Sterling's Mirage Dedicated to George Sterling & Nora May French

I hear the brittle Poetry of the day...
What pensive Poetry holds me?
Perhaps Imagery (it’s hard to say).
I find the glitter in the vanished past:
Its array: worlds of blues, whites and grays;
In far-off distant seas, under moon beams.

Ah! but my friend they could not rest: in the
Winds, and stars on the ocean's breast—;
Thus, they left, they just up and left (kind of)
To a land where they have no iron walls, no fence.

So brave and passionate they were; he was
Swept back to his “…cool, gray city of love,”
For everything else was simply a mirage!

 212;by Dennis L. Siluk

Comments: Although George Sterling was not from San Francisco, originally, once he visited the city, he remained there, it became his home, away from home one might say. A poet he was, to his dying day, even though he wrote other things, plays, and etcetera.

It would seem, there was this special group of poets and writers), in California around the turn of the century (1900), many commited sucide like George Sterling would (1926), and his wife did previous to his death, and Nora May French (1881-1907), a young poet of 26+ who for her own reasons commitded sucide in Carmel (at Sterlings home); Ms Austin thought both George and Nora were outstanding poets, as also she thought Jack London(who drank himself to death at age 40) was outstanding in his field. Nora wrote well, and I quote: ...all sensible people will be damned. Sometimes I think she is wrote, I've known people who write, who fit the discription quite well.

#1339 5/4/06

< p>“The Step Ladder”

George Sterling died in 1926, in 1927, “The Step Ladder,” a Monthly Journal, offered what was known as “The George Sterling Memorial Prize” $100-dollars to the best poem published in its pages during the year 1927. In the issue Volume XIII, for the first time in this book journal [magazine Clark Ashton Smith’s Poetry was published, by the efforts of George Sterling. Also, in this issue or journal, Helene Margaret wrote a poem offered up to Mr. Sterling:

Is this your message? You who bore the light
And gathered rhythm from the symphonies
Of earth, who ravelled colors from the breeze
And wove them into shadows of the night?
Your sense of darkness should have been but slight,
For you found pulsing life in all of thes e,
More opalescent than the changing seas,
More lyrical than swallows in their flight.

And yet, the shadows of your life grew thick,
And fell like shrouds of dusk upon our thought,
Until your sensate soul was madly sick
Of life and all the strangling gloom it brought.
And though you’ve passed, the wondrous argosies
Your fancy formed shall sail the centuries.

It might be noteworthy here to mention: in the summer of 1926, George Sterling got Clark Ashton Smith’s Poetry published in Braithwaite’s 1926, Anthology, where Sterling had nice compliments to say about CAS. At this time Smith lived in Auburn, California. The selections the Step Ladder put into its magazine, were taken from Smith's books: “Ebony and Crystal,” and “Sandalwood.& #8221; Such poems like: The Barrier, Query, Deleted Love, The Crucifixion of Eros, Quest, A fragment, Love is not Yours, Love is not Mine, The Love Potion, Maya, Beauty Implacable, Ave Atque V Ale, Incognita, Semper Eadem, and several more.

See Dennis' web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com

Author:: Dennis Siluk
Keywords:: Poetry
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