Julie Unplugged

S is for Sara Teasdale: Women Writers in Literary History from A to Z #atozchallenge

 

Sara Teasdale

Poet

1844 - 1933

 

 

I don’t remember when exactly I fell in love with Sara Teasdale. I think it was during the era when I was being haunted by Edna St. Vincent Millay. She was a contemporary of Millay. I wanted to know more. I read of “this other woman” (Sara Teasdale)  of the time who was another tragic figure.

Back then I was focusing on a different person each month and in Sara’s month, I studied May Sarton, too.

Sara was a big part of my inspiration for my “Women’s Sphere?” art project which also inspired the A to Z in Women’s Literary History AND what I am creating on June 6 and 7 which still doesn’t have a name, but which is celebrating the writing of The Yellow Wallpaper, since it was scribed by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in two days – June 6 and 7, 1890.

Here are some nitty gritty facts about Miss Teasdale’s life:

She was born in 1884 in St. Louis, Missouri. (Remember K is for Kate Chopin? She was also born in St. Louis!)

She was unhealthy as a child so she didn’t start school until she was nine-years-old. She came from a wealthy family who was able to both provide for her and take care of all her needs. She went to the prestigious Hosmer Hall, an all girls school in St. Louis. She created a women’s literary society with some of her teen friends which they called “The Potters.” They even published their own literary journal The Potters Wheel where Sara received her first publishing credits.

She looked to several different poets as well as actress Eleanora Duse as role models and inspiration for her writing. Among her favorites were Christina Rossetti, Mary Robinson and Emily Dickinson.

She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1918 (which was then called Columbia University Poetry Prize).

Many of her lyrics are love poems inspired by two men: one she married (Ernst Filsinger) and one who adored her and ended his life with suicide in 1931 (Vaclev Lindsay).She divorced Filsinger, who offered financial stability in addition to her wealthy family, in 1929. Some sources say it is her seven year friendship with young poet Margaret Conklin that caused the marital split. 

On January 29, 1933, Sara Teasdale followed other creative people including her one-time love, Vaclev Lindsay, into suicide. She overdosed on barbiturates and climbed into the bathtub, yet another tragedy upon yet another creative woman.

This blog post is an entry in the A to Z Challenge. Each day in April (except Sundays) I will be featuring a woman in literary history. If you click on the logo below, you will be introduced to the writing of more than a thousand bloggers writing on a wide variety of topics in April, all from A to Z!

Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She teaches a teleclass/ecourse "Discover the Power of Writing & Telling Engaging, Enlightening Stories" which begins again April 19, 2012. Find details by clicking this link.

Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -

Subscribe to DailyPassionActivator

Powered by us.groups.yahoo.com

R is for Rosmarie Waldrop: Women Writers in Literary History from A to Z #atozchallenge

R is for Rosmarie Waldrop:

Poet, Translater, Publisher

1935 to present

She has been called an “avant garde doyenne” whose greatest influences were found in Rainer Rilke, Ezra Pound, Emily Dickinson and Gertrude Stein.

I found it intriguing and again, sad on my part, that Rosmarie Waldrop is described by the Poetry Foundation as “a forceful presence in American and international poetry for over forty years” yet I have never heard of her until I searched and searched and searched for a woman whose first name started with R who was successful yet relatively unknown.

She has written more than twenty books and translated even more than that. She translated from French and German, her native language, to English. She spent a year in Paris in 1970. She befriended many avant garde poems during her residency, becoming especially close to Edmond Jabès.  She has translated more than a dozen of his poetry collections. In 1993 she was awarded the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award for her translation of Jabès’s The Book of Margins. She was also named “Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres” by the French government.

Listen to these words she said in response to being asked a question about Edmond Jabès Book of Questions: “Mark the first page of the book with a red marker for in the beginning the wound is invisible.” The wound is certainly the wound of the Jewish people, but Jabès almost immediately widens it to the wound of the human condition. He sees the Jew’s “otherness” as exemplary for the condition of individuation. We are all “other” than the rest of creation and, as individuals, “other” than our fellow humans.”

