Posted on by Jean Lee Cole

Summer farewells

Summer farewells (Dalea pinnata), courtesy Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.

There’s a certain slant of light . . . not quite the same slant of light Dickinson made famous, the somber light of winter afternoons and cathedral tunes—but a light that lets you know fall is on its way. I’ve been noticing it during the past week or so, and with the beautiful, hazy late summer days, this poem by Marguerite Easter, one of the WLCB’s more accomplished poets, keeps coming to mind. That put it in my mind to share with you. Enjoy summer while it lasts. Fall is a-comin’.

Summer’s-Farewells (1892)
Marguerite Easter

(Local name in Virginia for late wild-wood flowers of Aster genus.)

Unto the complaining woods suddenly they came, 
To the fields so desolate but the day before,
To the unsmiling paths and to the hills that wore 
Such sullen looks; there was no further need to blame 
Nature’s improvidence, for lo, where pin oaks flame,
And large leafed yellow hickories sprout with more 
Than Spring’s abundance seemingly, they bloomed o’er
Her lately bereaved breast. I asked their name—

That suddenly to wood and path and meadow came—
And that on warm upland slopes were white in hue, 
But in hollows, where I had thought but shadows grew,
Were purple-petaled, with calyxes the same
As ragged-robins have, and stamens that became 
Golden or red, as by chance of birth they knew
Of sunlit clearings, or of depths where pines renew 
Themselves perpetually. I asked their name.

“‘Summer’s-farewells,’ we call them here.” Summer’s­ farewells!
They are the final gift of sentiment to sight.
O certainly, the earth should be contented quite
To be remembered so.— “We call them here ‘Farewells.’”
O love, I am the field, the wood, the path, the hill 
Before these come. Alas, I bide thy coming still—

Who have been gone so long, so long. E’en summer days 
Send back greeting to the earth they loved of late,
But thou abidest in silence, and I must await
Thy recognition. Hateful clime! whose woodland ways 
No Summer’s-farewells have;—I am that clime that stays
Wrapt in November’s loneliness, my woods debate
Their dolor, my falling leaves deplore their fate,—
There are no Summer’s-farewells to my Autumn days.

“‘Summer’s-farewells,’ we call them here.” Summer’s­ farewells!
They are the final gift of sentiment to sight.
O certainly, the earth should be contented quite
To be remembered so.— “We call them here ‘Farewells.’”
O love, I am the field, the wood, the path, the hill 
Before these came. Alas, I bide thy coming still.

Posted on by Katie Shiber · 1 Comment

Work to remember, Fast to Forget: The Life of Lizette Woodworth Reese

Although today few may know her name, Miss Lizette Woodworth Reese may very well have been one of Baltimore’s most gifted writers. H. L. Mencken, Baltimore writer, critic and scholar, said of Reese upon her death, “I believe, that of all the women who have ever lived in Baltimore, she will be remember the longest, just as Poe will be remembered the longest among men.”

Miss Reese and her twin sister Sophia were born on January 9, 1856 to Louisa Gabler and David Reese, a former confederate soldier, in what is now Waverly, Maryland. Waverly, a still pastoral suburb of Baltimore, served as one of Reese’s favorite subjects of poetry.

After her education in the Baltimore Public schools, Miss Reese began her teaching career at the age of seventeen. She began at St. John’s Episcopal Church’s parish school, but soon moved on to the Number Three School, a German-English school, which largely served immigrant families. Reese than continued her career at City High School, an exclusively African-American school, where she was exposed to the hardships her students faced at the hands of poverty and racism. She finished her teaching career at her alma mater, Western High school.

Reese was widely praised for her passion and dedication to teaching, but found her truest talent and purpose in writing. From poetry to short fiction to memoir, Reese had a gift for eloquence and profound insight. In 1874, her first piece, a poem titled “The Deserted House,” was published in Southern Magazine. She found a fruitful platform in magazines, and continued publishing regularly until the release of her first poetry collection, A Branch of May, in 1887. Reese proceeded to published 15 volumes of her work, two of which were autobiographies and a novel. Reese’s work was not only locally recognized, but nationally. In 1914, a New York Times Poll, asked current well-known writers, “What is the best short poem in the English language?” In response, the writers named 68 poems by 10 different authors, Reese being one, ranking her beside poets like Keats and Wordsworth. Miss Reese’s most famous and critically acclaimed poem, “Tears,” was published by Scribner’s Magazine in November of 1899. In response to its publication H. L. Mencken called it, “one of the imperishable glories of American literature.”

