Number 221: More Plums– William Carlos Williams " To A Poor Old Woman"

To A Poor Old Woman

munching a plum on
the street a paper bag
of them in her hand

They taste good to her
They taste good
to her. They taste
good to her

You can see it by
the way she gives herself
to the one half
sucked out in her hand

Comforted
a solace of ripe plums
seeming to fill the air
They taste good to her

-- William Carlos Williams

Hap Notes: First off, we can conclude that WCW liked plums, eh? More than that, he had an affinity for them, what they stood for to him, what they tasted like to him.

A good ripe plum is a delicious thing, no doubt, and there are many varieties and colors although generally we are most familiar with the purple prunus domestica. The plum (as with many fruits including apples, apricots, cherries, peaches, pears, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries) are from the Rose family. Plums are often called gages (store that tidbit for future poetry/literature). The slightly white dusty coating on a plum is called an epicuticular wax (or bloom) and is biologically there to prevent moisture and decay- it's easily rubbed off, as you probably know. (Don't eat the pits/seeds- they aren't good for you. Don't know why anyone WOULD but, just in case. Actually I eat the whole apple when I eat one- core and all- so maybe the plum warning IS necessary for goofs like me.)

Let's go back to the poem. The repetition of the line "they taste good to her" was particularly riveting to me when I read this poem years ago. It not only emphasizes the way she is appreciatively eating the plums, but also, the phrase strikes and comforts at the same time. Sure the plums taste delicious to her, sure she's "munching" them, but there's something else here and I don't believe it is her appreciation that we are feeling (although we can feel that, too.) Once again, this isn't just about plums (take it that way if you want to, though) it's about our feelings and the poet's feelings about what is going on here.

You see an older lady. She's eating some plums. She seems to like them. But we're getting something else out of this, if we're thoughtful humans. We can relate to the feeling of eating something we find tasty. Now, is it just because a food tastes good that we like it or is there something else, something emotional that goes with taste? WCW tells us this woman is "poor." How does that change our feelings about the plums?

How does her enjoyment "fill the air"? Do we get some solace from her enjoyment? Why?

I want you to remember that when Williams wrote this poem- the form and the repetition was brand new- like a bucket of cold water thrown in the face of traditional poetry.

Here's where we've talked about Williams before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/07/number-220-wiliam-carlos-williams-this.html (yesterday)

and

happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/07/number-220-wiliam-carlos-williams-this.html

Number 220: PLUM CRAZY–Wiliam Carlos Williams "This Is Just To Say" (with poems by Koch and Hurley)

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in
the icebox



and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast



Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

--William Carlos Williams

Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams
1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the
next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

-- Kenneth Koch

This Is Just to Say

For William Carlos Williams

I have just

asked you to

get out of my

apartment



even though

you never

thought

I would



Forgive me

you were

driving

me insane.

-- Erica Lynn Hurley (Gambino)

Hap Notes: WCW's spiny poems have engendered quite a few parodies or tributes over the years but Koch and Gambino's are my favorites of the lot. Williams is going for an economy of thought which can often get warped as one tries to discern his meaning.

Seriously, who is this guy who is eating the plums? Is he a lover or a friend? What did you assume about the speaker in the poem as you read it? That he was a friend? A random plum thief? Well, of course, not, I'm just emphasizing how much we take for granted in this ultra-short poem. A random plum thief would neither know nor care what you were saving for breakfast. The speaker in the poem gets a lot of delight from the plums, much more than just a guy eating a plum would get. Why is that? What else is going on in this poem? Did Williams want us to think THAT much about it? Yes. He did.

Notice that both parodies take issue with a person who feels entitled to take something from you and they're not just talking about plums (and neither is Williams, probably.) By the way, you know that "icebox" is just an old-fashioned word for refrigerator, yes?

Koch's take (which was lovingly done, as most Koch poems are) is exaggerated for hilarity. He takes the idea right over the top, as Koch is wont to do (which is what is so appealing in his poetry, I think.) Koch's last verse (#4) refers specifically to Dr. Williams, in a good-natured jab at Williams' other profession. Koch's natural effusiveness and enthusiasm just permeates his parody/tribute.

