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Poet Dead INA DONNA COOLBRITH, California's poet laureate, who died at the home of her niece in Berkeley at the age of 85. |
INA COOLBRITH, POET, IS DEAD
Woman, 85, Laureate of California, Dies at Home of Niece in Berkeley.
California's gifted and beloved poet laureate, Ina Donna Coolbrith, is dead. News of her passing spread a note of sorrow over the entire state, and today messages of condolence and regret poured into the home of her niece, Mrs. Finlay Cook, 2906 Wheeler street, Berkeley, from every section of California as the press wires broadcast the word of her death.
Miss Coolbrith died early today after an illness of several months. Had she lived until March 10 she would have been 86 years old, and friends and admirers both in California and the east were preparing to honor her with some form of special observance of the occasion.
On hearing of the gifted poet's death, President W. W. Campbell of the University of California said today:
"I had the pleasure of knowing Ina Coolbrith and greatly admired her personality as well as her rhetoric."
"It is with great sorrow that I learn of her death. Such is the way of the world. But fortunately for us her influence will continue to live after her."
FUNERAL TO BE HELD FRIDAY AT 2 P. M.
Funeral services will be held at 2 o'clock Friday from St. Mark's Episcopal church, Bancroft way and Ellsworth street, Berkeley. Rev. Hugh Montgomery of All Souls Episcopal church, a friend of the family, will officiate. Interment will follow in Mountain View cemetery.
Miss Coolbrith's niche in the literary hall of fame stands in the same group with such famous writers as Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Charles Warren Stoddard and other immortals of the time.
She was California's first noted poet, and sang her way into the hearts of thousands. Wherever the English language is spoken her poems are known and loved.
CAME TO CALIFORNIA IN DAYS OF GOLD RUSH.
Miss Coolbrith belonged among that first picturesque group of pioneers who came to the state in covered wagons. She came with her parents from Springfield, Ill., in the days when the gold lure was drawing thousands across the plains.
Ina Coolbrith / Jim Beckwourth 25 Mar 1934, Sun
Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) Newspapers.com
She made her home in Oakland for years, and served as librarian of the Oakland library before becoming librarian to the Mercantile and Bohemian club libraries in San Francisco.
It was while she made her home at
Washington and Taylor streets in San Francisco
that the name of
"Poets' Corner" was given that location. Bret Harte was a frequent visitor, and Joaquin Miller, Mark
Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson, all of them drawn to Miss
Coolbrith by a community of literary interest and appreciation of her
talent.
“SONGS FROM GOLDEN GATE" WON HER FAME.
It was about that time she published her first book, "A Perfect Day, and Other Poems." Her verse had already attracted much local attention, and in 1895 when she published "Songs From the Golden Gate," her fame spread across the country, and the world of literature awoke to the fact that a poetical genius had arisen on the Pacific coast.
Following that publication Miss Coolbrith was hailed as "The Sappho of the West," and her verse was praised by
George Meredith in
England. Following up that success she
moved to New York
to continue her literary work, but her heart remained in her beloved
California, and it was of California that she sang her most beautiful songs.
Her "Songs From the Golden Gate" contains 159 pieces of verse and nearly all of them were composed and written in Oakland. It was here that her muse matured and she gave the world much of her best work.
GAINED INSIGHT FROM OLD TIME MINERS.
As a child, Miss Coolbrith was closely associated with the miners, around Marysville, and from them she gathered much of the picturesque color and insight into human nature that appeared in her mature work. She moved with her family in Los Angeles, then but a Spanish village, then back to Oakland and San Francisco, where she achieved the height of her fame.
On the occasion of her birthday in 1926, Joaquin Miller, one of her best friends and greatest admirers, when asked to write a poem in commemoration of the day replied:
"I am not equal to doing her half way justice. Her whole life has been a poem, a sweet pathetic poem."
[Joaquin Miller died in 1913. Ina Coolbrith gave him his name, formerly he was Cincinnatus Hiner Miller. - MF]
Last year another birthday occasion Edwin Markham was among those who gathered to do her honor at the annual Ina Coolbrith Circle luncheon in San Francisco. The guests included many of the literary great of the Pacific coast, and a feature of the ceremonies incident to the gathering was the presentation to Miss Coolbrith of a great basket of California wildflowers.
One of Miss Coolbrith's earlier poems, written when she was only beginning to win the recognition that was so generously accorded her later, is also one of her deepest and best loved.
When the grass shall cover me,
Head to foot where I am lying;
When not any wind that blows,
Summer blooms nor winter snows,
Shall awake me to your sighing:
Close above me as you pass,
You will say: "How kind she was,"
You will say: "How true she was.'
When the grass grows over me.
When the grass shall cover me,
Holden close to earth's warm bosom;
While I laugh, or weep or sing,
Nevermore for anything
You will find in blade and blossom,
Sweet small voices, odorous,
Tender pleaders in my cause,
That shalt speak me as I was --
When the grass grows over me.
When the grass shall cover me!
Ah, beloved in my sorrow
Very patient I can wait,
Knowing that, or soon or late,
There will dawn a clearer morrow:
When your heart will moan: "Alas!
"Now I know how true she was;
"Now I know how dear she was; --
When the grass grows over me.
The spiritual note that was so often reflected in her poems appears strongly in "Fulfillment," in which she wrote:
Somewhere, for God is good,
Life's blossoms, unfulfilled,
Must spring from dust and gloom
To perfect bloom.
[More blog posts mentioning Ina Coolbrith - MF]
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