Anna A. Cassatt - Manners (1927)

Forgotten Poems #46: The Book of Lost Rhymes

—: Manners :—

 
       You'd scarce expect good form of me!
           My teachers were the sky and sea;
       My playthings: streams, the stars, small toads
       In weeds along the winding roads,
           And wild winds tussling with the trees—
       How could I learn good form of these?
 

Anna A. Cassatt (p. 1927, etc.)
P: Contemporary Verse (1927), etc.

I’ve not been able to find a single thing about Cassatt, besides this solitary, quietly feminist verse, but I will keep searching. And if it turns out that this is all that remains of her work, what a poem! It brings me a lot of joy to be adding it to the Book of Lost Rhymes, a new sub-section of Forgotten Poems, for those who enjoy mad meters and ragged rhymers!

 
            Quatrain for Anna A. Cassatt
                        by Dick Whyte

       Sky is our teacher, sea is our kin—
       Dust is the lesson told before sin,

       Living is dying, death a rebirth—
       Return to the lesson, deep in the earth.
 

                                    xoxo
                                      dw

 

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