How can I have never heard of this woman until now? She and I seem to have so many of the same thoughts.

Besides being an poet and translater, she and her husband, Keith Waldrop began Burning Deck Magazine in 1961. The magazine evolved into Burning Deck Press, one of the most influential publishers for innovative poetry in the United States.

This blog post is an entry in the A to Z Challenge. Each day in April (except Sundays) I will be featuring a woman in literary history. If you click on the logo below, you will be introduced to the writing of more than a thousand bloggers writing on a wide variety of topics in April, all from A to Z!

Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She teaches a teleclass/ecourse "Discover the Power of Writing & Telling Engaging, Enlightening Stories" which begins again April 19, 2012. Find details by clicking this link.

Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -

Subscribe to DailyPassionActivator

Powered by us.groups.yahoo.com

Q is for Quinn Cummings: #AtoZChallenge - Women in Literary History from A to Z

Q is for Quinn

Blogger/Memoir Writer/Educational Advocate/ Humorist

1967 -

How could you not adore someone who writes like this: “I sometimes wonder if my last words on this earth will be something like, 'Oh, I knew this wouldn't work.” It sounds like something I wished I had said AND it comes from our subject of today’s A to Z Challenge post.

Today’s Woman in Literary history is the only Blogger/Novelist/Memoir Writer of all twenty six women. Her name is Quinn Cummings and when I found her blog it was like discovering a dear friend. I could imagine myself walking my dog with her along as our two ten year old children ran impatiently ahead.

She is funny, awkward and much smarter than I am. I enjoy having friends like her, even when the only mode of friendship is me reading her words. There is a certain connection that comes with unique, full voiced writers. It reminds me of the day I finished Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones and as I turned the last page I broke into tears. I didn’t want the “friendship” to end. I wanted it to keep going.

Quinn’s first book, a memoir, was published in 2009: Notes From The Underwire: Adventures from My Awkward and Lovely Life . She was approached by a publisher after her blog attracted attention, including Newsweek’s BlogWatch Pick of the Week.

From an Amazon reviewer: Quinn is honest, touching, funny, this is the kind of book you read and think, "I wish she was my friend." Another says, “Reading her stories was a bit like having a large glass of wine with an incredibly entertaining friend who isn't afraid to share some of her most embarrassing moments.”

Her second book is due out in September titled "The Year of Learning Dangerously". It is about her experiences homeschooling her daughter.

Her blog, The QC Report (subtitled-Putting the "Self" in "Paralyzing Self-Consciousness" since the 20th century.) may be found here.

 

This blog post is an entry in the A to Z Challenge. Each day in April (except Sundays) I will be featuring a woman in literary history. If you click on the logo below, you will be introduced to the writing of more than a thousand bloggers writing on a wide variety of topics in April, all from A to Z!

Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She teaches a teleclass/ecourse "Discover the Power of Writing & Telling Engaging, Enlightening Stories" which begins again May 10, 2012. Find details by clicking this link.

Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -

Subscribe to DailyPassionActivator

Powered by us.groups.yahoo.com

 

 

#AtoZChallenge - P is for Phillis Wheatley:Transformed from Slave to Celebrated Poet to Obscurity in her Short Lifetime -

Phillis Wheatley

(Approximately) 1753 – 1784

She was quite a celebrity in her day: a poet from the (in the 17^th century in the Colonial United States) mysterious continent of Africa. She proved to the Northern English speaking elite that it was not only their pale skinned comrades who had a polished, ready to serve mind.

She was adopted off a boat from West Africa by the Wheatley family from Boston. They treated her well, giving her an education as well as using her as a house servant.

She learned side-by-side with the “other” Wheatley children.

When it was discovered she had a gift for language, it was something to be developed.

She began writing poetry in earnest.

She was talked about by people across Europe as well as in “the young or the soon to be” United States.

She was so successful, she was freed.