In 1931, Reese was elected the poet laureate of Maryland by the General Federation of Women’s Clubs and received an honorary doctorate from Goucher College. She also served as the honorary president of the Poetry Society of Maryland, the honorary president of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, and a co-founder of the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore, where she served as chair of the modern poetry committee from 1890 until her death in 1935.

Reese wrote until the day she died, passing before the completion of her novel, Worley’s. She was deeply dedicated to her craft, both education and poetry, manifesting this passion in her work with the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore. Miss Reese’s life embodied everything the club sought to achieve, the engaged study of literature, the production of literary art and the advancement of women writers.

Reese died in the year 1935 at the Church Home and Infirmary, the same location of her beloved idol, Edgar Allan Poe, who passed decades before her. Although her biographical information is easily accessible and most of her texts available digitally online, I am still left to ponder if Miss Reese is remembered these 83 years later. Certainly more than her fellow club members, but not so in comparison to the poets of her time to which she was compared. Her name rarely appears in popular history of the period or anthologies of 18th century poets, and I certainly never heard her name in my literary education.

Lizette Woodworth Reese

A woman, once considered a world famous poet, is now stuck in a niche corner of literary history, and though there may be myriad reasons why, I am more interested in the undoing of the dust collected on this poet’s history.

 

Sources:

“Lizette Woodworth Reese and the Poetry of Spring.” Underbelly, The Maryland Historical Society, 16 Apr. 2015, www.mdhs.org/underbelly/2015/04/16/lizette-woodworth-reese-and-the-poetry-of-spring/.

“Lizette Woodworth Reese.” Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lizette-woodworth-reese.

“Lizette Woodworth Reese.” The Baltimore Literary Heritage Project, baltimoreauthors.ubalt.edu/writers/lizettereese.htm.

“Miss Reese, Poet, Dies in Hospital.” The Evening Sun, 17 Dec. 1935, p. 44.

“What is the Best Short Poem in the English Language.” Baltimore Sun, 12 July 1914, p. 16.

Posted on by Tara Brooky

In search of Cautley, Coale, and Cloud

Last week I took my first jab at researching some of these women in the club. I found the work incredibly meticulous and overall frustrating. I felt like I was sifting through virtual piles of forgotten texts and coming up empty-handed. Yet when I finished the assignment I felt like I really was not finished at all. I was ready to keep going, it is cheesy but the more I found about these women, the more questions I had.

L. R. Cautley or Lucy Randolph Cautley was pretty active within the club. She shared lots of articles throughout her time as a member. They seemed to be short stories and essays never published. What I did find online of hers was sparse in comparison to the amount she shared at club meetings. Cautley had a fascination with Rudyard Kipling, the author of the Jungle Book. She shared with the club a few things she wrote about his work and in 1901 had an essay about his work published. This seemed to be the most notable thing she had ever published. Although she was not known for poetry, she did have a poem published in Harper’s Monthly. The only other things I could find on her were three copyrights of dramas with authorship by her. I could not find any text on them, if they were ever performed, or sold, or any other reason which would draw her to want to copyright them. I hope to solve that mystery in my second phase of research on her.

Mrs. James Casey Coale really frustrated me in research. I only found she was mentioned in the minutes as presenting two of her published books to the club to keep in their library. She was not an official member of the club as far as I could tell. Her book The Cottage by the Sea was insanely easy to find. But the other book seems to have never existed, and maybe for a good reason, it was titled Leila the Hindoo Girl, so I can only imagine the type of material it contained. I think what I found most frustrating about Coale was that she exclusively goes her husband’s name, but her husband can not be found anywhere! Hopefully in phase two of the research I can find out who Mr. James Casey Coale was and thus, find out more about who the Mrs. was.

Virginia Woodward Cloud was an extremely active member inside and out the club. She was a popular poet whose poems are still popping up in recent anthologies and/or reprints. It is very refreshing to me that people have held on to Cloud’s poetry and continue to make her selections available online. I am excited to start reading some of her works and uncover some forgotten ones. Also, she seemed to be a very well-liked woman within the club. Since she was a bit more revered than other women at the time, I hope this allows for me to find out more about her aspects of life through research.

