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Show 58 MADELYN CANNON STEWART SILVER poem was finally published, with others, in 1917. In the years that followed she published nine books of poetry, three plays, the libretto for an opera, a book of sonnets, and three books of social commentary. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for a book of poetry in 1923, the first woman to win this heralded pnze. That Madelyn's library contained several of Vincent's emo tionally rich books is not surprising. Madelyn was impressed with Vincent's technical excellence, humor, tenderness, and insight. Fresh and direct, utilizing easy, free-flowing meters, Vincent's poems flicked off daring and beautiful thoughts and images that Madelyn relished for all the remaining years of her life. She would have agreed with many that Millay was America's finest lyric poet. Madelyn also admired Vincent's courage, light-heartedness, wit, and independence. In 1930 Madelyn attended an evening with Vincent in Salt Lake City, at which she (Vincent) read some of her poems. Madelyn was dis appointed in her reading: "It lacks all the piquancy and charm of her writing."? Madelyn also liked Sara Teasdale, a lyric poet whose quat rains articulated moods. One of Teasdale's collections, Fame and Shadoto, winner of a Pulitzer Prize, was published about the time that Madelyn entered the university. Madelyn's library also included Rivers to the Sea (1915), Love Songs (1917), Dark of the Moon (1926), Strange Victory (1933), and Collected Poems (1937). III These were creative years for Madelyn the poet. She wrote poems that were published in The Pen; she also wrote poems, as Emily Dickinson did, that were rolled up in little tubes and filed away. Among those published were three that were prob ably written during her summers of 1920 and 1921 at the ranch. Madelyn's poetry had an "imagist" quality; that is, she looked for just the right words to paint a "sense" picture. She saw with a painter's eye the dark against light, patterns in Yet there was of smoke. a branches, coiling always human ele- |
