Palace-Burner

by Piatt, Sarah Morgan Bryan

• ISBN13: 9780252072819
• ISBN10: 0252072812
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-09-07
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt (1836-1919) now ranks as the most important American woman poet of the nineteenth-century after Emily Dickinson. Published heavily in all the period's most prestigious journals, Piatt was widely celebrated by her peers as a gifted stylist in the genteel tradition. Palace-Burner, however, also reveals Piatt's other side: ironic, experimental, and pushing the limits of Victorian language, the sentimental female persona, and what women's poetry could say. Paula Bernat Bennett's astutely edited selection of Piatt's mature work--much of it never before collected--explains why her "deviant poetics" caused her peers such discomfort and why they remain such a fertile ground for study today.Paula Bernat Bennett is a professor of English at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. She is the author of Poets in the Public Sphere: The Emancipatory Project of American Women's Poetry, 1800-1900, and other books.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	xv
Abbreviations	xvii
Preface	xix
Acknowledgments	xxi
Introduction	xxiii
Note on Editing and Arrangement	lix
THE SELECTED POETRY OF SARAH PIATT
Waiting at the Party	1	(1)
Hearing the Battle.---July 21, 1861	2	(2)
The Fancy Ball	4	(1)
Army of Occupation	5	(2)
Giving Back the Flower	7	(1)
Shapes of a Soul	8	(1)
A Lily of the Nile	9	(1)
Questions of the Hour	10	(1)
Playing Beggars	11	(2)
A Hundred Years Ago	13	(1)
Death before Death	14	(1)
Our Old and New Landlords---1869/70	15	(1)
Paris	16	(1)
Her Snowdrops	17	(1)
An After-Poem	18	(1)
Shoulder-Rank	18	(1)
My Dead Fairies	19	(1)
Thorns	20	(1)
A Life in a Mirror	21	(1)
Beatrice Cenci	21	(2)
One from the Dead	23	(3)
Her Rescue	26	(1)
The Grave at Frankfort	27	(1)
Another War	27	(2)
Mock Diamonds	29	(1)
Prevented Choice	30	(2)
The Funeral of a Doll	32	(1)
The Sorrows of Charlotte	33	(1)
Leaving Love	33	(1)
A Well-Known Story	34	(1)
Love-Stories	35	(1)
Over in Kentucky	36	(2)
The Black Princess	38	(1)
The Palace-Burner	39	(1)
Why Should We Care?	40	(1)
There Was a Rose	41	(1)
The Old Slave-Music	42	(1)
A Ghost at the Opera	43	(2)
Sour Grapes	45	(1)
Her Chosen Lord	45	(1)
[Song]	46	(1)
At the Play	47	(1)
His Fairy Godmother	48	(1)
Her Blindness in Grief	49	(2)
We Two	51	(1)
Unheeded Gifts	52	(1)
Counsel---In the South	53	(1)
Aunt Annie	54	(2)
A Butterfly's Message	56	(1)
The Favorite Child	57	(1)
Worthless Treasure	58	(1)
``Siempre''	59	(1)
Answering a Child	60	(1)
That New World	61	(1)
Lady Franklin	62	(1)
In a Queen's Domain	63	(1)
Giving Up the World	63	(1)
Comfort---by a Coffin	64	(2)
Sad Wisdom---Four Years Old	66	(1)
A Woman's Counsel	67	(1)
The Little Boy I Dreamed About	68	(1)
Keeping the Faith	69	(3)
A Greeting	72	(1)
The Lament of My Lady	73	(1)
Her Lover's Trial	74	(1)
The House below the Hill	75	(2)
Caprice at Home	77	(1)
Counsel	78	(1)
Somebody's Trouble	78	(2)
A Coat of Arms	80	(3)
Two Little Sextons	83	(1)
No Help	84	(1)
One Out-of-Doors	85	(1)
After the Quarrel	86	(1)
In Doubt	87	(1)
``We Women''	87	(1)
A Hint from Homer	88	(1)
From North and South	88	(1)
The Prince Imperial	89	(1)
A Tragedy in Western Woods	90	(1)
A Pique at Parting	91	(1)
A Lesson in a Picture	92	(2)
Engaged Too Long	94	(1)
Transfigured	94	(1)
The Descent of the Angel	95	(1)
Her Reproof to a Rose	95	(1)
The Story of a Shawl	96	(1)
Her Word of Reproach	97	(1)
Broken Promise	97	(1)
Denied	98	(1)
(The Lady's Thought.)	98	(1)
(The Mother's Thought.)	98	(1)
His Mother's Way	99	(2)
A Strange Country	101	(1)
Watching the Cow	102	(1)
The Thought of Astyanax beside Iulus	103	(1)
The Witch in the Glass	104	(1)
Her Grown-Up Doll's Needs	105	(1)
Some Children Asleep	105	(1)
A Neighborhood Incident	106	(2)
Two Visions of Fairy-Land	108	(1)
Some Morning Orders	109	(1)
Out of Tune	110	(1)
Trumpet Flowers	111	(1)
The First Party	111	(2)
Little Dragon's-Teeth	113	(1)
A Party in a Dream	113	(1)
A Child's Party	114	(4)
A Child's Cry	118	(1)
The Watch of a Swan	119	(1)
The Christening	119	(1)
An Irish Fairy Story	120	(2)
On the Pier at Queenstown	122	(1)
Rachael at the Lodge	123	(1)
In Primrose Time	124	(2)
Courtesy	126	(1)
Pro Patria	126	(2)
At the Grave of a Suicide	128	(1)
A Tragedy of the Night	128	(1)
An Irish Wildflower	128	(1)
The Night Cometh	129	(1)
``When Saw We Thee''	130	(1)
A Night-Scene from the Rock of Cashel, Ireland	130	(1)
The Dance of the Daisies	131	(2)
An Idyl of the Wayside in Ireland	133	(2)
In the Round Tower at Cloyne	135	(1)
A Child in the Park	136	(1)
The Coming-Back of the Dead	137	(1)
A Bid for the Crown Jewels	138	(1)
``There Shall Be No Sea There''	139	(1)
My Other Gods	140	(1)
His Argument	141	(1)
A Reproach	141	(1)
Heredity	142	(1)
A Swallow in the Hall of Mirrors	142	(1)
A Prayer to Osiris	143	(1)
A Sea-Gull Wounded	143	(1)
A Woman's Last Word	144	(1)
Confession	144	(1)
One Jealous of a Rose	145	(1)
Heredity in Death	145	(1)
A Mistake in the Bird-Market	146	(1)
Heart's-Ease over Henry Heine	147	(1)
The Coming of Eve	148	(2)
A Shadowy Third	150	(1)
Heart and Eyes	150	(1)
Another Woman's Eyes	150	(1)
A Woman's ``No''	150	(1)
The Broken Wedding Ring	151	(1)
At the Playhouse	152	(1)
A Legend of the Daffodils	152	(2)
A New Thanksgiving	154	(1)
A Bird without a Mate	154	(1)
A Daffodil	155	(2)
Appendix: Juvenilia	157	(6)
``The Indian's Inquiry''	157	(1)
The Memorials	158	(2)
``If Freedom's Miracle Should Fail''	160	(3)
Notes	163	(20)
Selected Bibliography	183	(8)
Index	191