PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

There are very few poets whose poems I re-read a second time or more.  But this poem compels me once again, and once again it is the voice of Ann Rutledge speaking to the young frontierman who, driven by his unceasing grief for her death, brought this nation through its greatest internal crisis and brought to final conclusion the unfinished work of the Founding Fathers.  I believe he saw, in the political misery of the nation, a metaphor for Ann's final illness; and he did, for this country, what he could not have done for her.  Although he was murdered, he was alos martyred; and the martydom's reward was, I think, a reunion, at last and never to be broken, with Ann.

Well worded and nicely written. You totally caught a moment in time here where your dreams become reality and whilst clinging to reality to draw upon to feed the dream. Just loved your poem hoplessly candid.

KS

I am about to offer a compliment in some of the most serious terms I can offer.  Not sure if you know the name Anne Rutledge:  she was Abraham Lincoln's first love, and certain friends of his (including his law partner) believed that, after her early death from typhus, he never got over her, even after he married Mary Todd.  Anne is one of the reasons he always looks sad in most photographs.  I heard a forensic psychologist suggest that Lincoln's great capacity for work during the War was due to the effect of the work to numb the pain of always thinking about Anne.  HIs law partner said, in later years, that on stormy or cold nights, Lincoln would weep in the office and say, "She's all alone out there" in the cemetery.  The poet Edgar Lee Masters, whose father was in partnership with Lincoln's partner after the assassination, wrote a great poem about Anne, and it is now inscribed on a monument that stands over, or near, her grave.

I said all that to say this.  Tpnight's gout made me a bit melancholy, and as I was trying to soak some of the pain away, I began to think of this poem as being in Anne Rutledge's voice, telling Lincoln about the cabin he wanted to build for her, and that she can soundly rest because she rests in his love.  I have the highest esteem for Anne, and for what she did for the man who, more than any other except Washington, guided this country on the correct course even to the cost of his own life, and for your poem to have gotten into my mind to convince me that Anne is speaking here, and just not some random character . . . well, that is a great achievement because I allow only a couple of poets that far into my mind.  You may not have had Anne in mind, and I have no idea what you know about her, but whenever I look at this poem again (and that will be more than once), it is Anne's voice I hear, channeled through your excellent words and lines.

Excellent deployment of rhyme.  And quite a vision you have described in such a small space of lines.