Speaking of Poetry, what about Evaleen Stein?
Listen, I know James Whitcomb Riley gets all the attention as an Indiana poet. And, sure, he's great. By putting him so much in the limelight, though, other worthy Indiana writers are left in the shadows... including Evaleen Stein. Born during America's Civil War, she spent her life in Lafayette, Indiana. This is where she lived physically; her imagination ranged the world over. She wrote children's novels, poetry, and a visual artist, too. A historical marker for her finally went up in Lafayette in 2024. You can read about it in The Exponent.
Her life as an artist and poet are such good reminders that women participated in literary conversations in the nineteenth-century, too. So is one of the published books including her poetry; another Lafayette woman, educator R. Katharine Beeson, arranged a seasonal collection of poems for school children in 1908. Called Child's Calendar Beautiful, Beeson included work from a wide range of poets. Evaleen Stein's poem on the month of October is included for the Fifth Year Students. A few stanzas from it are below; despite its month-aligned title, it represents the beauty of all autumn. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
"Far, far above, within the blue,
A hawk sails slow, and sunward turns
A breast of shining white.
The air is full of milkweed films,
And floating thistle floss;
And busily the spiders spin
Their silver nets across
The red-oak's tangled undergrowth
Of lacing boughs, and string
The yellow lindens, that the winds
Are rudely pillaging.
And where the ruddy maples blaze
Athwart the gusty air,
It lifts their leaves like little flames,
And puffs them everywhere."
photo credit from "A Woman of the Century," by F. A. Willard & M. E. Livermore, now in the public domain. Also wondering where this post's title originated? A post about how engineers need poetry, too.