A common theme in poetry - the transporting effects of memory. Indeed, today’s poem says nothing particularly new, but it says it well. Reese’s poetry has been praised for its ‘intensity and concision’, a summing up with which I fully agree, and which shows to very good effect in ‘After’. The contrast between the dull monotony of routine and the sharp spice of a memory is beautifully evoked in a few, short words, crystallising around the very different tones of ‘these, but these’ and ‘this thing; that thing; – nothing more’.

Biography and criticism:

Reese, Lizette Woodworth

1856-1935, American poet, b. Waverly, Md.

Lizette Woodworth Reese was a professional, independent woman from the time she left high school in 1873. She began her teaching career that year and published her first poem in Baltimore’s Southern Magazine in 1874. She taught for 45 years in the public schools of Baltimore. Her poetry and her readings of it were particularly popular in women’s groups throughout the United States. She was one of the founders of the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore and its chairman of poetry until her death in 1935. In April, 1931 she was named Poet Laureate of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. In that same month, she was iven an honorary doctorate of literature by Goucher College which called her one of the “greatest living women in America.”

In her lifetime, Reese was internationally admired for her poetic genius and hailed by H.L. Mencken as one of the most distinguished poets in the United States. This volume is the first extensive collection of her poems since her Selected Poems was published in 1926.

– From the description of “In Praise of Common Things”

http://info.greenwood.com/books/0313279/html

In the 1920s when women in great numbers were again publishing her kind of poetry, Reese began to re-emerge as a poet. Robert Hariss claims that both Teasdale and Millay were “deeply indebted” to her.

From Cheryl Walker, “The Nightingale’s burden : women poets and American culture before 1900.”

– http://library.nsuok.edu/Ella/Bio/bnighten.htm

[Read the whole thing - it’s good]

Her poetry, remarkable for its intensity and concision, has been compared to that of Emily Dickinson. She is probably best remembered for the sonnet “Years”. [I think that last is a typo for ‘Tears’ - m.]

– http://www.encyclopedia.com/printablenew/39250.html

Links

Reiterating the essay on pre-1900 woman poets:

– http://library.nsuok.edu/Ella/Bio/bnighten.htm

Some previous poems I was reminded of (for various reasons):

  poem #206
  poem #236
  poem #323
  poem #373
  poem #464
  poem #670

— Martin