Thursday, March 21, 2019

Remembering Phyllis McGinley and one author leads to another.


Phyllis McGinley, March 21, 1905 to February 22, 1978.

Every March I've meant to write on her birthday about this American Pulitzer Prize poet who meant so much to me as a young married woman. Not for her poetry, I had yet to discover that, but for her book of essays called Sixpence in Her Shoe, the old faded red book in the picture below.


 It was the first contemporary book I had read that made homemaking sound attractive in an age of Betty Friedan back in the early 1960s.

I think that McGinley is responsible for plunging me headlong into a lifetime of love for houses. All kinds of houses. Trying them on for size in my mind if not in my life. Constantly playing the game of "what kind of house do I want" even before RH and I ever bought one.

Admit it, you've done it too.

Avidly, I read McGinley's words:


And charm in a dwelling is like charm in a woman. It is a mysterious essence compounded of warmth, character, and a welcoming countenance.

The right house, no matter what its period, must pluck you by the sleeve and say, "Take me. We were meant for each other."

I loved the stories of how McGinley set about furnishing and decorating the houses she and her husband and daughters moved to, lapping up her advice on all of it.

But natural good taste is rare. A few lucky souls have it from the cradle like long eyelashes or perfect pitch. Most of us simply muddle along with our prejudices or our predilections instead.

I had no prejudices or predilections as a young married woman and natural good taste was not handed out to me in the cradle. I was a blank slate but knew I was. I did have that going for me.

We proceed by trial and error. We work and we plan and we read the instructions and we study other people's triumphs. Then if our surroundings really matter to us, if we are willing to use our eyes and our wits, we gradually acquire what is even better than taste: minds of our own.
It is only the mindless house which is dull...A house which charms and welcomes does not need to conform to any current fashion. But it must wear its owner's signature.
At least the houses I inevitably admire do wear that signature. They are not necessarily ones I want to copy or to live in. I enjoy them because they mirror the character of the friends who planned them.

Bingo!

 The rest of the book, on many other subjects, is equally as good, and still as relevant today as when I first read it in 1964.

Decades later I bought McGinley's Pulitzer Prize Poetry book, Times Three. I came late to loving poetry. It was not until I said to heck with poetry and started reading it as prose that I discovered I loved it. 

And it was an author of fiction who led me by a roundabout way to buy McGinley's poetry book. 

 
 I bought my first Alexander McCall Smith book that happened to be his first of the Isabel Dalhousie series.

The Sunday Philosophy Club's philosopher Isabel was like a bolt of lightning in my life. I had never thought much about philosophers but if Isabel was one, I liked them a lot.

A few Isabel books later I noticed that she was an ardent fan of a poet I hadn't read since high school, W. H. Auden. I won't use any Auden quotes from the Isabel books here because this is primarily a love letter to Phyllis McGinley but I took sharp notice of my favorite lady philosopher's love of the poet she called WH and ordered his big book of poetry. 

Fell in love. With 50% of the poems, not bad for a prose-reading woman. 



Then at a Goodwill, where I always look for older books, I spotted a book by Phyllis McGinley. However, it was a book of her poems and would I really read a book of what I thought would be like the humorous McGinley poems that had been in my mother's women's magazines? Even if I still loved her Sixpence in Her Shoe?

I opened it up and discovered that the long foreword was by an admirer of her work, no other than W. H. Auden himself.

For eight pages Auden quotes and praises McGinley's poems.

Holy cow! I nodded and empathized and laughed my way through McGinley's Times Three. Even when she poked fun and denigrated the South and our enthusiasm for ham.

Ham,
Ham,
Not lamb or bacon
But ham in Raleigh
And ham in Macon.
Ham for plutocrats,
Ham for pore folk,
Ham in Paducah and ham in Norfolk;
In Memphis, ham, and in Chapel Hill,
Chattanooga,
And Charlottesville.
Ham for the Missy,
Ham for the Colonel,
And for the traveler, Ham Eternal.

Oh, patriotically I implore,
Look away, Dixieland, from the smokehouse door.
--Phyllis McGinley, from "Notes for a Southern Road Map"

I laughed but I admit to another thought running through my mind, something to the effect of, well, honey chile, head back north if that's the way you feel. Just kidding. No, actually I'm not. But I do still love you, Phyllis.


