This week: Edith Wharton Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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This is poetry from the minds and the hearts of poets on Writing.Com. The poems I am going to be exposing throughout this newsletter are ones that I have found to be, very visual, mood setting and uniquely done. Stormy Lady
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An Autumn Sunset by Edith Wharton
I
Leaguered in fire
The wild black promontories of the coast extend
Their savage silhouettes;
The sun in universal carnage sets,
And, halting higher,
The motionless storm-clouds mass their sullen threats,
Like an advancing mob in sword-points penned,
That, balked, yet stands at bay.
Mid-zenith hangs the fascinated day
In wind-lustrated hollows crystalline,
A wan Valkyrie whose wide pinions shine
Across the ensanguined ruins of the fray,
And in her hand swings high o'erhead,
Above the waste of war,
The silver torch-light of the evening star
Wherewith to search the faces of the dead.
II
Lagooned in gold,
Seem not those jetty promontories rather
The outposts of some ancient land forlorn,
Uncomforted of morn, Where old oblivions gather,
The melancholy unconsoling fold
Of all things that go utterly to death
And mix no more, no more
With life's perpetually awakening breath?
Shall Time not ferry me to such a shore,
Over such sailless seas,
To walk with hope's slain importunities
In miserable marriage? Nay, shall not
All things be there forgot,
Save the sea's golden barrier and the black
Close-crouching promontories?
Dead to all shames, forgotten of all glories,
Shall I not wander there, a shadow's shade,
A spectre self-destroyed,
So purged of all remembrance and sucked back
Into the primal void,
That should we on that shore phantasmal meet
I should not know the coming of your feet?
On January 24, 1862, in New York City, George Jones and his wife Lucretia Rhinelander welcomed daughter Edith Jones into the world. The couple already had two sons, Frederic, sixteen and Henry twelve. They lived in a very prominent neighborhood in New York. Goerge Jones made his money in real estate. The family was part of the old money established in the city. As a child Wharton studied under private tutors and governesses. The family moved to Europe during her childhood. Living in places such as France, Italy, Germany and Spain. These travels helped Wharton to become fluent in German, French and Italian.
Wharton was only educated at home but wanted more. She was often found reading her father's books, in search of more knowledge. She rejected the idea of marrying for money and being put on display. She published her first poem under the name E. A. Washburn. Her family didn't believe it was proper for their daughter to be a writer, so they forbid her to use her name in print. She wrote and published several poems under a pseudonym published in the New World, and published others anonymously in the Atlantic Monthly. Her father eventually published a collection of her poetry through a private publishing company.
At the age of twenty-three Edith married Edward Wharton, a man twelve years her senior. The couple moved to Newport, where they purchased a home. In the beginning of their marriage the couple spent several months a year living in Europe. That ended when Edward started suffering from depression and the couple stayed in the states. Eventually her husband's depression would lead to their divorce. The one thing Wharton would turn to during these times was her writing. She wrote eighty-five short stories and she published a design book. Her first major publication was, "The Decoration of Houses" in 1897 and was followed by "The Greater Inclination," published 1899 and Crucial Instances 1901.
Her first novel was The Valley of Decision, was published in 1902 she was twenty-nine. Other publications followed, "The House of Mirth'' in 1905; "Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verse" in 1909; Ethan Frome in 1911. "The Age of Innocence," published in 1920 won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, making Wharton the first woman to win the award. She then published "The Writing of Fiction," in 1925. Wharton moved back to France for her later years.
On June 1, 1937, Wharton was at the French country home of Ogden Codman, where she was busy writing, when she suffered a heart attack and collapsed. Her health declined and a few months later she would suffer a fatal stroke. Edith Wharton passed away August 11, 1937.
Life by Edith Wharton
Life, like a marble block, is given to all,
A blank, inchoate mass of years and days,
Whence one with ardent chisel swift essays
Some shape of strength or symmetry to call;
One shatters it in bits to mend a wall;
One in a craftier hand the chisel lays,
And one, to wake the mirth in Lesbia’s gaze,
Carves it apace in toys fantastical.
But least is he who, with enchanted eyes
Filled with high visions of fair shapes to be,
Muses which god he shall immortalize
In the proud Parian’s perpetuity,
Till twilight warns him from the punctual skies
That the night cometh wherein none shall see.
Chartres by Edith Wharton
I
Immense, august, like some Titanic bloom,
The mighty choir unfolds its lithic core,
Petalled with panes of azure, gules and or,
Splendidly lambent in the Gothic gloom,
And stamened with keen flamelets that illume
The pale high-alter. On the prayer-worn floor,
By worshippers innumerous thronged of yore,
A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb,
The stranded driftwood of Faith's ebbing sea--
For these alone the finials fret the skies,
The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free,
While from the triple portals, with grave eyes,
Tranquil, and fixed upon eternity,
The cloud of witnesses still testifies.
II
The crimson panes like blood-drops stigmatise
The western floor. The aisles are mute and cold.
A rigid fetich in her robe of gold,
The Virgin of the Pillar, with blank eyes,
Enthroned beneath her votive canopies,
Gathers a meagre remnant to her fold.
The rest is solitude; the church, grown old,
Stands stark and grey beneath the burning skies.
Well-nigh again its mighty framework grows
To be a part of nature's self, withdrawn
From hot humanity's impatient woes;
The floor is ridged like some rude mountain lawn,
And in the east one giant window shows
The roseate coldness of an Alp at dawn.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
WE GO... WRONG
However beauty somewhere came to be
Someone everywhere took of it for free
Advantage to the self always will stay
Irons clasped and are freedoms held at bay
Living like headstones in cubicles chairs
Hands striking keyboards of processing there
Lost teenage glories lain gentle to a grave
Slip aging flowers splendor far away
and governments play holding all the hand
Fingers numb tapping everywhere they stand
Subtleties dose of comatose to love
Forgotten so thyself, whatever of
For granted, for some kind of nothingness
Everything is breathing whats willing this
Humans tasteless in their oblivion
Man, his kind, impropriety the sum
Wit gathers years and serves some simple need
Without are frenzied failing calls to see
As liter to the curb lazily tossed
Ignorant gutter and a line is crossed
Honorable mention:
"Invalid Entry"
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Poetry: March 23, 2022 Issue [#11275]
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