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WILD PEACHES
Elinor Wylie (1885 - 1928)
In reviewing several reference books while preparing to write this little essay, I discovered that authoritative sources seem to agree on three things concerning Elinor Wylie.
The first is that she was beautiful. The Columbia Encyclopedia uses the term "ethereal beauty" to describe her, and the Readers' Encyclopedia of American Literature (1962) noted that "her beauty aroused more commotion than her fine poems or the delicate fantasies she called novels."
The second is that she was a gifted poet and author. Such words and phrases as "high level of artistry," "prodigy," "incurably scholarly," "creative genius" "amazing clarity and precision" and "severe elegance" permeate descriptions of her and her work.
The third is that she is not well known today. Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia (1987) put it this way. "It is disturbing that a poet of such power and felicity of expression should be virtually unread a few decades after her death, but the reasons can be found in changes in American culture, which cannot diminish the stature of this brilliant poet." A lesser known reference work, published in 1963 and entitled The Concise Encyclopedia of English and American Poets and Poetry, says this: "She was often precise and sometimes intense, and deserves better than her present obscurity."
I knew, of course, that she was beautiful, for she is described as such in the introduction to my First Edition volume of the Last Poems of Elinor Wylie, which was compiled and published by her third husband, the poet William Rose Benét, in whose arms she died from a sudden stroke at the age of 43. And I certainly knew that she was talented. But I had no idea until tonight that she is no longer well-known and widely read. I have been a fan of Wylie's poetry for many years and naturally thought everyone else was also. So tonight I will do my bit to bring her poetry back into popularity by featuring "Wild Peaches," one of my favorite poems by her.
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Wild Peaches
1
WHEN the world turns completely upside down
You say we'll emigrate to the Eastern Shore
Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore;
We'll live among wild peach trees, miles from town,
You'll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown
Homespun, dyed butternut's dark gold colour.
Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor,
We'll swim in milk and honey till we drown.
The winter will be short, the summer long,
The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot,
Tasting of cider and of scuppernong;
All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all.
The squirrels in their silver fur will fall
Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot.
2
The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass
Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold.
The misted early mornings will be cold;
The little puddles will be roofed with glass.
The sun, which burns from copper into brass,
Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold
Their knitted mufflers; full as they can hold
Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass.
Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover;
A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year;
The spring begins before the winter's over.
By February you may find the skins
Of garter snakes and water moccasins
Dwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear.
3
When April pours the colours of a shell
Upon the hills, when every little creek
Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake
In shoals new-minted by the ocean swell,
When strawberries go begging, and the sleek
Blue plums lie open to the blackbird's beak,
We shall live well -- we shall live very well.
The months between the cherries and the peaches
Are brimming cornucopias which spill
Fruits red and purple, sombre-bloomed and black;
Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches
We'll trample bright persimmons, while you kill
Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback.
4
Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones
There's something in this richness that I hate.
I love the look, austere, immaculate,
Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.
There's something in my very blood that owns
Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate,
A thread of water, churned to milky spate
Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones.
I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray,
Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves;
That spring, briefer than apple-blossom's breath,
Summer, so much too beautiful to stay,
Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves,
And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.
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