Robyn Hood Black, of haiku and artistic fame, is our host today at Life on the Deckle Edge, remembering her wonderful time in Scotland! Thanks, Robyn!
It's Poetry Friday! Three weeks ago on this post I shared an old anthology that I was fortunate to get at the used bookstore where I volunteer. And I chose one poem that I liked the writer of which was not acknowledged. I assumed it to be anonymous until Heidi Mordhorst (My Juicy Little Universe) asked. It was then it occurred to me that I could Google the poem's lines. I did, and found a large amount of marvelous information about a Celia Thaxter, the author! With a red face, I'm now sharing about this "past" well-known poet, a bit of her life, and another poem! I did look through the anthology again and still found no mention of her name.
I should have researched further, and thanks to Heidi's question, I did! Celia Thaxter lived from 1835 to 1894. You can find more about her here and an interesting essay about her among other women in the nineteenth century here. If you don't have time for it all, here is one paragraph about Celia: "The economic straits of most nineteenth-century American women were all but inescapable, and Celia won a degree of financial independence too late to do her career any good. Levi's high-minded Transcendentalism didn't include such mundane considerations as allowing his wife household help, and thus Celia was forced to write most of her poetry in a state of mental, physical and emotional exhaustion."