The only problem is she was completely unprepared for the costs of freedom. She didn’t know how to be a “good worker” with her hands. She had been focusing on her power with words which required only lying in bed on the worst days.

She married another freed slave.

She had a child.

She worked as a scullery maid.

Her husband left her.

Her child died.

She died near penniless.

How many poems with her went unexpressed?

Her tragedy is relatively unknown.

This was the life of Phillis Wheatley. She was once a word-celebrity, in the end just another face in a crowd of sad, unfulfilled faces. What happened in her relationship with the Wheatley family? Did they know what happened to her? Did they care?

I wonder if she continued to write when her life changed, but her poems from that time died with her. I hope she wrote. I wish we could find those poems and come to know her life “after” better.

This blog post is an entry in the A to Z Challenge. Each day in April (except Sundays) I will be featuring a woman in literary history. If you click on the logo below, you will be introduced to the writing of more than a thousand bloggers writing on a wide variety of topics in April, all from A to Z!

Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She teaches a teleclass/ecourse "Discover the Power of Writing & Telling Engaging, Enlightening Stories" which begins again April 19, 2012. Find details by clicking this link.

Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -

Subscribe to DailyPassionActivator

Powered by us.groups.yahoo.com

 

#Row80 Wednesday Check In: The Ongoing Pulse of Poetry

April is flying past. My writing is continuing at a rapid pace and my creativity is soaring.

I continue to have opportunities flying into my radar screen. Most of them I catch and hold onto. Others I don’t notice until they zip out of range.

Sunday I will post my specific progress. Wednesdays are the day for me to talk about my experience of writing into my Row80 goals. They are about the writing me, sort of an ongoing pulse taking of myself as a writer.

In the last seven days I have done more stream of consciousness writing than I have for probably the last month.

Could this be the reason I am feeling so darned good?

My latent or not-so-latent talent of guilt tells me I should feel guilty for feeling so good.

The wise sage me says, “Pshaw! Love each moment of it, beloved Julie.”

Some different writing for me this week: joke writing. Well, it is sort of like my storytelling but intentionally being funny with my storytelling, as well as some microstorytelling… otherwise known as very short jokes.

I emceed a cabaret show – I wrote about it in my Stream of Consciousness Sunday post which I didn’t write until yesterday.

Now I am thinking I need to find more opportunities to practice my skills at humor. At one of my earlier poetry performances I said, “Hey, if poetry doesn’t work out, I should try stand up.” That is sort of what I did, unintentionally, by agreeing to emcee. What is it they say, “Watch what you say because it may come true?”

Saturday I went to a Poetry workshop. It was wild to be thrust into such a deep place with a praise poem I wrote there. I cried, I laughed, I cried and cried and cried.

Here is a snippet of some of the beginnings of a poem from that exercise:

Festering boil across the curve of her calf

Slashed lower skin of the hooker’s leg

Bloody ooze glistens as she stands on the

Corner of 22^nd and West Street

With her, I stand

My orphanhood

My sluttyness

My tangled mass of hair

My worry about her judgment and

His judgment and their

Judgment  each

Tsk tsk tsk a fresh new fissure,

a river of blood

a crag of a

canyon where once skin

smiled, played and loved

together

~  ~  ~

Deep sigh. Tonight, I am considering going to another poetry workshop (it is national poetry month, afterall) and on Friday I am having people to my home to write with me again to do what I call Writing Improv.

It is a full, wondrous, word-love time, isn’t it?

 

I look forward to supporting you and being supported by you as this Round 2 continues.

Word-love, one and all!

Julie

Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She teaches a teleclass/ecourse "Discover the Power of Writing & Telling Engaging, Enlightening Stories" which begins again April 19, 2012. Find details by clicking this link.

Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -

Subscribe to DailyPassionActivator

Powered by us.groups.yahoo.com

The Gift of My Mourning Dove Friends: Optimism, Delight & Deep, Deep Peace

The first time I saw them they roosted briefly upon my hanging bird feeder: two of them, swinging and seeming to try to get my attention. I hadn’t ever seen birds like this, spotted backs and orangey necks and bellies. My daughter Emma declared me a crazy bird lady and suddenly I am spending more and more time gazing at my lawn, watching and befriending all the sweet birds who munch on the seed I lovingly place there. (Photo courtesy of Alex O'Neal via a Creative Commons License.)

My love has gone so deep I am starting to send daily reports to my twitter followers.

I have learned about and loved a flock of white crowned sparrows. I was familiar with starlings and jays, but this bird – this special bird brought an identical friend along and I was hooked. I was a crazy bird lady and there was clearly no turning back.

My favorite new “family” members are the Mourning Doves. As of today, I have seen five mourning doves on my lawn together, which means there must be a sixth one close at hand because they are birds who mate for life.

I went to my friend, Google, to see what this animal means. I discovered the dove stands for new beginnings, great expectations and deliverance.

The dove stands for peace.

And the dove is among the most common birds there is, specifically the mourning dove in comparison to the not-so-common white dove and the seemingly ubiquitous to the inner cities in our country pigeon.

I have noticed a brightening of my spirit lately.

I try to think if it coincided with the appearance of the doves in my eye-viewing.

I remember in the past I would say things like, “I hear a lot of birds in my yard, but I don’t see them.” Now, I see, hear, feed and love many birds.

Today one of the male mourning doves stood watch, off to the side, while the three female mourning doves ate.  This makes me wonder if they are getting close to their time to lay eggs. If and when their babies start visiting, I might combust from pure happiness.

Since these birds have made my home their home I feel more peaceful. I feel a sense of unattached expectation and new beginnings.

I feel a strong call to God. I miss church and want to attend if not where I used to, at least someplace.

I miss the camaraderie and the intellectual pursuit.

Ever since the mourning doves arrived on my bird feeder, I have felt more optimistic than I have felt in a long time.

Is there a bird connection or is this coincidence?

Well, it seems intentional and divine simultaneously.

I have never bought bird seed specifically to feed mourning doves. I didn’t this year, either, but I did put food out. Just like in “Field of Dreams”, if you build it, they will come. I had my bird feeder for nearly a year before it had any visitors.

Recently I refilled it and delight filled by chest. I heard myself singing along with the sparrows and the starlings.

No matter what, I have made friends with a bunch of birds. I have embraced the name “crazy bird lady” and I feel a lot better. It all makes me smile.

O is for Octavia Butler: Women Writers in American Literary History from A to Z #atozchallenge

O is for Octavia Butler

1947–2006

Yesterday I wrote on my Facebook Page:

“Friends, which of you have read Octavia Butler's work and neglected to share it with me?”

I don’t know whether my lack of knowledge is amusing or embarrassing. I started this series because I wanted to both expand my experience and promote just a handful of deserving women writers. I didn’t know until I looked for a writer with an “O” name that there were so few African American science fiction writers. The thought had never occurred to me. I hope my subconscious was saying “naturally there are successful African American science fiction writers!”

When I found Octavia Butler I knew she was meant to be my subject.

It was clinched when I saw she attended Pasadena City College like my Dad did.

She was born to a father who shined shoes for a living until he died when she was still a young child and a mother who was a housekeeper who often took little Olivia to her jobs with her. Octavia did not know what it meant to be financially stable. When she chose writing as a career, she was told to get “a real job” with a pension. She attended Pasadena City College, Cal State Los Angeles and extension classes at UCLA. She met science fiction writer Harlan Ellison via the Open Door program at the Screen Writer’s Guild. He recommended her to the Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Workshop in Pennsylvania.   There were times when she was starting out she wondered if everyone else was right: she was taking the menial work from temp agencies and not seeing much success in her writing career. She took class after class after class, finally getting a publishing credit for a story in an anthology created by workshop participants.

