Betty Earl - 3 Short Poems (1917-1922)

Forgotten Poems #99 || Reissue #16

    
“Imagination haloes effective writing, illumines and beautifies those phrases that a too-strong searchlight might mar. Images should be summoned, not stunned by excessive detail. Effective description inks the image, lifts the silhouette against the flame. Effective description is the wizard-wing, inducing vivid flight. Effective description is the lightning streak, followed by thunders of thought.” (Betty Earl, from 'Strength in the Lightning-Flash', 1923)
    

     
              —: The Shell & The Tear :—

       I shaped a poem from a shell;
       Its fragile curves I loved full well.

       I shaped another from a tear—
       A little human sorrow-sphere.
 
       The first was formed with matchless grace;
       Its thin perfection shone like lace.

       The second, less divinely wrought,
       Held only one shy, wistful thought.
 
       I sent them forth, believing well 
       The tear would come; would stay, the shell.

       But lo, life knew another way! 
       The shell came back; the tear did stay.
    

    
              —: Spirit :—

       A dead leaf
       Summons grief;

       A dead tree
       Bends the knee;

       A dead man,
       Wrecks god's plan.
    

      
              —: Then Night :—

       Like snowy sheep that stray
       Beyond the bars,

       One by one, the waifs of cloud
       Slipped far away

       Until the great half-heaven lay
       Golden with its stars.
      

Betty Earl (p. 1917-1923, etc.) was a poet and short-story writer from Nevada, Missouri. Little is known of her life, apart from a few poems published in the late-1910s and early-1920s in American Poetry and Tempo. Was included in the anthology The Poet’s Pack, edited by John G. Neihardt.

     
              Two Fragments
                   For Betty Earl
                       By Dick Whyte

                            ❖

       wrap your songs in feathers
            plant them in a field
       and hope like hell
                 it rains—

                            ❖

       where do poems come from
           worlds bent into words?
       from the singers up on high
           those we call the birds—

                            ❖
     

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