Now, Gambino takes a direct, practical route to the Williams poem. See how she asserts that the plum thief (or whoever) has taken a bit more than she can handle. She's implying with this poem that the person she is addressing is making her crazy with a variety of personal things we don't know and things we do know since it is parody. The speaker is obviously unhappy with the poet-plum thief. Or, if not him, someone else she is equating with his poem. Again- look at all the assumptions we have to make, even with this frank poem, about what is going on.

Williams poems often let you do a lot of work. Sometimes, one does want to kick him out and just read a poem that says directly what it means. Ah! And there's the rub, because there are no words that just mean one particular thing are there? Each word we use is so loaded with images and connotations that it's hard to think of one that means the very same thing to all of us. Even simple words like yes, no, stop, ouch!, mom, dad, etc- are loaded with YOUR feelings and thoughts. In Williams' search for simplicity he ends up still making us all read deeply.

Let's let Williams have the last word on this kind of poetry, where one must look deeply into simple words for more:

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

-- William Carlos Williams

Here's where we've talked about Williams before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-13-william-carlos-williams-great.html

Number 219: Wislawa Szymborska "Some People Like Poetry"

Some People Like Poetry

Some people--
that means not everyone.
Not even most of them, only a few.
Not counting school, where you have to,
and poets themselves,
you might end up with something like two per thousand

Like--
but then, you can like chicken noodle soup,
or compliments, or the color blue,
your old scarf,
your own way,
petting the dog.

Poetry--
but what is poetry anyway?
More than one rickety answer
has tumbled since that question first was raised.
But I just keep on not knowing, and I cling to that
like a redemptive handrail.

--Wislawa Szymborska
(Translation by Stanislaw Barabczack and Clare Cavanagh)

Hap Notes: Wislawa Symborska (born 1923) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. She is a wonderful poet and deserves a wide audience but just winning the Nobel Prize doesn't seem to do this as much as it should. It certainly asks the question: what the heck do you have to do to get recognized as a poet? Win the Nobel Prize? (Answer: Well, it couldn't hurt but don't count on that.)

She is well-loved, well-read and respected in her native Poland, though. She is not particularly a prolific poet, publishing only 250 poems in her lifetime, so far. As a young woman, Symborska had poetry published as she worked as an illustrator and other jobs (secretary, railroad worker). Originally supporting the "party line" she signed petitions in favor of Lenin and Stalin and like most intellectuals she became disenchanted with the cant and left the party and became more dissident in the 60s. She worked for a literary magazine, wrote a literary review column and edited a monthly periodical. She was encouraged in her writing early on by Nobel Prize-winning poet Czesław Miłosz.

She is said to be humble, shy and a bit retiring.

In today's poem, she both explains how some folks "like" poetry and others, like herself, use it as a "redemptive handrail." The handrail image makes a lot of sense to me. Poetry can steady a person as they go through life. Seeing the misery of others, seeing the wild beauty of the universe, poetry can be a stabilizing element that helps a person stand up when life is too dizzying with its strange and vertiginous variety, both the awful and the "awe"-full. That handrail helps you pull your way up and steady your way down.

You can find more Symborska here: info-poland.buffalo.edu/web/arts_culture/literature/poetry/szymborska/poems/link.shtml

Number 218: Lawrence Ferlinghetti "The Pennycandystore Beyond The El"

The Pennycandystore Beyond The El

The pennycandystore beyond the El
is where I first
fell in love
with unreality
Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
of that September afternoon
A cat upon the counter moved among
the licorice sticks
and tootsie rolls
and Oh Boy Gum

Outside the leaves were falling as they died

A wind had blown away the sun

A girl ran in
Her hair was rainy
Her breasts were breathless in the little room

Outside the leaves were falling
and they cried
Too soon! too soon!

-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Hap Notes: My apologies for not figuring out how to format this poem correctly. My computer and this format are more intractable than an IBM Selectric (which would have accomplished it with no complaints, btw). Ferlinghetti's spacing is not exactly like this and I wrestled with it for an hour and gave up---however, the words are brilliant in any format and it's such a good poem.

