Ethelinda [Ethel Lynn] Eliot Beers (13 Jan 1827 – 11 Oct 1879 | Goshen NY – Orange NJ) US Civil War poet.

All quiet along the Potomac to-night. Ice-cold, like a waxen thing, the quiet sleeper lies.

It was even so. When a printed word had the quiet pulse of a reader stirred, she had found

her voice. They walk beside us everywhere – in quiet glen, in crowded street, wherever

hearts are borne about by busy human feet. Pale, quiet faces pass us by. Her voice was

wondrously quiet the summer-day long; fair, quiet, and pale, she was pining. Rest on your

oar and quiet lie: we’re floating now till the Pilot calls us by and by. Quiet lives just close

beside us shine upon the ended days. No index tells the worth of baby’s quiet breath. Had

we hither come for quiet? The seals are broken slowly, then closed with sober, quiet care.

Far down in the quiet valley I’ll tarry & people its quiet with forms loved before. The bird

in the maple was quiet — silent as the quiet shade.

Beers, Ethel Lynn. All Quiet Along the Potomac and Other Poems. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1879. https://archive.org/details/cu31924021985084

Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson (08 Feb 1825 – 22 Dec 1911 | Boston MA – Malden MA) poet, author, mill girl, bobbin doffer, social activist, suffragist leader.

The sonnet sonnetized: The sonnet is mechanical in part, and part ideal. The cube root

of song, conceive your thought, then build the verse along in true Petrarchan style. With

rhythmic art to all the fourteen lines a grace impart. Ten-syllable the verse, the rhymes

be strong; within the octave only two belong, and in the sestet three. And here the heart

of all the sonnet lies. Con-centred fast, your thought, developed through each separate line,

here breaks the bounds and struggles to be free, through hampering bars of rhyme; and

when the last is reached, away it soars — a breath divine– in charmèd flight towards

immortality. One of the most curious phases in the life of New England, is its sudden

intellectual blossoming, seeds of which came as if blown from far-off lands. Some found

a resting-place in this little corner, where gathered daughters who felt  impelled to write.

Robinson, Harriet Jane Hanson. Loom and Spindle, or, Life among the Early Mill Girls, with a Sketch of ‘The Lowell Offering’ and Some of Its Contributors. New York: T. Y. Crowell, c1898. https://curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/women-working-1800-1930/catalog/45-990022084580203941

1951:  deconstruction

the deep freezes: old spaces spark
refilling fearless empty river beds

duty calls, stops, restarts moments
subjective, we see him/her in town

forests die, flirting with infiltration
often in reply, chasms plunge open

only a few crumbs of difference fall
lost logs lying on the forests’ floors

we each lived forever before at times
after all has been said or done: align

matriarchal artists meander: encircle
mid-summers’ white wings of desire

adieu once-upon-a-time — authentic
sunlight fades and sets the hills aglow

a few still yearn to fly across the night
skies at the end of the Age of Aquarius

bodies remember radiant forgiveness
as we finally make it home — unbound

silence lists — interprets liminal views:
no past probabilities — only now exists

. . . . .

Poet: Susan Powers Bourne
Sources: Impromptu | Simone Muench
Process: Pick and mix cento