Today, let’s muse on the sometimes overlooked W.Va. poet Caroline “Danske” Dandridge, born in Denmark… a poet whose thoughts were profound and whose eye for natural detail was precise.
 
She was, I’m almost certain, too sentimental for some, especially those who followed Ezra Pound’s extraordinary remarks about poetry in 1912. “Direct treatment of the thing … (or object).” — Ezra Pound
 

Here are two sample poems:
 
WINGS
 
Shall we know in the Hereafter
    All the reasons that are hid?
Does the butterfly remember
    What the caterpillar did?
How he waited, toiled, and suffered
    To become the chrysalid.
 
When we creep so slowly upward;
    When each day new burden brings;
When we strive so hard to conquer
    Vexing sublunary things—
When we wait and toil and suffer,
    We are working for our wings.
 
–Danske Dandridge
 
 
 
And one from “The Little Book of American Poets, 1787-1900″ (other poets in the book range from Philip Freneau to Ralph Emerson to Louisa May Alcott to Walt Whitman):
 

THE SPIRIT OF THE FALL
 
Come, on thy swaying feet,
Wild spirit of the Fall!
With wind-blown skirts, loose hair of russet-brown,
Crowned with bright berries of the bittersweet.
 
Trip a light measure with the hurrying leaf,
Straining thy few late roses to thy breast,
With laughter over-gay, sweet eyes drooped down,
That none may guess thy grief.
Dare not to pause for rest
Lest the slow tears should gather to their fall.
 
But when the cold moon rises o’er the hill,
The last numb crickets cease, and all is still,
Face down thou liest on the frosty ground
Strewed with thy fortune’s wreck, alas, thine all –
.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
There, on a winter dawn, thy corse I found,
Lone Spirit of the Fall.
 
–Danske Dandridge
 

To read her historical prose is to get a sense of the American Revolution and the Civil War (she had a brother who died at Antietam). Readers wanting more biographical details could look up a film about Dandridge, mentioned in a 2003 Goldenseal by research librarian Steve Fesenmaier:
 
“Immortal Essence: The Life and Writings of Danske Dandridge” 27 mins.  2002 Jim Surkamp Productions. Jim Surkamp profiles Shepherdstown’s poet, garden writer, and historian, Caroline “Danske” Dandridge (1854-1914). Ms. Dandridge wrote over a hundred acclaimed poems, 200 gardening articles, and four history books. A web site of her writings is at http://www.libraries.wvu.edu/dandridge/index2.htm. Access: Jim Surkamp Presentations
 

Other links of interest, for those wanting more about the “Danske magic”:

http://justjefferson.com/23danske.htm
 
http://www.hello-wv.com/danske/

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