Mary Carolyn Davies - Songs of a Girl & Other Verses

Mary Caroline Davies - Songs of a Girl & Other VersesPublic Domain Poets #4 | Publicdomainpoets.com'Songs of a Girl & Other Verses' brings together over 100 of Mary Carolyn Davies' unrhymed verses including the 29 song sequence 'Songs of a Girl' (first published 1919) the 24 song sequence 'Songs' (1917) and a generous selection of other song sequences verses and variants (originally published from 1914-1920) none of which have been anthologised before. New edition designed edited and selected by Dick Whyte.The sun fallsLike a drop of bloodFrom some hero.WeWho love painDelight in this.Mary Carolyn Davies was a poet from Oregon born in Sprague and later attended Berkley University. She left college after only a year and moved to Greenwich Village meeting poets and artists like Marianne Moore Alfred Kreymborg and Marcel Duchamp among others. Best known for her rhymed verses Davies was also an early practitioner of 'free verse' and wrote numerous unrhymed 'song' sequences first published in Kreymborg's 'Others: A Magazine of the New Verse' (1915-1919). Davies' unrhymed verse was largely composed in compressed and fragmented forms such as the couplet;I am going to die too flower in a little while-Do not be so proud.The triplet;Red as dawnThe apple petals burnAgainst my burning cheek.And the quartet and quintet;The moonStrikes my handAcross my face as I lie.And the pain of itKeeps me from sleeping.Davies' verse also explores feminist and queer themes particularly in the sequence 'Songs' (1916 version) clearly addressed to another woman in which Davies writes such powerful lines as;Give me your lips-I would live-Your eyes are two miracles;And I who have seen themBelieve.Public Domain Press is dedicated to producing contemporary editions of out-of-print poets and poetry collections particularly with regard to compressed and fragmented 'free verse' from the late-1800s and early-1900s. All poems start as facsimiles - to preserve the original fonts - which are then cleaned up edited for consistency and spaciously laid-out adorned with borders illustrations and ornaments from the books and magazines they originally appeared in. These are not reprints of previously existing books but newly crafted collections lovingly edited from public domain material for the serious poetry lover.