The Wilmingtonian Poetry Journal

SONNET: "DEAR MAMMA" (1933)

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Tue, 2 Mar 04 17:49:00 UT

(I recently purchased a vintage postcard at an antique show. Exactly what it said and what it showed are included in the following Shakespearean sonnet.)

SONNET: "DEAR MAMMA" (1933)

(copyright Donata Lewandowski Guerra 2004)

"What thou doest, do quickly. Love from Allen"
Ends backward slant on a Wilmington card
Postmarked from Middletown to Margaret Virdin.
In linen, city's sturdy boulevard

Thrusts up Delaware Trust. Minute adults
Disperse over broad pavements anchoring
A Post-Depression's mercantile results.
He begins "Warning! Everything in full swing!

Dining room table is piled up - no place
To put hat - and other sure signs." Bizarre,
Confounding, his neat scrawl on back's half-space
Serves riddles to us yearning from afar

Unable to breech distance, years, blood ties
To Philadelphia and mother's eyes.

VILLANELLE: THE BACK OF THE CARD

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Tue, 24 Feb 04 16:26:00 UT

As I continue to collect vintage postcards of Wilmington, Delaware -- my sites are available on the links above -- I find intriguing the messages written between strangers, family, and friends. While the writing on postcards does not seem to impact their monetary value, I am always struck by the sheer historical value of the exchanges on such cards. These messages serve as windows into the minds of their writers -- each a product of time, place, and all factors that make one a unique person in time.

VILLANELLE: THE BACK OF THE CARD

(Copyright 2004 Donata Lewandowski Guerra, do not reproduce without permission)

These strangers' words not meant to last
Pressed out in pen or scrawled with lead
Still speak on postcards from the past

That fill a shoebox with a vast
Visual inventory. Unread,
These strangers' words not meant to last

Harbor scant value in contrast
To scarce imagery; once read
Still speak on postcards from the past

But little count (if one's amassed
A century's worth of sites instead).
These strangers' words not meant to last

Remain invisible, surpassed
By landmarks. Places travels led
Still speak on postcards from the past.

Unmarked by card enthusiast
Are treasures hidden in the said.
These strangers' words not meant to last
Still speak on postcards from the past.

SONNET: DELAWARE TRUST

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Tue, 10 Feb 04 20:08:00 UT

A fascinating reminiscence of Wilmington landmarks in 1886 occurred in 1933 when a reporter for the Wilmington Sunday Journal recreated the streets of his youth for the paper's readers. Now, in 2004, I look back on his creation of that recreation.

DELAWARE TRUST

(copyright 2004 Donata Lewandowski Guerra)

The Old Timer in nineteen thirty-three
Strolled, composing Market Street from his head
In 'eight-six: Yellow-buttoned shoes tread
On a route long shaped in his memory.

At Tenth an uprooted cemetery
Raised stones once more "in this man's town. The red
Brick village that was Wilmington." Block shed
Delaware Trust, he, a soliloquy:

"Chester A. Arthur's full burn-sided stare
Tracked me to Fourth where a drove of cattle
Stalled. Eyeing a factory for the bee hive

Up Sixth at Shipley, I deemed it rare
To improve on nature", 'til trolley's rattle
Jarred him to breathing. He was yet alive.

SONNET: PUTTING LIFE INTO A GRAVEYARD, A 1920 DELAWARE STATE MAGAZINE FE

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Mon, 26 Jan 04 14:26:00 UT

Last year I stumbled across a January, 1920 article in the short-lived Delaware State Magazine about the ground under the present-day Wilmington Institute Free Library on Rodney Square. Part of the building stands over a playground that, itself, had displaced the First Presbyterian Church cemetery on Market Street. The story featured photographs of young boys playing on the old cemetery grounds. The church had already been moved to the Brandywine River bank where it stands today as the headquarters of the Colonial Dames. Eventually, this play area gave way to the library we see today. My ruminations take shape in this Petrarchan sonnet.

PUTTING LIFE INTO A GRAVEYARD: DELAWARE STATE MAGAZINE FEATURE, 1920

(copyright 2004 Donata Lewandowski Guerra)

Around opaque headstones and thin trees brown
As dried grass trampled underfoot, they mill,
"The Gang" -- baptized in print -- on Market's hill,
1920s teams, all boys, it seems. The town

Sees burial ground give way (with Church set down
Anew on the Brandywine's banks) but still
Its emptying plots won't cede to masons' skill
Until a firm of national renown

Two years hence lifts pilasters to pages.
"The war has changed all things." cite accolades,
Coy captioning "From the Grave to the Gay".

