Elinor Wylie

thumb|Under oak, ash and thorn My soul was born. Elinor Morton Wylie (7 September 1885 – 16 December 1928) was an American poet and novelist popular in the 1920s and 1930s. Quotes thumb| Under thorn, oak and ash My body bent to the lash. Under oak, ash and thorn My soul was born. Under thorn, oak and ash My body bent to the lash. "Beltane", published in Last Poems of Elinor Wylie (1943) Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) Full text online at Project Gutenberg Wild Peaches Full text online at Poetry Foundation When the world turns completely upside down You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore; We’ll live among wild peach trees, miles from town, You’ll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown Homespun, dyed butternut’s dark gold color. Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor, We’ll swim in milk and honey till we drown. 1 The winter will be short, the summer long, The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot, Tasting of cider and of scuppernong; All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all. The squirrels in their silver fur will fall Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot. 1 When strawberries go begging, and the sleek Blue plums lie open to the blackbird’s beak, We shall live well — we shall live very well. 3 Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones There’s something in this richness that I hate. I love the look, austere, immaculate, Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones. There’s something in my very blood that owns Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate, A thread of water, churned to milky spate Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones. 4 I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray, Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves; That spring, briefer than apple-blossom’s breath, Summer, so much too beautiful to stay, Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves, And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death. 4 A Crowded Trolley Car thumb|A bell is clanging, people sway Hanging by their hands. Full text online at Poetry Foundation The rain’s cold grains are silver-gray Sharp as golden sands, A bell is clanging, people sway Hanging by their hands. Orchard of the strangest fruits Hanging from the skies; Brothers, yet insensate brutes Who fear each others’ eyes. One man stands as free men stand As if his soul might be Brave, unbroken; see his hand Nailed to an oaken tree. Quotes about Elinor Wylie Wylie and Millay were standard in high school-women whom I really loved. 1978 interview in Conversations with Audre Lorde (2004) It is not in the power of an organization which has insulted Elinor Wylie, to honour me. Edna St. Vincent Millay 4/18/1927 letter to the League of American Penwomen, anthologized in Letters of a Nation: A Collection of Extraordinary American Letters edited by Andrew Carroll External links Elinor Wylie at the Poetry Foundation - Biography and 8 poems (A Crowded Trolley Car, Cold Blooded Creatures, Epitaph, Full Moon, Little Elegy, Speed the Parting, Valentine, Wild Peaches) Wylie,+Elinor Elinor Wylie Poems of Elinor Wylie at Poemtree.com Poems of Elinor Wylie at Poets' Corner Category:20th-century poets from the United States Category:Novelists from the United States Category:Women authors from the United States Category:1885 births Category:1928 deaths Category:People from New Jersey