Poetry O'Neill, Rose: The Master-Mistress, V1, 21 Dec 2016

[doubleshuffle]

One of those lucky finds the internet sometimes provides. An acquaintance of an acquaintance tweeted an intriguing drawing by Rose O'Neill. Never had heard of her, so I googled her and found that she was also a writer...

What she was most famous for, however, was the Kewpie doll. Here's how her Wikipedia entry starts:

Rose Cecil O'Neill (June 25, 1874 – April 6, 1944) was an American illustrator, artist, and writer who created the popular comic characters, Kewpies. After the growing popularity of O'Neill's Kewpie cartoons upon their publication in 1909, the characters were made into bisque dolls in 1912 by a German toy company, and later in composition material and celluloid. They were wildly popular in the early twentieth century, and are considered to be one of the first mass-marketed toys in America.
O'Neill also wrote several novels and books of poetry, and was active in the women's suffrage movement. She was for a time the highest-paid female illustrator in the world upon the success of the Kewpie dolls.

The Master-Mistress, a poetry collection published in 1922 (illustrated with nine drawings from O'Neill's fascinating "Sweet Monsters" series) contains some seriously great writing. I'm not going to analyze, I'll just show. Look:

OWL SINISTER
Ah, can you never still,
Unhealable complainer of the wounded will?
You Groan-in-the-dark,
You sobber of no shape,
And strong negation of the lark!
You wrong-recounter of no words!
Ape
Of lovely birds,
And hunchback of the singing breed!
You void! You, irremediable Need,
Make nothing of desire.
With long, cold, crying famine you put out the fire,
And esperances of the day rescind.
Eater of shadows! Ghoul and gullet of the wind!


THE TRAPPER OF STARS
The trapper of stars went out alone
On the track of his running prey,
And his eyes were the eyes of his prize that shone
And his look illumed the way.
But anon, he sighed, and anon, he said,
“The trapping of stars is a lonely trade,
Though the golden game be won!
Ah, happy the hunters that hunt in the sun,
When the coloured fields are gay!
The birds of the night have a sorrowful say,
And the dreads of the dark bestride me.
I would I could hunt my stars by day
With a lover that ran beside me.”

This work is assumed to be in the Life+70 public domain OR the copyright holder has given specific permission for distribution. Copyright laws differ throughout the world, and it may still be under copyright in some countries. Before downloading, please check your country's copyright laws. If the book is under copyright in your country, do not download or redistribute this work.

To report a copyright violation you can contact us here.

[AlexBell]

Thanks