Not at All What One Is Used To: The Life and Times of Isabella Gardner

July 7, 2011, will mark the 30th anniversary of the death of Isabella Gardner at the age of 64. Unlike Dylan Thomas, Robert Lowell, and Allen Ginsberg—all male stars of the American poetry firmament of the 1950s, and Plath, the tragic female among them—Gardner's reputation, Janssen suggests, suffers from not being taken seriously, perhaps not even by herself. Once her fourth marriage collapsed in 1966, the patrician Gardner began to decline, moving into New York's ultra-bohemian (and ultra-rundown) Chelsea Hotel. After her troubled son, Daniel, a prominent photographer and filmmaker in the downtown scene, died under mysterious circumstances, and her daughter Rose, whose drinking had gotten out of hand, admitted herself to an institution, Gardner drifted through a series of alcohol-fueled dead-end relationships in California until finally returning to the Chelsea Hotel to spend a few final years in relative peace. In telling Gardner's story, Janssen avoids the arcane, particularly when dealing with her rebellious years, when Gardner fought against her white-glove upbringing to pursue a career in the theater. But when she became involved with Poetry magazine, she realized her true calling. The association led to her first and best collection, Birthdays from the Ocean, and these narrative threads breathe vivid life into a highly accessible biography. Photos. (Dec.)