In Praise of Common Things: Lizette Woodworth Reese Revisited

In her lifetime, Lizette Woodworth Reese was internationally admired for her poetic genius and hailed by H.L. Mencken as one of the most distinguished poets in the United States. This volume is the first extensive collection of her poems since her Selected Poems was published in 1926. The volume begins with a short biographical sketch of the poet and includes some 250 of her poems. The poems are arranged into sections illustrating some of her major themes: nature, love, remembrance, faith, family, history and literature. An eighth section contains a complete narrative poem, Little Henrietta , about the life and death of a young girl. Introductory comments help to place Reese in the continuum of American poetry and to indicate her influence on succeeding generations of poets.