National Poetry Month No. 4

Okay, a couple of things: I didn't know that Edward Arlington Robinson: I didn't know that he won 2 Pulitzer Prizes.

You can learn more about him HERE.

And I'll never forget reading/hearing David McCullough likened David Wallace, the handsome, popular father of Bess Wallace Truman to Richard Cory. It was just over in the next block [here in Independence, MO] that he killed himself in 1903.

Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean-favoured and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good Morning!" and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich, yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine -- we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked and waited for the light,
And went without the meat and cursed the bread,
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet in his head.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Bess

Oh I so should have posted something yesterday. Birthday-wise, you can't do much better than the 12th of February. Lincoln. Darwin. Gen. Omar Bradley. One of my favorite authors, R. F. Delderfield, whose 100th birthday anniversary was yesterday. If you're reading this, track down his A Horseman Riding By, the first of a handsome trilogy called - isn't this a lovely title: Long Summer Day. So is the setting, an estate in southern England, in the first four decades of the 20th century. One of those generational sagas. Very Masterpiece Theatre, to which I'm addicted these days, thanks to the denizens of Downton.

So what's this got to do with Bess Truman? Nothing, except today's her birthday. Also a wedding anniversary of someone I was way stuck on years ago, who married someone else, but I doubt they're still married anyway and thanks be to all that's holy I dodged that particular bullet. But I digress.

Elizabeth Wallace was born just a short walk from here in the winter of 1885. Grew up in the antebellum sunset world of Downton Abby. And once upon a time, when such a thing as the Great War was off in the unimaginable, unthinkable future, she went for walks around my neighborhood with her girl friends. Sorrowed over a dead father. Wondered if she should marry the earnest, cheerful farmer from down around Grandview, who kept calling on her. How could either of them ever know that he'd be the President some day?