The Book of Repulsive Women: 8 Rhythms and 5 Drawings

by Djuna Barnes

"8 Rhythms and 5 Drawings," from 1915

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Art, 20th Century, Womens

48 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Djuna Barnes was an artist, illustrator, journalist, playwright, and poet associated with the early 20th-century Greenwich Village bohemians and the Modernist literary movement.

Barnes has been cited as an influence by writers as diverse as Truman Capote, William Goyen, Isak Dinesen, John Hawkes, and Anaïs Nin. Bertha Harris described her work as "practically the only available expression of lesbian culture we have in the modern western world" since Sappho.

Barnes played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing and was one of the key figures in 1920s and 30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens. Her novel Nightwood became a cult work of modern fiction, helped by an introduction by T. S. Eliot. It stands out today for its portrayal of lesbian themes and its distinctive writing style. Since Barnes's death, interest in her work has grown and many of her books are back in print.

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

can be read online here - http://greeninteger.com/pdfs/barnes-b...

[None Ofyourbusiness Loves Israel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This way too short 1915 collection introduces figures who exist beyond conventional boundaries—women whose bodies and behaviors reject societal standards. Barnes confronts readers with stark observations: "The relativity of their gray flesh/Sliding diagonally down."

Through eight poems and five drawings, she presents a gallery of outcasts: the fading performer whose "slack strings of your mouth" betray her years; the solitary watcher noting how "Some souls pay a contemptious hate"; the deceased whose "flesh/Dying sufficiently to bloom."

Her Greenwich Village aesthetics emerge through precise and immediate language that is in tune with the times and an unflinching gaze. These women inhabit spaces where beauty includes decay, where attraction coexists with repulsion, where traditional femininity dissolves.

Nightwood expands into philosophical territories through ornate language, while The Book of Repulsive Women condenses intensity into each line. Barnes's early work shows her signature outsider perspective in concentrated form. Her technical experimentations—traditional rhyming patterns breaking into spatial arrangements across the page—demonstrate her artistic range.

The accompanying illustrations evoke Aubrey Beardsley with distinctly female sensibilities. Reading creates an unusual tension: observation without sentimentality, judgment mingled with fascination. When Barnes describes a woman "Raveling grandly into vice/With sidelong, skeptic eyes," she positions readers as both witnesses and accomplices.

This collection existed as feminist text before such terminology gained currency. Barnes—who later entered Parisian expatriate circles and experienced her complex relationship with Thelma Wood—established her voice here with unwavering authority.

These poems, apparently not to popular on this site, find value in what others discard or ignore. Barnes writes, "You pay her price/And watch her mouth corrupting, gracious/To expound the imperial bust," capturing exchanges between subject and observer.

Readers seeking literature that questions rather than confirms, that examines shadows rather than sunlight, will discover in these pages something electric and essential—Barnes's singular early work stands as fierce rejection of constraints, revealing truths hidden beneath polite society's veneer.

"...Still her clothing is less risky
Than her body in its prime,
They are chain-stitched and so is she
Chain-stitched to her soul for time.
Ravelling grandly into vice
Dropping crooked into rhyme.
Slipping through the stitch of virtue,
Into crime..."

[Maddie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m sad I didn’t like this collection more 😢

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

A chapbook of early 20th-century poetry by a cult figure who, according to the brief biography at the end, was close friends with Joyce, among other expatriates who lived in 1920s Paris. This small collection, which could be considered juvenalia, put me in mind of Plath's early poems (but perhaps I don't know enough poets). The rhyming didn't bother me all that much (as it did in, for example, Lyrical Ballads). There is a gothic feel to them, a barely passive venom. Yet, with a title that sounds like the counterpoint to DFW's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, I didn't see clear-enough reasons to be repulsed by these women. Then again, the reasons would be fairly clear if my brain was bogged down by Victorian 'morality.' The poems are accompanied by the author's strange and unique illustrations, vaguely reminiscent of Gustav Klimt. This is my first Barnes, but not my last, and I will make an attempt to read Nightwood sooner rather than later.

P.S. Does anyone know how to pronounce her name? Is the 'D' silent, like Django?

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 2 out of 5]

An endlessly fascinating person in her own right and a great novelist, Djuna Barnes is not a very good poet. This collection is one of those ones that much was made of at the time of their publication in a collection, heralded as "Lesser-known gems". Always be wary of the term "lesser-known gems", for it often means, "shit for the OCD completist" and this is definitely the case here.
Barnes' has a nice grip on language, but her themes are banal and she's a sonance-rhyming poet, which I can't stand usually.

[Adriana Scarpin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Twilight of the Illicit

You, with your long blank udders
And your calms,
Your spotted linen and your
Slack’ning arms.
With satiated fingers dragging
At your palms.

Your keens set far apart like
Heavy spheres;
With discs upon your eyes like
Husks of tears;
And great ghastly loops of gold
Snared in your ears.

Your dying hair hand-beaten
‘Round your head.
Lips, long lengthened by wise words
Unsaid.
And in your living all grimaces
Of the dead.

One sees you sitting in the sun
Asleep;
With the sweeter gifts you had
And didn’t keep,
One grieves that the alters of
Your vice lie deep.