My two favorite things in one– poetry and candy. And it's Saturday, too! However there's a shadow on this poem as the poet realizes that life and pleasure and the whole mystery of it is going by very very quickly- too soon! Too soon! The sparkling raindrops on the girl's hair, the heady smell and colors of candy, the rattling of the elevated train (the El) perhaps, the fall rain that brings on such a contrast between indoor lights and the outside gloom, the sharpness that each and every thing seems to contain in a moment of blissful and wistful epiphany; it's all in this short poem.

Penny candy (it's clever than Ferlinghetti runs these words together) was such a wonderful thing. When I was a kid (back when Lincoln was president) one bought candy by the pound or the piece at the department store (like Marshall Fields or even Sears) or a candy store. The candy would be put in a little white bag. I particularly liked a candy called "Peas and Carrots": little round green candies and little orange cubes of candy that resembled the vegetables one got at a cafeteria. Usually the candy store also had a revolving roaster for cashews and peanuts and Brazil nuts that smelled delicious, too.

And yes, candy really was about a penny a piece or three pieces for a nickel. Candy bars were not as good a deal- they were about a dime and a dime could buy ten pieces of different candies at the penny candy counter so you could get licorice, cinnamon, mint, peanut butter, cherry, orange, lemon, grape, a piece of gum and chocolate if you wanted. (yes, I was one of thos O/C types that wanted one of each- the hard part was figuring out the order in which to eat them.)

It's Saturday so here's some video fun:

Sour is not a new flavor profile. Dig this Adams gum ad with the cool 60s music (well, I liked it):www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpVDjp_8Gw0

My grandma always had a pack of Teaberry gum in her purse and I love the stuff. Teaberry refers to the herb, Eastern Teaberry, and it has a faintly minty taste. Sorta like wintergreen a little. Here's Herb Alpert with the "Teaberry Shuffle". (It was called the "Mexican Shuffle" but it was changed for the commercial- with a dance!) www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk11Acjofu8&feature=related

Yes, the 60s made everything about being hip and on the beach. Here's an ad for Bit-o-Honey that is full of 60's "youth culture": www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9gzQchCMDk&feature=related

We used to sing this stupid Chunky song when I was a kid: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o2Kx18LvgA&feature=related

Three Musketeers bars were originally called that because they featured three little candy bars, one vanilla, one chocolate and one strawberry nougat. Then they went to a big chocolate nougat bar which one was supposed to share. I don't believe this worked out very well. Here it is: www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2GTlulUAVo&feature=related

Here's the original Snickers bar. They sound delicious. Too bad they aren't made like this anymore: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XbfjKulQFw&feature=related

Here's where we've talked about Ferlinghetti before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/number-174-lawrence-ferlinghetti-two.html

Number 217: Jane Austen "When Winchester Races"

When Winchester Races

When Winchester races first took their beginning
It is said the good people forgot their old Saint
Not applying at all for the leave of Saint Swithin
And that William of Wykeham’s approval was faint.

The races however were fixed and determined
The company came and the Weather was charming
The Lords and the Ladies were satine’d and ermined
And nobody saw any future alarming.–

But when the old Saint was informed of these doings
He made but one Spring from his Shrine to the Roof
Of the Palace which now lies so sadly in ruins
And then he addressed them all standing aloof.

"Oh! subjects rebellious! Oh Venta depraved
When once we are buried you think we are gone
But behold me immortal! By vice you’re enslaved
You have sinned and must suffer, ten farther he said

These races and revels and dissolute measures
With which you’re debasing a neighboring Plain
Let them stand–You shall meet with your curse in your pleasures
Set off for your course, I’ll pursue with my rain.

Ye cannot but know my command o’er July
Henceforward I’ll triumph in shewing my powers
Shift your race as you will it shall never be dry
The curse upon Venta is July in showers–."

--Jane Austen

Hap Notes: Happy St. Swithin's Day! St. Swithin (or Swithun) was the Bishop of Winchester (he died in 862) who was noted for his work on the restoration of churches. He traveled on foot and when he gave banquets he invited the poor, not the rich. One of his miracles entails the reparation of a basket of broken eggs. He also planted a few apple trees. Before he died he asked that he be given an humble burial outside of the church where the rain would fall on him and on which parishioners would walk. On July 15, 972, his remains were dug up (I'm shortening the story a bit but the gist is correct, I think) and placed in an indoor shrine. It is said that this, obviously counter to Swithin's wishes, caused a torrential rain and bad weather.