They have asked, are rot already, sages
Matured in the intervening eight decades,
If living souls remember tombs or play.

THE WILMINGTONIAN JOURNAL" PLEIN AIR:CITY RESERVOIR AND URSULINE SCHOOL"

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Sun, 18 Jan 04 19:18:00 UT

The Wilmington, Delaware City Reservoir along Franklin Street has adjoined the collegial Gothic architectural complex that is Ursuline Academy -- High School, convent, and Junior School -- for a little less than a century. My other websites feature photographs and postcards of the Reservoir, but none can capture the beauty one sees while actually standing and taking in the vista, and this Petrarchan sonnet is an attempt to recreate that effect.

PLEIN AIR: CITY RESERVOIR AND URSULINE SCHOOL

(copyright 2004 Donata Lewandowski Guerra, do not reproduce without permission)

Cupped inside a low-rising gradient,
Secured with fence, bordered by gray stone wall,
The City Reservoir guards drink for all
Strolling past the mutual abutment

Of Ursuline School and water allotment.
Under Romanesque arch at evenfall
Step out from the porte-cochere. Recall
A glimpse of dark lapping, and contentment.

On days when shards of sun had pierced our eyes,
London blue, the aqueous aggregation
Would not cede self-contained serenity,

And we, dismissing pain, suppressing cries,
Framed the pool with massed Gothic formation
In a gallery of eternity.

THE WILMINGTONIAN JOURNAL: SONNET: POLISH SPEAKERS AT AN AMERICAN WAKE, CIRCA 1970

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Sun, 11 Jan 04 17:26:00 UT

SONNET: POLISH SPEAKERS AT AN AMERICAN WAKE, CIRCA 1970

Copyright 2004 Donata Lewandowski Guerra

Commotion at the chairs along the wall
Liberated us from studied grief,
Daughters of sons and daughters. Amnesiacs all,
We failed to know the words they bandied for relief.

The eldest aunt and all her aging cronies
Gossiped, hushed and murmured. No translation.
The Polish tongue was natural for these
First-born of sacrificial generation.

The talk was, no doubt, personal, exchange --
When one knew, had heard,what felt, and where --
Selective lowered tones in their interchange
Made us smile, savoring the risque air.

The century mark has born away distraction
For those who mourn and claim Polish extraction.

THE WILMINGTONIAN JOURNAL: POEM: ROUNDEL ON RODNEY SQUARE

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Fri, 9 Jan 04 19:57:00 UT

Rodney Square in Wilmington, Delaware took years to achieve its present appearance. An old postcard on one of my websites shows the Court House building that stands -- along with the Wilmington Institute Free Library, Hotel DuPont, and Post Office on each of its sides -- even lacking the statue of Cesar Rodney galloping to sign the Declaration of Independence. The irony of this poem is that though its form, the Roundel, is taken from a type of dance, the narrator is left standing in place.

ROUNDEL ON RODNEY SQUARE

(copyright 2004 Donata Lewandowski Guerra)

I feel myself still standing there
While memory unveils each side:
Four portals to the past and pride
Of those whose vision raised this Square.

First, books stacked high in warm dark air
And "DuPont" pushed "Biltmore" aside.
I feel myself still standing there
While memory unveils each side:

Third, Court, porticoed lawyers' lair,
Then Post Office massed in brick to hide
Mundane business, while astride,
Rodney rears in perpetual tear,
I feel myself still standing there.

THE WILMINGTONIAN JOURNAL: Poem, The Ursuline Academy Drama Closet

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Fri, 12 Dec 03 22:55:00 UT

As a drama student at Ursuline Academy, I often visited the drama closet high on its third floor. When our Drama Club participated in the University of Delaware's play festival for area high schools one year, I found myself entranced by this room. Over the years, this sacred space appears in my dreams; I recognize it as a place that has come to represent a precious portion of my past experience.

THE URSULINE ACADEMY DRAMA CLOSET

(copyright Donata Lewandowski Guerra, 2003)

I sometimes dream of Ursuline
Where Gothic corridor
Leads to a large dark closet hid
Up on its attic floor.