That's probably more than enough poetry or prose from me now, but in my enthusiastic delve into poetry while pulling together a birthday salute to Phyllis McGinley, I pulled another favorite poetry book off the shelf,  Edna St. Vincent Millay's Collected Poems

I opened it up and discovered a little treasure inside, a pretty card from my mother from many years ago. When I saw the unicorn I knew I had to save it for our youngest granddaughter who is passionate about unicorns, or she was at Christmas.



I won't share the whole message with you as much of it was personal family news but I smiled to read that my father had brought home some purple grapes and she had made eight cups of grape jelly. 

To my three sisters, if you're reading this, wouldn't you love to have some of Mama's homemade jelly again? 



 Do any of you reading this, whether you ever comment or not, do you tuck cards and notes into books that you're reading, to be found years later? Don't you love it when you find them?

And don't you love it when the love of one author leads to another author? And on and on it goes, discovering one book after another. Isn't that a wonderful thing?

And have you ever been blessed to walk in a house for sale and have it "pluck you by the sleeve and say 'take me'?"



17 comments:

  1. I have an assortment of books that belonged to my great great aunt. They have messages and cards and old bookmarks in them More than 100 years old, they transport me to another time. Houses do "grab" me. I don't agree with the real estate trend to "depersonalize" homes that are offered for sale. I am attracted by books or artwork or scenes of family life. One book certainly does lead to another.I had not heard of Phyllis McKinley.

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    1. I don't agree with the depersonalized house for sale either, Madame. It wouldn't work for me. What a gift to own your great great aunt's books! It must be like finding treasure to come across these items inside.I always save the things other owners have left in books that I find while thrifting. And I am unusual in that a book is more valuable to me if it is annotated. I hope the person who has my books someday will feel that way about mine.

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  2. I've never heard of her but now I'm intrigued! Going to have to find some of her books...Half-Price Books should definitely have copies...they have everything! :-) Yes, I've walked into a house and been taken by the sleeve...this house was one of them. We knew the moment we walked in that it was ours. While we are still transforming it to personalize it for us, it now says "keep me"! :-) I always find notes and cards tucked into my books...I forget where I've put the card or note and then run across it one day. I have one specifically tucked away, it was the last note from my dad before he died and it is safely tucked in the last book he gave me. Love to you sweet friend!

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    1. Oh, Benita, that is so precious to have the note from your father in the last book he gave you. And you say last book so that makes me think that he was in the habit of giving you books, such a wonderful thing. Was he a great reader too, or just knew that you were?

      I'm so glad you felt instant rapport with your new house because I know how much you loved your Tennessee house. I think you would like Sixpence in Her Shoe!

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  3. Oh my goodness! So much to comment on here, Dewena - where do I begin??

    Well, since you know of my love of poetry, I shall begin with YOUR love of a favourite poet (and author), namely, Phyllis McGinley. I sure got a taste of how popular ham is in some parts of the South by reading her culinary cook up on it! What a huge honour to have had W.H. Auden devote 8 pages of praise to her first collection!

    The chosen excerpts here about how a house speaks to you and decorating one's home are SPOT ON! Yes, that mindset for creating the perfect setting according to one's character, is what ultimately makes a home inviting and comfortable to its guests, never mind, owners, is it not?

    In my case, I leafed through thousands of glossy magazine pages, countless design books, and wandered the rooms of my childhood in my memory to revisit what had always made me feel cozy and special, and it was this combination of aesthetic 'specs' that finally made up the rooms of the house I designed and my husband built.

    Lastly, I was struck at how similar your mother's handwriting is to yours my friend! Have you noticed this before? Aside from all the other marvelous ways you two are alike, this, I imagine, is one of them. Finding greeting cards tucked into beloved books is always a unexpected sweet surprise for sure. I tend to use favourite greeting cards for bookmarks, as well.

    So enjoyed this potpourri of pleasantries on this dark and grey Toronto morning.