You, the twilight powder of
A fire—wet dawn;
You, the massive mother of
Illicit spawn;
While the others shrink in virtue
You have borne.

We’ll see you staring in the sun
A few more years,
With discs upon your eyes like
Husks of tears;
And great ghastly loops of gold
Snared in your ears.

[andreea. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though her lips are vague as fancy
In her youth—
They bloom vivid and repulsive
As the truth.
Even vases in the making
Are uncouth.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her first book. She has not expanded, here, into the galaxy she will become. The seed is here, but it is small. Some of the weird, stunning, evil precision---unequaled in English since Shakespeare, I say without blinking---is here, but hardly, tinily. These are ditties. Where is the mind-twisting surgical acidity? The arch, brokenhearted, wicked truth? The grotesque delirium and hilarity?
Almost. Getting dressed. Coming!:

"Though her lips are vague as fancy
In her youth—
They bloom vivid and repulsive
As the truth.
Even vases in the making
Are uncouth."

[abigail · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this collection! I found I could appreciate Barnes without being too overwhelmed (as I feel with her prose)

some favourites: solitude, this much and more, from third avenue on, seen from the ‘l’, suicide, the last toast, lines to a lady, to the hands of a beloved, the flowering corpse, lullaby

[Lee Foust · Rating 3 out of 5]

8 pithy little verses. Quite affecting despite the archaic use of rhyme. Slightly more guardedly acidic than, say, Dorothy Parker, but also more artsy and taking itself more seriously therefore vulnerable as such cynicism usually is not. I guess a first effort from the unique novelist, playwright, and poet Barnes. Worth the time certainly--not sure if worth the cover price.

[luciana · Rating 3 out of 5]

while i love the intent behind this book, the writing of the poems wasn’t that great or interesting

[Nate · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first foray into the biting sensuality of Djuna Barnes. There is so much sex and revolution packed in layers into this book of poetry and illustration. It would be considered progressive feminism today, 97 years after it was written. Which is a testament both to Barnes's literary importance and our present society's seeming inability to come to terms with female sexual liberation. It's a hell of a read. It's daring, sensual, polemic, but never accusatory or uncomfortable to read. And Barnes displays an absolute mastery of form and meter. "And all the subtle symphonies of her / A twilight rune." That is Djuna Barnes. And it's a favor to yourself to give this a read.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

SUICIDE

Corpse A

THEY brought her in, a shattered small
Cocoon,
With a little bruised body like
A startled moon;
And all the subtle symphonies of her
A twilight rune.

Corpse B

THEY gave her hurried shoves this way
And that.
Her body shock-abbreviated
As a city cat.
She lay out listlessly like some small mug
Of beer gone flat.

[Jul G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Point de vue oblique sur ces personnages féminins, tout à fait original. Regard en diagonale. Dessins que j'hésite à me faire tatouer...

[Eric Cartier · Rating 3 out of 5]

The unpublished late poems are my favorite of all in this slim collection: "Discant (There should be gardens)", "Satires (Satires of Don Pasquin)", "Verse", and "Therefore Sisters". Here's "Dereliction":

Does the inch-worm on the Atlas mourn
That last acre it's not inched upon?
As does the rascal, when to grass he's toed
Thunder in the basket, mowed to measure;
The four last things begun:
Leviathan
Thrashing on the banks of kingdomcome.

[Layla Elqutami]

it’s funny that barnes’ masterpiece /nightwood/ is hailed as a poet’s novel / a novel of poetic prose (& i would agree), yet her actual poetry is so .. shockingly …… middling. the drawings are something else though——nightmarish & erotic

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been meaning to read Djuna Barnes for years but have been terribly lazy about it. So when I learned she wrote a short poem/art book, I figured that would be the ideal (easy) way to start reading her.

The Book of Repulsive Women - what a great title! I think it's something that would resonate with most women. At some point in all of our lives we've been told that we are repulsive, often for not acting as women are told we should. It's also an interesting title because of its relationships to the poems or "rhythms" themselves. We can think of women Barnes describes as being supposedly repulsive, as well as the woman who is describing them and wanting them. It does a good job of evoking the struggle of being a woman sexually attracted to other women in a world that tells you it's not right, while never outright saying this.

Although the rhythms are very basic in terms of their structure, I think they are very well written. There is something easy and playful about them, while at the same time they do that great thing poems do and tell you a lot more through their juxtaposition and images. They get better the more I read them.

The drawings are strange and well-suited to the rhythms. Overall, it's a great little collection. I just wish it was longer.

[Emily Joyce · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first thing that struck me about reading Barnes's poetry was how it reminded me of my first favorite poet ever, Marianne Moore. The same Modernist tone and the use of Imagism - and of course I flipped over the book and Marianne Moore had written a byline. This collection is like a briefer, chattier, sexed up Moore- but it also lacked Moore's polish and breadth.

It is interesting to consider that Barnes rejected this collection, and the only reason it is still in print is that it wasn't copyrighted at publication. I almost feel bad to read something she didn't want to continue in circulation.