Tucked underneath the mansard roof
Range clothes of olden date.
My hand takes from the colored rows
A gown for Shakespeare's Kate.

The fit is apt,gold satin threads,
Apparel for our show.
I will emerge as Henry's bride
Down in the world below.

My fingers open leather tomes
Obscured by vintage dress,
French prayers books, geometries
From Nineteenth Century press.

The nuns who stored away these words
Set up our drama nook,
Were loathe to discard precious gear --
Not verse, nor cloth, nor book.

Though fashions changed in garb or phrase
To such they still held fast
And taught how many needed things
Inhabited our past.

This reverie is not a wish,
It happened, yes, a fact.
Dream fragments help my memory
Forever call it back.

The play performed, the dress rehung,
No image left behind,
The volumes in that sacred space
Still open in my mind.

Wilmingtonian Journal Poem: NO POETRY ON THE BRANDYWINE

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Sun, 30 Nov 03 23:46:00 UT

On my website "Wilmington, Delaware, Then and Now, A City in Vintage and Modern Views" (available on the link above) an antique postcard image of the Brandywine River is juxtaposed with a digital image and my words "the surging Brandywine, source of power for flour and textile mills, has not inspired many poets." This poem examines the reasons for such a lack of verse in the Delaware literary world (if one can even imagine such a place exists!). I am aware of three women poets is the vicinity of this river -- two living, and one deceased. I cannot say if this river has been a source of their poetry, but I can say that these amazing creators have worked against the tide. Perhaps they are the subject of a later essay. Readers should bear in mind that the great Nineteenth and Twentieth Century illustrators who studied at Howard Pyle's school were equivalent to today's filmmakers, and their profession led to great financial success as well as lionization.

NO POETRY ON THE BRANDYWINE

(copyright 2003 Donata Lewandowski Guerra)

I claim the olden Brandywine had rarely watered verse.
In growing Schoonover and Pyle it spawned a writers' curse.
The school that raised the Wyeth clan, and gathered painters in,
Had little care for versifiers, less for poets' din.

These illustrators limned the tales outsiders first would write
For eyes that read and then took in an image with delight.
Such commerce-ship of word and art, an enterprise done well,
Sailed strong out from the Brandywine, with business nonpareil.

Perhaps its parlance well-distilled, the Quaker mode of speech
Lent little stock to lyricism. What virtue could it teach?
The simple and the practical, not gaudy nor too proud,
Let voices die before they swelled. What if one sung too loud?

The city on the Brandywine is rich and rich men made,
But poverty now marks her speech for poets are not paid.

The Wilmingtonian Journal: THE DOG IN THE WATER TOWER

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Fri, 28 Nov 03 22:47:00 UT

An old Wilmington legend has a dog buried under the Alfred I. DuPont Memorial Carrillon Tower. Although I do not know if this claim is factual, there was an occasion, long ago, when my sister led me, a friend, and a strange dog along Greenhill and across Pennsylvania Avenues to the top of the Water Tower in Rockford Park. The friendly canine only balked when it was time to descend. This incident is the basis for this poem presented in trochaic tetrameter couplets.

THE DOG IN THE WATER TOWER

(copyright 2003 Donata Lewandowski Guerra)

Conjuring the Water Tower,
Stone-cold sentry hour-to-hour,
Memory draws from me the day
Ambling Greenhill when a stray,
Golden dog so affable
Dogged us over Tower Hill
Tracked us right on up the stair.
Traveling down caused canine care.

Lisa pulled him round and round,
Collared tight, to reach the ground,
Forcing hound to flee that tower
Lest his bones remain this hour!

The Wilmingtonian Journal: ROUNDEL AT ST. PATRICK'S, ASHLAND

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Thu, 27 Nov 03 18:35:00 UT

I believe Thomas McKean, one of Delaware's signers of the Declaration of Independence, had declared Wilmington, like Philadelphia, to be a truly "Quaker towne". The influence of the Society of Friends and their unique culture on the Wilmington area is so subtle that most inhabitants are unaware of such a deeply steeped heritage until moving away. It was not until I'd lived in Boston that I realized "the colonials up here are different from those in the Pennsylvania/Maryland/New Jersey/Delaware region." Meeting another who'd also had the experience of Boston was doubly illuminating. Her house happened to be near the historical St. Mary's Cemetery where my parents had purchased tiny burial plots. This parcel of ground served as genesis for the poem, while three traditions -- Catholic, Puritan, and Quaker -- joined in my mind.