That is the old wives tale, which comes with a rhyme:

St Swithin’s day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain
St Swithun’s day if thou be fair
For forty days ’twill rain na mair

If it rains on St. Swithin's Day, the rains will continue for 40 days. I don't believe there is evidence to support this but it's a nice day to have a feast and eat an apple (one of Swithin's signifiers). Some apple growers believed that the rain on St. Swithin's Day christened the apples and that no apples should be picked or eaten before July 15.

Now we get to the poem. Jane Austen ( 1775-1817) is writing of the horse racing taking place at Winchester, Swithin's home turf. Swithin arises from his monument to chide the crowd. Venta is the Roman/Latin word for Winchester (remember it's pronounced "wenta" in Latin). William of Wykeham was Bishop of Winchester in the 1300s. The ladies are dressed to the nines, as we say, and, of course, gambling was taking place. Swithin gives them all a little "what for."

Austen needs no introduction to contemporary readers as she is way more popular as a writer now than she was even in her own time. Popular she was, but anonymous, also. She wrote her classic novels anonymously because women...blah blah blah...you know. Austen is not just a beloved writer from her era but a shrewd social critic and observer of the human heart with a shrewd, wry, witty sense of humor. All of her books (Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion) are loaded with charming insights and clever, real dialog. I find her a joy to read, speaking strictly for myself.

Austen lived with her family and never married (she was asked- said yes-changed her mind). Her books were successful and even Sir Walter Scott (writing anonymously) reviewed her book with high praise.

I am touched by the fact that Austen wrote this poem two days before her death. She had been ill for some time, was bedridden, and still her wit and sparkle and brilliance is intact as she lampoons the rich. She was still writing until the end.

It is of no little interest to me that Austen is so revered now. I believe she's a wonderful writer but what is it about her that is so inspirational to contemporary women? Is it, that, like Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, they are unwilling to "give in" to contemporary men while at the same time not wanting to particularly be Georges Sand? Is it the clothes, the manners, the life style? Not sure.

Of course you know that Austen-based movies and books on her and her writing abound. The movie "Clueless" is roughly based on Emma, there is the series "Lost In Austen" in which a contemporary woman magically trades places with the spunky aforementioned Elizabeth Bennet and many films have come out in recent years based on her books.

Here is where you can find more Austen: http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/a#a68

Number 216: James Laughlin "Step On His Head"

Step On His Head

Let's step on daddy's head shout
the children my dear children as
we walk in the country on a sunny

summer day my shadow bobs dark on
the road as we walk and they jump
on its head and my love of them

fills me all full of soft feelings
now I duck with my head so they'll
miss when they jump they screech

with delight and I moan oh you're
hurting you're hurting me stop
they jump all the harder and love

fills the whole road but I see it run
on through the years and I know
how some day they must jump when

it won't be this shadow but really
my head (as I stepped on my own
father's head) it will hurt really

hurt and I wonder if then I will
have love enough will I have love
enough when it's not just a game?

-- James Laughlin

Hap Notes: James Laughlin (1914-1997) casts an enormous shadow of influence over the literature of the 20th (and 21st) century. His remarkable taste and boldness is unequaled today and one can hardly see when it ever will be equaled at all.

Don't know him? Sure you do. You may not know his poetry but you are most certainly familiar with writers that he published and was often the first to publish. Just a short list includes Elizabeth Bishop, Kay Boyle, e.e. cummings, Henry Miller, Marianne Moore, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Tennessee Williams, Randall Jarrell, Karl Shapiro, Henry Miller, Vladimir Nabokov, Denise Levertov, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Gregory Corso, Nathanael West and that's just mostly the Americans. He was the first to publish Hesse's Siddhartha in America as well as Dylan Thomas's poetry and his publishing company also handled the works of Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Rilke, Valery, Kafka, Cocteau, Neruda, Queneau, Cardenal, Lorca, Pasternak, Paz and Borges. If you are not impressed and you love literature, check your pulse.

