Passages of The Antiphon and all of [Miss Barnes's] few recently published poems seem both in and out of time. They project the modern sense of despair and disillusionment that the 1920s left to successive generations of writers, while they continue to sustain the note of generalized or universal misery of Doctor O'Connor's monologues in Nightwood. Their lines are intensely worked and tightly constructed into complex units that stand firmly on their own ground, independent and resistant to ultimate breakdown or exhaustion by analysis. These highly formal late writings are evidence of their author's self-effacement, of a willful depersonalization of voice through which the work stands independent of its creator. In addition, they shun contemporary literary trends to such a degree that they seem at times to exist outside of the modern age. Rather than be seen as a representative author of her time, Miss Barnes would appear...