ROUNDEL AT ST. PATRICK'S, ASHLAND

(Copyright 2003 Donata Lewandowski Guerra)

The graveyard to the right begs I explain
Two Catholic parental plots 'til sight
Of you at life displaces, then, in your domain
The graveyard to the right.

Across, your fieldstones house cosmopolite
Recall of Boston sojourns to obtain
Division from the Brandywine where bright
With Mind, displaced and seeking chatelaine
Might grasp the Puritan is clothed in white
But Quaker soil remains, and we reclaim
The graveyard to the right.

The Wilmingtonian Journal -- MONUMENT SQUARE: A VIRELAI

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Thu, 27 Nov 03 17:54:00 UT

Using the form of a Virelai -- two stanzas with, respectively, an ababa and cacac rhyme pattern, the first and last lines of each in iambic trimeter with iambic tetrameter on interior lines -- this poem celebrates the famous Victorian manses towering over the confluence of the avenues meeting on this famed square in downtown Wilmington, Delaware.

THE AGE OF CONFIDENCE, too, is the title of native son Henry Siedel Canby's autobiographical work of his life in Victorian-era Wilmington. No doubt, growing up in these environs he would have known well the women who led Wilmington society in that period and whose charitable work was undertaken through membership in the New Century Club.

MONUMENT SQUARE

(Copyright 2003 Donata Lewandowski Guerra)

The Age of Confidence
Heaped up those grand Victorian dames
Assuring all one's deference.
Delaware bowed before their names
And noted well such prominence.

French Empire and Queen Anne
Or Italianate the influence
With Rural Gothic there began
Such quest for houses' opulence
Reflecting prosperous Man!

Poem-A FLORIDIAN REMEMBERS THE SEASONS

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Tue, 25 Nov 03 21:17:00 UT

Some years ago, North Carolina-born poet and Delaware transplant Gibbons Ruark said, in an interview given to the Wilmington, Delaware News-Journal, "A vast number of the poems in the world are either love poems or elegies. We tend to write about what we love and then what we've lost."

One of the losses for any Delawarean transplanted far afield are the seasonal changes in the natural world, and these quatrains rendered in iambic tetrameter expressed my loss during a sojourn of four years in Miami.

A DELAWAREAN REMEMBERS THE SEASONS

(Copyright 1982 Donata Lewandowski Guerra
Do not reproduce without permission)

Atlantic ways are old and set
Congealed in crevices of time
The Northern loam is deeper yet
Piled on my soul with Mill Creek lime.

There Autumn bears a scent of death
While naked trees and skies in gray
Prepare the Summer's sepulcher
And so revere the earth's decay.

Encased beneath a sheen of ice
All Nature sleeps; dreams swell, then pass,
It knows in such hard solitude
That Winter cannot break its glass.

Though March brings hope, a sadness, yet
Insists on lingering in the earth
Which broods on wintry hardship born
Before it yields to new rebirth.

The Spring's caress is gentle first --
The world is like her newborn child --
But when the mother's lived her prime
A brazen Summer strikes what's mild

Grants fecund ripening to the land
Swells fruits to burst in August haze
Then takes the verdure back again
And deals regrets to final days.

And so the cycle goes again
As surely as the day steals night
This movement ever in my eyes
Though I'm long blind from Tropic light.

THE WILMINGTONIAN: A LITERARY JOURNAL

OldWilmington@nc.rr.com — Tue, 25 Nov 03 14:53:00 UT

This journal is a site for poetry and prose inspired by Wilmington, Delaware and the Brandywine Valley.

(copyright property of
Donata Lewandowski Guerra, B.A. Swarthmore College)

Donata Lewandowski Guerra has previous published poetry in the Florida Arts Gazette and the New Oxford Review. Her play CAGED premiered at Sarah Lawrence College, and she has written the screenplay JENNY'S WISH for Cathy Klein Productions.

"It is part of my creed that the only Poetry is History, could we tell it right." -- Thomas Carlyle, in a letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson

"But then history does not only consist of documents." -- John Lukacs