Laughlin was heir to the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company in Pittsburgh although after visiting one of the foundries as a child, with its hot smoke, sparks, fire and noise, he determined he would not be going near the family business. He majored in Latin and Italian at Harvard and while on a sabbatical in Europe he wrote to Ezra Pound whom he visited and ended up attending what Pound called his "Ezuniversity"; hanging around with Pound for about six months. Pound told him to "do something useful" and he left Europe and started New Directions, a publishing house dedicated to the more experimental writers of the era. Laughlin knew the books would probably not make much money. That was not why he started the company. He wanted to give writers he felt were doing interesting work a publisher and, just maybe, some readers. (If this has no impact on you, again, pulse- check it.)

Laughlin recalled how when the names of Pound or T.S. Eliot were mentioned in the classroom at Harvard, his creative-writing professor, poet Robert Hillyer, would actually leave the room. Laughlin's taste was not as conservative, obviously.

The first thing his publishing company, New Directions (founded with a gift of $100,000 from his father,) tackled was an anthology of writers who included William Carlos Williams, Henry Miller, Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, E.E. Cummings and Ezra Pound (and also Tasilo Ribischka- a pen-name for Laughlin himself and described as "an Austrian now living in Saugus, Mass., where he is a night watchman at a railroad grade crossing; this gives him lots of time to think.")

After the anthology was published, he put copies in the trunk of his car and sold them to book stores a few at a time. New Directions published anthologies consistently until 1991 when they issued their last edition. New Directions also published Fitzgeralds' The Crack Up (where you see that Fitzgerald was every bit as brilliant and insecure as you thought.)

Laughlin knew everybody, was led to other writers by the writers he already knew and his life was a who's who of American letters. He had copious notes he wrote on his life which was published by New Directions called The Way It Wasn't and includes his thoughts on butterfly hunting with Nabokov and camping trips with Kenneth Rexroth. Their catalog is breathtaking: take a gander at this- www.ndpublishing.com/completecatalog.html New Directions' landmark best-sellers, however, were Hesse's Siddhartha and Ferlinghetti's Coney Island of the Mind.

If you have been moved by any of these writers you owe Laughlin a good thought.

In today's poem Laughlin talks about the cycle of father to child. Laughlin said of his own father and father's father in reference to New Directions, "Of course, none of this would have possible without the industry of my ancestors, the canny Irishmen who immigrated in 1824 from County Down to Pittsburgh, where they built up what became the fourth largest steel company in the country. I bless them with every breath. "

In today's poem, Laughlin is playing a little "shadow" game with his kids as they step on his shadow's head as they walk along. There is a joyful and a cautionary tone to this poem as the poet knows the shadow game presages a real one that will take place someday.

The love and joy in this poem is a happy running stream that turns into a river that runs into what could be a very dangerous sea. Laughlin knows that it won't be long before childhood delight turns into a young person striking out on their own and possibly striking out at the father a bit, too. It may not even be totally intentional but parents must be ready for it.

This comes with the territory of parenting and the poet hopes he and his offspring will be ready for it with love. He knows it's his love that needs to be the strongest, able to withstand what will come. (I won't tell you what that is- let's just enjoy this poem for now. We'll look at another of Laughlin's somewhat related poems later this year.)

Here's Laughlin reading the poem: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcI8TjNvdPU

Here's a good Laughlin quote: "I don't have any business acumen. I'm not good at deals and can't cope with agents."

and another:

"Do not become a cheap writer. Keep up your standards. It is better to be read by 800 readers and be a good writer than be read by all the world and be Somerset Maugham."

You can find more Laughlin here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/james-laughlin

Number 215: Emily Bronte "How Still, How Happy"

How Still, How Happy

How still, how happy! Those are words
That once would scarce agree together;
I loved the plashing of the surge -
The changing heaven the breezy weather,

More than smooth seas and cloudless skies
And solemn, soothing, softened airs
That in the forest woke no sighs
And from the green spray shook no tears.

