction. Unrue describes Porter's verse as an index to the stages of her developing intellectual thought and, in some cases, an intermediate phase in a creative process that began with random notes and letters and culminated in fiction.