She didn’t know that right around the corner she would become the first African American woman to be successful in the Science Fiction genre.  In 1976 her first novel, Patternmaster, was published and she began a long and celebrated career as a Science Fiction writer. In 1995 she won a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant which put her in an elite group of creative talent. She continues to be the only Science Fiction writer to be so honored. She won Nebula awards and Hugo awards as well.

In researching Octavia, I found some quotes that stirred my spirit. I want to close today with some of them so your soul may be stirred also.

“I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.”

“In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.”

The child in each of us
Knows paradise.
Paradise is home.
Home as it was
Or home as it should have been.

Paradise is one's own place,
One's own people,
One's own world,
Knowing and known,
Perhaps even
Loving and loved.

Yet every child
Is cast from paradise-
Into growth and new community,
Into vast, ongoing
Change.”

Tomorrow: Phillis Wheatley - Transformed from Slave to Celebrated Poet to Obscurity in her Short Lifetime

This blog post is an entry in the A to Z Challenge. Each day in April (except Sundays) I will be featuring a woman in literary history. If you click on the logo below, you will be introduced to the writing of more than a thousand bloggers writing on a wide variety of topics in April, all from A to Z!

Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She teaches a teleclass/ecourse "Discover the Power of Writing & Telling Engaging, Enlightening Stories" which begins again April 19, 2012. Find details by clicking this link.

Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -

Subscribe to DailyPassionActivator

Powered by us.groups.yahoo.com

 

#SOCSunday: A Slice of "How I Surprise Myself" Pie

Today I opted to choose a different topic for the Stream of Consciousness Sunday then the optional prompt. Instead I created my own.

My theme: A Slice of "How I Surprise Myself Pie"

I surprised myself once again last night and yes, yesterday afternoon.

Here is the story of one of them ~

This weekend I did yet another thing I have never done. I was the Emcee for a Cabaret and Comedy show.

I went to watch the final rehearsal but I only watched. When I told the theater founder I was going to Emcee he said, “Oh, are you going to be funny?”

Sometimes I am a bonehead. I didn’t know I was supposed to be funny as an Emcee. You would think it would occur to me: funny is what Emcee’s are: they keep the ball rolling in between major acts and scenes. They banter, they connect to the audience, they tell jokes?

Yes, they tell jokes.

Amidst a crazy busy Thursday, Friday and Saturday before dark, I researched some humor I thought would fit the audience. At 8:30 pm on Saturday I was backstage with my hair curled, my make up on and my confidence at negative zero or close to it. I reviewed my notes before I got thrown in front of an audience waiting for a bunch of gorgeous dancers, not particularly there to hear me attempt to be funny.

I did my intros and then, I was out.

I was back after the first dance and explained my story: I didn’t know I was supposed to be funny. (This not knowing is pretty darn funny so the audience laughed. I am not certain if they believed me or not, but that is my story and I am sticking to it!)

I launched into two stories/jokes and both brought much bigger laughs than I thought they would. I couldn’t quite believe my ears.

They were enjoying my stuff… a lot.

I was asked to come back for the next show, too. I think I will but maybe I’ll take some classes while I am at it. I am envious of those dancers! If I could do 1/10^th of what they do, I would surprise myself again!

  This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
• Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
• Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
• Link up your post at AllThingsFadra.com
• Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She teaches a teleclass/ecourse "Discover the Power of Writing & Telling Engaging, Enlightening Stories" which begins again April 19, 2012. Find details by clicking this link.

Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -

Subscribe to DailyPassionActivator

Powered by us.groups.yahoo.com

N is for Nicholasa Mohr - She filled a Literary Hole: Women Writers in Literary History from A to Z #atozchallenge

I learned a new word when I studied today’s woman writer Nicholasa Mohr: Nuyorican. This means “New York Puerto Rican.”  I started my friendship with her just this morning. I was surprised how few women writers I could find with an N first name. Now that I have my profile written, I will stumble along countless N authors!