Posted on by Katie Shiber

The House Not Made with Hands

In transcribing minute meetings, it is easy to get lost in the technicalities of accurate replication, distracting one from content that seems, at times, mundane. However, in my transcription of the 805th Meeting of the Women’s Literary Club of Baltimore held on October 27th 1914, a sentiment was put forth that piqued my interest. The meeting was conducted by the committee on poetry, led by chairman Miss Lizette Woodworth Reese, who began by reading a poem entitled “Ghosts.” However, it was not Miss Reese that brought forth this reflection, but a musing from the secretary herself that caught my eye. She wrote, “Every house where men live and die is haunted. The house not made with hands is the one we really live in. This is the modern touch, taking the place of cruder apparitions of earlier times. Our ghosts have been turned inward.”

I was immediately struck because, unlike other minutes I had encountered, the minute keeper was not simply relaying the conversation of the group, but weighing in herself. She was so moved by the topic of ghosts and apparitions that she felt it necessary to document her thoughts. It is clear that the “house not made with hands” she is referring to is the kingdom of God, quoting from 2 Corinthians 5:1. It is a religious sentiment, but perhaps a social commentary too. These minutes were taken in October of 1914, shortly after the beginning of the first world war, a time in history when the world faced the grim reality of brutal intercontinental conflict, and Americans feared their nation’s entry into the war. Death was no longer a topic easily ignored, but one in the forefront of civilian minds. Perhaps the minute keeper’s words were just a belief that religion had taken precedent over old-fashioned superstition, but maybe she was instead struck by the reality that war was raging and death looming, finding solace in her divine belief in heaven.

Posted on by Clara Love · 1 Comment

Titles, Texts, and Some Sapphic Poems

When I started compiling a list of the poems Lizette Woodworth Reese shared with the Woman’s Literary Club, I realized that my primary challenge would be tracking down the actual titles of her works mentioned on the meeting programs I’ve transcribed (1890-1905). More often than not, her original works are just listed as something unhelpful like “Three Poems, Lizette Woodworth Reese.” Fortunately, I was able to find many of these missing titles in the minutes that have been transcribed so far (1890-1895, 1910-1912), and hope to find the rest by looking through the minutes of the 1895-1905 seasons.

Another related challenge/question I encountered whose answer also lies in the minutes is that since the formatting for almost every kind of presentation given to the Club follows more or less the same = format on the programs, it’s tricky to tell whether something Lizette shared that actually was titled something other than “Poem” is a poem or something else–an essay, a review, a story. Again, referring to the corresponding meeting minutes usually clears this up.

Of the 20 readings I’ve been able to both identify as poems and confirm titles of, I’ve been able to track down the text of 13 so far. I’ve found the texts Lizette chose to read to the Club scattered all over the place–some in her published volumes, some in her papers held at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, and some on generic poetry sites and in periodical records online.

One of her poems that struck me in particular is called “Lydia,” and it stood out to me for a couple of reasons. At first glance, I thought it could perhaps be written about the longtime Club recording secretary, Lydia Crane, especially since it was one of the first things Lizette shared with the Club. However, upon closer investigation, the poem references Sudbury, a town in Massachusetts, twice, so that doesn’t seem likely.

The other reason this poem caught my eye has to do with our prior group discussion about how many of the Club women, including Lizette Woodworth Reese, remained unmarried. We’ve also discussed ‘Boston marriages,’ and the possibility that the reason for some of these women remaining unwed could be because they weren’t heterosexual. In “Lydia” and the poem that immediately follows it in the collection of poems I found it in, “Anne,” (which also references Sudbury), I hear what, to me, could definitely be the voice of a woman who loves other women. Both of these poems are celebrations of another woman’s beauty, grace, and glory (“Anne” even raises its subject to the level of divinity, and romanticizes her from afar) and both contain strong violet imagery, which has long been associated with lesbianism thanks to the Greek poet Sappho.

I don’t want to make broad claims about a dead woman’s sexuality without evidence, or claim that these two poems that caught my eye are necessarily evidence themselves. However, following our prior conversations (and even before that), it’s been on my mind, so discovering this sort of poetry leaves a strong impression on me, and I’m looking forward to uncovering more of what Lizette Woodworth Reese chose to share with the Club.