In Honor of Poetry Month: Sarah Kemble Knight

Crossposted from my Blogetary:

One of the first books I ever purchased at the Student Union bookstore at Western Washington University my first quarter there was The Poetry of American Women from 1632 to 1945 by Emily Stipes Watts. It wasn’t for a class, I just remember seeing it and thinking I had to have it. Each time I’ve moved I’ve thought of donating it somewhere. I just can’t seem to let go of it, though I rarely open it.

The chapters cover different sections of time. Some of the poets covered in each chapter are well known and some are not so well known. According to Watts, Sarah Kemble Knight was “a diarist, a poet, and a businesswoman” who lived in Boston. She was married to Richard Knight in 1689 and they had a daughter sometime before he passed away in 1706. Madame Knight, as she came to be known, was a landowner of property in Connecticut as well as a shopowner in Boston. On a trip from Boston to New Haven to New York she wrote a journal that was later published in 1825. Below is one of the poems found mixed in with her journal entries. Apparently she was a little annoyed with some of her fellow travelers.

I ask thy Aid, O Potent Rum!
To Charm these wrangling Topers Dum.
Though hast their Giddy Brains possest–
The man confounded with the Beast–
And I, poor I, can get no rest.
Intoxicate them with thy fumes;
O still their Tongues till morning comes!

Reminds me of little things I’ve written to get something out of my system. That is, after all, what some of writing is for. Not just to blather online about something or write that famous book or poem or screenplay, but sometimes to get out for ourselves what’s in our head down on paper, in private, for our eyes alone. It’s a form of self-reflection, a part of cultivating our inner lives and growing as people.

You can read more about Sarah Kemble Knight here.