Edna Constance Willard - Moonlight (1928)

Forgotten Poems #44

 
        Black canyons,
        Silver mesas,
        Mountains cowled in mist . . .
        Columns of silence
             supporting the sky
                  and an old gold moon.

        Flooding moonlight—
        Black . . . silver . . . blue . . . gold . . .
        And stillness . . . peace.

        Black canyons,
        Silver mesas,
            sink in motionless dreams;
        Columns of marble silence
            uphold the sky,
                and the moon.
 

Willard, Edna Constance (p. 1923-28, etc.)
L: San Diego, California, US, &c.
P: Pegasus (1923), The Lyric West (1924), Troubadour (1928); etc.

Part of the “Western” American poetry scene, known through magazines like The Lyric West and Troubadour; “Without question, each of these magazines casts its literary and cultural expression within the context of its regional geography. Collectively these editors understood the “West” to include Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, and sometimes Texas. More than just sites on the map, however, this region was defined by its physical terrain. Its vast deserts and grand vistas, its mesas and buttes as well as its unique geographical landmarks—the Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, the Rocky Mountains—are celebrated by the magazines’ contributors,” which included poets like Alice Corbin, Eleanor Nichols, Betty Earl, and Edna Constance Willard. (Sarah A. Fedirka, ‘Little Magazines’ of the American West, 2009)

Outside the handful of poems Willard had published in the 1920s, this is the only contemporary reference I have been able to find to her poetry, though I did find a record from the 1930s in which she granted the ‘City of San Diego’ the rights to use her land for the construction of a new sewer. It’s amazing the odd things you come across when researching forgotten poems!

 
        For Edna Constance Willard
                         by Dick Whyte

                old gods,
        the moon has risen
        as if to say,

        watch as the sky
        returns to the river—

        forgetting your names,
        the waters
        wait


                                     xoxo
                                       dw

 

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