She was born in El Barrio in Manhatten in 1938 to parents from Puerto Rico and was raised primarily in the Bronx. Her father died when she was only eight-years-old. To help her through her grief process, her mother gave her pencils, crayons and paper to express her feelings through art and writing. She found solace and more in these materials. She said, “"by making pictures and writing letters I could create my own world … like 'magic.'"

Her mother died when she was in high school leaving her aunt as a guardian. While she loved Nicholasa, her love was not embued with encouragement. She approved of Nicholasa enrolling in a seamstress program, thinking simply that this was the path for a young Puerto Rican girl. Thankfully with the stubborn and strong spirit she inherited from her mother, she pursued an artist’s education through the Art Students League in New York.

 

She leveraged her education into a career as a fine artist and finally, a writer.

Nicholasa saw a hole in literature. There weren’t any books about girls and women like her. There weren’t any books told through the eyes and heart of a Puerto Rican girl or woman so she started to write one and another and another and another. She has written plays and films as well.

I read a review of her book, Nilda, by Daniel Mackler which said, “Finally, I get to read a young adult coming-of-age book that doesn't pretend to be anything it isn't! It isn't a grandiose book of romance and drugs and wonder, with the teenager becoming a hero or tragic hero. It's just a simple story of a poor New York born Puerto Rican girl hitting her adolescence during WWII.”

I don’t know about you, but simple stories are my favorite perhaps because they remind me the most of me.

I am so grateful you are reading!

Tomorrow we will feature Octavia Butler, the first successful African American woman Science Fiction Writer. She said, “I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.”

Me, to, Octavia… Me, too!

This blog post is an entry in the A to Z Challenge. Each day in April (except Sundays) I will be featuring a woman in literary history. If you click on the logo below, you will be introduced to the writing of more than a thousand bloggers writing on a wide variety of topics in April, all from A to Z!

Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She teaches a teleclass/ecourse "Discover the Power of Writing & Telling Engaging, Enlightening Stories" which begins again April 19, 2012. Find details by clicking this link.

Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your email

directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -

Subscribe to DailyPassionActivator

Powered by us.groups.yahoo.com

 

M is for Marietta Holley: "The Female Mark Twain" ~ Literary Women Writers in History from A to Z #atozchallenge

M is for Marietta Holley

(1836-1926)

Marietta Holley was consistently referred to as “The Female Mark Twain”. I am a big fan of Samuel Clemens, but I wonder if he wouldn’t mind being called “A Male Marietta Holley”? He certainly adored his wife and three daughters.

She was born the youngest of seven children on a farm in Jefferson County, New York. She lived in this area for most of her life. At age 14 she left school to help support the family financially, first offering piano lessons and eventually using her talent for writing as a way to generate much needed income.

She wrote poetry with accompanying illustrations anonymously until 1957, when she had several poems published in local magazines.

She had her first major literary success in 1872 with her novel My Opinions and Betsey Bobbet. She published more than 25 books in her lifetime. She never married but chose to write her most famous series using the pseudonym, Josiah Allen’s Wife. He was the fictitious husband of Marietta’s most famous heroine, Samantha, who spoke in a very folksy way about significant issues of the day, including “wummin’s rights”. Marrieta used her beliefs as a springboard for her character’s activities. She was a strong advocate for suffrage and temperance.

Her activism came only through her pen as she refused to make any public appearance due, most likely, to her shyness and a very slight speech impediment.

Eventually she traveled a bit. She even met several presidents, including Grover Cleveland. She was a good friend to Clara Barton.

By the time she died in 1926, her books were no longer read. I am one who is only beginning to read – and completely appreciate - them now.

This blog post is an entry in the A to Z Challenge. Each day in April (except Sundays) I will be featuring a woman in literary history. If you click on the logo below, you will be introduced to the writing of more than a thousand bloggers writing on a wide variety of topics in April, all from A to Z!

Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She teaches a teleclass/ecourse "Discover the Power of Writing & Telling Engaging, Enlightening Stories" which begins again April 19, 2012. Find details by clicking this link.

Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -

Subscribe to DailyPassionActivator

Powered by us.groups.yahoo.com