[Kobita Banerjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the body talking, but the mouth is outside the body, or perhaps the eyes. The mind is in the frame, the mind is the frame. One is only left to wonder 'is this the poet's mind or mine?'

'And hear your short sharp modern
Babylonic cries.'

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly uneven work. There were a few poems here that I read half a dozen times and never could find much meaning in. But there were also a few really fabulous poems I will want to read over and over because they are so full of meaning, "The Personal God" chief among them.

[Jackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Djuna Barnes was a writer and journalist in New York and Paris in the 1920's and 1930's. Repulsive Women is a short volume of poetry and illustrations. Now I need to read her novel, Nightwood.

[Patrick Nichols · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though her lips are vague as fancy
In her youth -
They bloom vivid and repulsive
As the truth
Even vases in the making
Are uncouth.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short collection of poems from a poet who really deserves to be read more widely. Seriously, she's fantastic.

[Katie Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Received as a gift from my mentor and friend, this collection of poems is a fine, portable, and beautifully published book.

[Olga Sala · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Book of Repulsive Women: 8 Rhythms and 5 Drawings me ha resultado una lectura árida, desconcertante y, en muchos tramos, directamente inaccesible. Entiendo su valor histórico como obra provocadora y pionera en dar voz a lo femenino desde los márgenes, pero en mi caso no logró conectar ni por fondo ni por forma.

Los poemas, cargados de simbolismo oscuro y lenguaje denso, más que sugerentes me resultaron confusos. Y aunque las ilustraciones aportan cierta coherencia estética, refuerzan esa sensación de extrañamiento y rechazo más que de reflexión o empatía.

Djuna Barnes plantea temas potentes —el cuerpo, el deseo, la exclusión—, pero lo hace desde una mirada tan pesimista y grotesca que la experiencia de lectura se vuelve más tensa que reveladora. No niego su valor como objeto literario experimental, pero leerla fue más una obligación intelectual que un verdadero disfrute.

🔹 Lo mejor: El atrevimiento formal para su época.
🔹 Lo peor: Su tono críptico, lúgubre y alienante.

En resumen: una obra que respeto, pero no disfruté.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

SOMEDAY beneath some hard
Capricious star-
Spreading its light a little
Over far,
We'll know you for the woman
That you are.

If one is looking for an introduction to Djuna Barnes this is not the place to start. The work consists of 8 short rhythms and 5 drawings and is one of Barnes' earliest published works (first appearing in 1915). Barnes, who would go on to write the brilliant and poetic novel Nightwood (a great achievement), would later try to distance herself from this early work, even suppressing publication of a later edition at one point. This is a work really best-suited for those who have already read Nightwood and maybe Ryder (with which this little work has more in common) and provides insight into Barnes' development as an artist. For those who do start here, though, don't think this is representative of her style. The poems and drawings contained here are fun and, as with Barnes' other writings, were very avant-garde at the time, but the best was yet to come.

[Alexandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think my teenage self would have appreciated this collection more. The best way I can describe this is as a bit moody/gothic with lots of rhyming. It’s by no means terrible. It has it’s place and I’m interested to read more of Barnes’ works. It’s easy to see that from the collection of poetry that Barnes was a progressive feminist in her time. I think if this collection was published today that would still hold true.

Here’s a sample of one of her poems “Twilight of the Illicit”

One sees you sitting in the sun
Asleep;
With the sweeter gifts you had
And didn't keep,
One grieves that the altars of Your vice lie deep.

You, the twilight powder of A fire-wet dawn;
You, the massive mother of Illicit spawn;
While the others shrink in virtue
You have borne.

[Kelly Buchanan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone who has read Barnes's superb and dizzying "Nightwood" knows the alien spell that she is capable of casting over a reader. It is clear from this volume that Barnes's poems are no different. Earthy and fleshy, yet somehow also preserving a certain sense of removal that lets us glimpse the subjects as somewhat of a voyeur. This feeling causes both discomfort and fascination, an edge which this great writer of the Left Bank walks with the poise of no other. This version holds particularly fond memories, as it was purchased from Shakespeare and Co. in Paris.

[Mina Widding · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bitvis drömlik, en sån där text där man får acceptera att man inte kommer att kunna förstå med intellektet, utan ger sig ut på okänd mark och bara tar in, och även att om man skulle verkligen närläsa, så finns där tusen lager till, detta om de senare novellerna i boken. Död, att dö, dö för egen hand och att döda är starka teman, liksom inte klart uttalade relationer mellan människor. Barn vs gammal, att ta sitt liv i egna händer, att förställa sig eller vara hemlig, likaså. Starka symboler och bilder, suggestivt.

[Dylan Kiewel · Rating 4 out of 5]

"through the dark'ning city to a narrow space, / with a song between his teeth, silence in control, / with a little humor clenched within his face / and a little wonder wedged within his soul."

"ravelling grandly into vice / dropping crooked into rhyme. / slipping through the stitch of virtue, /
into crime."

reading about how djuna barnes refused all offers around the time of her death to republish her work, how she apparently refused ingmar bergman's making a film of nightwood but would have said yes had greta garbo been proposed as star, is everything to me.