Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt

A Prettier Book.

5		"HE has a prettier book than this," With many a sob between, he said; Then left untouched the night's last kiss, And, sweet with sorrow, went to bed. A prettier book his brother had? –
10		Yet wonder-pictures were in each. The different colors made him sad; The equal value – could I teach? [98] Ah, who is wiser?... Here we sit, Around the world's great hearth, and look,
15		While Life's fire-shadows flash and flit, Each wistful in another's book. I see, through fierce and feverish tears, Only a darkened hut in mine; Yet in my brother's book appears
20		A palace where the torches shine. A peasant, seeking bitter bread From the unwilling earth to wring, Is in my book; the wine is red, There in my brother's, for the king.
25		[99] A wedding, where each wedding-guest Has wedding garments on, in his, – In mine one face in awful rest, One coffin never shut, there is! In his, on many a bridge of beams
30		Between the faint moon and the grass, Dressed daintily in dews and dreams, The fleet midsummer fairies pass; In mine unearthly mountains rise, Unearthly waters foam and roll,
35		And – stared at by its deathless eyes – The master sells the fiend a soul! [100] ... Put out the lights. We will not look At pictures any more. We weep, "My brother has a prettier book,"
		And, after tears, we go to sleep.

Druckvorlage

S. M. B. Piatt: A Voyage to The Fortunate Isles, etc.
Boston: J. R. Osgood and Company 1874, S. 97-100.

URL: https://books.google.fr/books?id=KskRAAAAYAAJ
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000321305

Die Textwiedergabe erfolgt nach dem ersten Druck (Editionsrichtlinien).

Literatur

Bennett, Paula B.: Poets in the Public Sphere. The Emancipatory Project of American Women's Poetry, 1800-1900.. Princeton 2003.

Brandmeyer, Rudolf: Poetologische Lyrik. In: Handbuch Lyrik. Theorie, Analyse, Geschichte. Hrsg. von Dieter Lamping. 2. Aufl. Stuttgart 2016, S. 164-168.

Gymnich, Marion / Müller-Zettelmann, Eva: Metalyrik: Gattungsspezifische Besonderheiten, Formenspektrum und zentrale Funktionen. In: Metaisierung in Literatur und anderen Medien. Theoretische Grundlagen – Historische Perspektiven – Metagattungen – Funktionen. Hrsg. von Janine Hauthal u.a. Berlin u.a. 2007 (= spectrum Literaturwissenschaft / spectrum Literature, 12), S. 65-91.

Hooks, Karin L.: "It is Difficult to Disengage a Single Thread from the Living Web of a Nation's Literature": Sarah Piatt and the Construction of Literary History. In: American Literary History and the Turn toward Modernity. Hrsg. von Melanie V. Dawson u. Meredith L. Goldsmith. Gainesville, FL 2018, S. 27-55.

Kilcup, Karen L.: Who Killed American Poetry? From National Obsession to Elite Possession. Ann Arbor 2019.

Renker, Elizabeth: The 'Twilight of the Poets' in the Era of American Realism, 1875-1900. In: The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Poetry. Hrsg. von Kerry Larson. Cambridge 2011, S. 135-153.

Renker, Elizabeth: The "Genteel Tradition" and Its Discontents. In: The Cambridge History of American Poetry. Hrsg. von Alfred Bendixen u.a. Cambridge 2015, S. 403-424.

Renker, Elizabeth: Realist Poetics in American Culture, 1866-1900. Oxford 2018.

Edition
Lyriktheorie » R. Brandmeyer