    Poppy



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    1. Poppy, that was exactly what impressed me, that foreword by Auden. And then I learned that she was the first poet of "light verse" to have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize! I think in 1962. Now you're the poet, not me, so maybe you understand more about light verse than I do. All I know is that she has such an acerbic wit in her poetry and yet not a mean wit. And she was such a believer in education for women and supportive of career women and yet insisted that women who stayed home to raise their children were in an honorable career too. And she claimed that college degrees for those women who wanted to marry and have a family were "a jewel in the pocket" that would serve them well.

      Poppy, I know you say you studied so many sources in designing your home but I believe you are one of the rare ones that McGinley says was born with good taste. No argument, please!

      I have noticed myself how similar my handwriting is to my mother's. Wish so much that we were similar in many ways! She is such a dear lady.

      May your grey Toronto day give way to sunny spring days very soon!

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  4. I have loved the comments that this post and this community brings. they're each wonderful and unique in their own way.
    I'm familiar with WH Auden but alas not Phyllis. like Benita I will have to discover her now. another beautifully written post dear friend. and yes... I too have tucked little notes that were special to me in some of my favorite books. it's fun to come across them and see a very young hand writing that was my own. and often my Mother's or Gram's. little parts of their soul.

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    1. Well, this community would not be complete without you here, dear Tammy!

      Isn't it nice how much little notes from the past mean? I'm so glad I didn't purge all the letters my mother wrote to me over the years when we moved. You're right, they are "little parts of their soul" and what a lovely thought that is.

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  5. Dewena, you have got to stop introducing me to all these wonderful authors I haven't discovered yet! I have piles and piles of books to read...and I think some of them are already from books you've mentioned. ;-) I just looked up Phyllis McGinley on amazon and there are sellers that have her books for pretty decent prices. I must resist! I haven't read Auden in a long time.

    No, I don't tuck notes in books, as most of my books are donated after I'm done reading them. I do have books that I want to read again or refer back to, but those just have passages that are highlighted.

    The two houses that Brian and I have lived in (the two before that were apartments) did indeed speak to us! Before we looked at the house we currently live in (almost 29 years!), we must've looked at 30 houses. We knew the minute we walked into this one that it was meant to be.

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    1. Melanie, I understand what you're saying about so many unread authors. You should see my library file with all that I want to read, many from blog friends' recommendation. It's stuffed! And then there's a shorter list of ones I think I must buy, not many go on that list anymore because I'm very selective now. Not enough room on my shelves left for many. And I tend to buy only books from favorite authors now.

      That's a special feeling when someone is lucky enough to have a house say I'm yours. I know when we walked into our old house one fall day it was like falling in love. Not because it was a beautiful house, it wasn't. But there was such peace and welcoming spirit that nothing else mattered. I think there had been gentle souls living in it before us.

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  6. Must confess, I had not heard of Phyllis McKinley.
    No, I don't tuck notes in books, but I do have a favourite bookmark that I use in my reading books that has been with me for many years …

    All the best Jan

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    1. I have special bookmarks too! I keep them forever.

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  7. Oh, i love this post. I have never read anything by her and actually never heard of her but wow these books look so interesting. Lucky you having so many sisters. I never purposely left anything in the books I have read but am always surprised to find scribbles, doodles or notes on paper or even passwords to my favorite forums that I have put on paper and absent mindedly slipped into the book I was reading at the time. It's always fun to decipher my codes for whatever I was writing about at the time, whatever reminders I placed in a book. Sometimes it's like someone else slipped in and wrote these little notes.

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    1. Finding a note to myself I wrote decades before can be very illuminating. It's like meeting someone I had forgotten about.

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  8. Oh! Sixpence In Her Shoe sounds perfect and I'm wondering how I missed that one. Thanks for your lovely review--I ordered it and can't wait till it arrives! Blessings, Debra

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    1. Hello, Debra! I am just now beginning to get back into the blogging world after a blogging break and computer breakdown but hope so much that you have enjoyed reading the McGinley book. I'll try to see if I can visit you and say hello, so nice to meet you!

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    2. Well, Debra! I now realize that you are Debra from As I See It Now. So sorry, I didn't recognize you!

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