How still, how happy! now I feel
Where silence dwells is sweeter far
Than laughing mirth's most joyous swell
However pure its raptures are.

Come, sit down on this sunny stone:
'Tis wintry light o'er flowerless moors -
But sit - for we are all alone
And clear expand heaven's breathless shores.

I could think in the withered grass
Spring's budding wreaths we might discern;
The violet's eye might shyly flash
And young leaves shoot among the fern.

It is but thought - full many a night
The snow shall clothe those hills afar
And storms shall add a drearier blight
And winds shall wage a wilder war,

Before the lark may herald in
Fresh foliage twined with blossoms fair
And summer days again begin
Their glory - haloed crown to wear.

Yet my heart loves December's smile
As much as July's golden beam;
Then let us sit and watch the while
The blue ice curdling on the stream.

-- Emily Bronte

Hap Notes: I'm always getting the Bronte sisters confused in my own head. Emily Bronte (1818-1848) is the one who wrote Wuthering Heights (wuthering is a Yorkshire word which refers to stormy weather). Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre and Anne wrote Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

It has always amazed me that Charlotte is so highly respected and Anne is not. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is an extraordinary book-- much more like a Thomas Hardy novel, say Jude the Obscure. Charlotte hated the book so much she refused a second printing after Anne was dead and the book had sold out. Sheesh! Where were we? Oh yes, Emily. Emily was most surely the poet of the trio and while her poetry was not met with much enthusiasm when it was published, it has increased in merit over the years.

I find Emily's poetry charming and graceful, unlike the characters in Wuthering Heights who are singularly selfish. Somebody somewhere must have done a study of what the Bronte sisters thought of men whom they portray as selfish drunken louts, milque-toasty toadies or saints. Mostly the former. I have enjoyed the books but on the whole, I'll take Jane Austen. Oh, wait, this isn't about me- sorry- started musing there. Let's go back to Emily.

I thought since this poem was actually written for the winter that the images would cool us down since the nation has been in such a heat wave. Just the phrase "blue ice curdling on the stream" makes one feel cooler, doesn't it? She brings up a good point, too, that one can imagine most every season no matter what the weather is, if one wants to. The imagination is a very powerful tool. The Bronte sisters and their brother, Branwell, created extensively detailed imaginary worlds as children and wrote lots of stories and poems about them.

The Bronte sisters wrote a book of poetry together with their pen names taken to make them seem to be men (because women were eschewed as writers, etc. etc....you know the drill.) Charlotte was Currer Bell, Emily was Ellis Bell and Anne was Acton Bell and the book was called Poems By Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. The poetry was really mostly Emily's and she turned to novel writing to enact her vengeance at her poetic dismissal with a book bound to be made into countless cheesy movies and stand as an archetype as a "romantic hero." (Okay, she didn't do it quite like that. Heathcliff is a very bad romantic, let alone hero. And Emily didn't write from rage, or---maybe she did...)

If you are in any Women's Studies classes the Bronte sisters are sure to be mentioned. They were very gifted storytellers and keen observers of dialect and life. Their health was compromised by poor sanitary conditions (it was the water, not their housekeeping- which led to typhus. tuberculosis and pneumonia) and both Emily (at 30) and Anne (at 29) died young. Branwell Bronte, their only brother, was a portrait painter. He was said to be dashing and handsome and talented. He had a torrid affair with a married woman, was abandoned by her and became a severe alcoholic ( you gettin' the drift that the Bronte sisters saw some firsthand stuff to use for their characters, here?) He also died at 29.

So Charlotte was left to sort out the stories. She didn't live all that much longer, dying at age 38. But she, alone, escaped to tell.

The masthead picture is a portrait Branwell painted of himself and his three sisters. Don't see him in the painting? He painted himself out. There is an apocryphal story that the Bronte's father wiped him out of the painting with turpentine. The sisters in the painting are, left to right: Anne, Emily and Charlotte. The painting next to the poem is one Branwell did of Emily.

You can find more Emily Bronte here: academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/wuthering/poetry.html

Here's some of Anne's work: www.readbookonline.net/books/Bronte/37/

And here's Charlotte: www.readbookonline.net/books/Bronte/24/