The Antiphon The University of Maryland. In 1954, once Barnes had completed writing the play, she sent it to T. S. Eliot at Faber & Faber, who had previously published "Nightwood" and with whom she had developed a strong friendship. Eliot was initially very uncertain of the play's merits, indeed in a letter responding to it he explained that he had struggled to fully comprehend it. Nonetheless, he enlisted the poet and critic Edwin Muir to read the manuscript, who claimed the play "a work of genius and utterly absurd." Muir did, however, suggest some editorial changes, especially to the first act,
Howard Baker (poet) Howard Baker (poet) Howard Baker (born Howard Wilson Baker, Jr.) (April 5, 1905 – July 1990) was an American poet, dramatist, and literary critic. Baker was born in Philadelphia. He did graduate work in English at Stanford University, where he befriended Yvor Winters and was co-editor of the literary magazine "Gyroscope". After getting his master's degree, he moved to Paris to pursue his studies at the Sorbonne. There he married the novelist Dorothy Baker and met and was influenced by Ernest Hemingway and Ford Madox Ford, who helped him to publish his first work, the autobiographical novel "Orange Valley" (1931).