Now let no charitable hope
Confuse my mind with images
Of eagle and of antelope:
I am in nature none of these.
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I was, being human, born alone;
I am, being woman, hard beset;
I live by squeezing from a stone
The little nourishment I get.
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In masks outrageous and austere
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The years go by in single file;
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But none has merited my fear
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And none has quite
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escaped my smile.
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Basic (Wikipedia) Biography of Elinor Morton (Hoyt) Wylie (1885-1928)
Literary Biography At Poetry Foundation Website
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”No Charitable Hope” appeared in Elinor Wylie's second major book of poems, Black Armor, 1923.
The spare elegance of this little verse is characteristic of the poet. The tone has bitter experience behind it.
Elinor Hoyt came from a background marked by both privilege and politics: a grandfather was Henry M. Hoyt, governor of Pennsylvania 1879-83. Her father, Henry M. Hoyt, Jr., served as Solicitor General of the United Stated under Theodore Roosevelt,1903-06. Part of her youth was passed in Washington D.C.
From the biography at the Poetry Foundation: “Her childhood was unhappy….[H]er father had a mistress, her mother was a chronic hypochondriac, and at least one of her siblings, a brother, committed suicide. Another brother was rescued after jumping off a ship, and a sister died under equivocal circumstances. Wylie herself, although known for her beauty, suffered from dangerously high blood pressure all her adult life; it caused unbearable migraines, and would kill her…." She died of a stroke, age 43.
The poet was married for the first time in 1906, reputedly “on the rebound" from a prior relationship; bore a son; left her emotionally unstable husband and her child to cohabit with Horace Wylie, a long-term, married admirer who had pursued her for years; decamped with Wylie to England where the couple lived under an assumed name; on the outbreak of World War I returned with him to the U.S.; suffered several miscarriages, a stillbirth, and the birth of a premature child that did not survive; and married Wylie, after he obtained a divorce. (Meanwhile her first husband committed suicide.)
Her literary career was brief but highly productive. She published her first small collection of verses anonymously in 1912. In 1920 she had four poems accepted by Harriet Monroe, editor of Poetry magazine. She became part of the New York literary world, where friends and supporters included Edmund Wilson, John Dos Passos, Sinclair Lewis, and Carl Van Vechten. Her first commercial volume of poetry appeared in 1921; Black Armor was the second of four in all. Between 1923 and 1928, she would also produce four novels.
The marriage to Horace Wylie fell apart, however.
In 1923, the same year this poem was published, the poet married William Rose Benet, who had been acting as her literary agent. (This was Benet’s second marriage out of four in all.)
Benet and Wiley also separated within a few years. Wiley would go on to find love again in England, producing what some consider her best poetry out of the last relationship of her abbreviated life.
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Footnotes to the art:
1. Art Deco porcelain. (Offered for sale at http://artdecocollection.com/ceramics-and-glass/masks-figurines/crackle-glazed-ceramic-art-deco-woman-on-antelope-cubist/)
2. Art deco head of a woman. ceramic. (Retrieved from Etsy.com; item marked sold, no further information.)
3. Vintage ceramic mask offered for sale on Ebay. No further information.
4. Feather masks at Carnival celebration, Venice, Italy. (Retrieved from webpage of the Venetian Mask Society; photo by Wanblee.)
5. Noh theater mask (representing the mistress of a married man, who has miscarried with his child). Retrieved from otherwomenswords.wordpress.com/…
6. Retrieved from Pinterest; no further identification.
7. Art deco style ceramic wall sconce. Pelzman designs/Vandor ceramics, Japan,; found on Pinterest.
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Something About Art Deco Style (popular in the 1920s-30s, revived 1980s)
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Shameless plug for my previous diary, CLASSIC POETRY/Women's History: "To all virtuous Ladies in general" by Emilia Lanier (1569-1645).
For those who did not see it, if the title looks forbidding, you might still enjoy the graphics. ;-)
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More Diaries:
Classic Poetry Group
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Readers and Book Lovers (with full schedule of literary diaries)
“These fragments I have shored against my ruins.” -- T.S. Eliot
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