My English Final: Susan Coolidge

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Susan Coolidge

I came across the following poem written by Susan Coolidge today as I was reading in my Poem a Day (yes, one of my NY resolutions is to read poetry more regularly and in the morning). Here's the poem:

New Every Morning

Every day is a fresh beginning
Listen my soul to the glad refrain.
And, spite of old sorrows
And older sinning,
Troubles forecasted
And possible pain,
Take heart with the day and begin again.

Which is an excellent thought for any beginning but what struck me more was the biographical note under the poem. Apparently Coolidge wrote something called the Katy books "and other unsentimental stories in a natural style for girls." This is no small feat for a writer who lived from 1835 to 1905, decades of intense sentimentality.

I've already ordered the first Katy book from the library as one of my other resolutions is to read more classic children's literature (I can blame that one on the wonderful "Saving Mr. Banks").

Happy New Year!

1 comment:

louiseculmerFebruary 27, 2015 at 10:52 AM
I enjoyed the Katy books when I was young, also the Anne of Green gables books. the one that has lasted longest with me though is Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster, I still find it utterly delightful.
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My English Final

One bracingly pleasant element of my college years was coming to class prepared to scribble away in the "blue book" that had been handed me for the purpose of testing my knowledge of some aspect of American or English literature. Although my blissful days of undergraduate literary critiques are long gone, I often still get the hankering and here's where those otherwise-orphaned musings will find a home.

And the cool photo header is my maternal grandfather, who, although he only had a formal sixth-grade education, was a Chicago typesetter and a great reader who instilled his daughter with a love of books which she then passed on to me.