Greetings, Poetry Lovers!
It's a week when the news has us reeling. I'm just offering a bright spot/diversion. I know others among us are Downton Abbey fans, and the final movie comes out TODAY. My daughter Morgan and I plan to see it next weekend when she and the baby grands visit. (Wish Baba luck....)
Devoted fans since the series ran on PBS (starting 15 years ago!), we've seen the movies and went to the traveling exhibit when it came to The Biltmore Estate. (Those costumes - swoon!) That was just days before we were all on lockdown in 2020, come to think of it.
I've caught a few TV interviews with the cast this week, and I recorded the hour-long special on NBC on Wednesday night. Almost time to get out that fascinator hat! (It came in handy, above, when the recent mixed media art retreat I attended in Georgia had a 1920s-themed welcome party. I zipped up my dress from Morgan's wedding in 2016, added a few touches from Amazon, and off I went!)
I thought it would be fun to make a couple of small blank journals with 1920s ephemera as well, to celebrate. These have 1920s fashion illustration clippings on the covers, plus a couple of other period extras inside. (Here's a link to my Etsy shop, and here's a link to my artsyletters blog with some pictures of a tiny 1920s celluloid date book.)
In pondering poetry penned during the setting of the movie, the end of the 1920s turning into the 1930s, I thought of H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961), one of the leading imagist poets of the early 20th Century. This poem caught my fancy, from her 1931 collection, Red Roses for Bronze.
Stars Wheel in Purple
by H.D.
Stars wheel in purple, yours is not so rare
as Hesperus, nor yet so great a star
as bright Aldeboran or Sirius,
(Read the full poem here.)
Thanks for coming by, and be sure to catch the Roundup with our lovely Rose at Imagine the Possibilities.