“What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore / Meant in croaking ‘Nevermore’”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday:

Convention, Agnes Lee

The snow is lying very deep.
My house is sheltered from the blast.
I hear each muffled step outside,
I hear each voice go past.

But I’ll not venture in the drift
Out of this bright security,
Till enough footsteps come and go
To make a path for me.


Lee (1862-1939) was a daughter of the Rand of Chicago-based map publisher Rand McNally. She was older than most of these early 20th century female poets—her first collection was published in 1889—but she successfully transitioned into the Modernist period and was a frequent contributor to Poetry in its first two decades. This is from her 1922 collection Faces and Open Doors. Neither of her two husbands was a writer (photographer and surgeon, respectively).

---L.

Subject quote from The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe.

Comments

[asakiyume]

How perfect.

I've often thought about the beaten path in precisely these terms, because of how very, very hard it is to be the first to walk through deep snow. I've struggled with it! And then you see a trodden path, going more or less the way you want to go, and you (I) think, Oh thank god--and get on it. Ahh, the easy walking.

... But metaphorically speaking, what if it's not quite where you want to go. Or even in actuality: I may stay on that path for a while, but when it comes time to peel off for my destination, it's back to the struggle.

Thanks for sharing.

[larryhammer]

It's a nicely deep one, which is what caught my attention.

What strikes me is that the author was going on 60 when she wrote it.

[asakiyume]

Having just turned 60, I am nodding in sage satisfaction ;-)