“Let some of your rules as to form go, and sing.” — Marjorie L. C. Pickthall | V2Melody

“Let some of your rules as to form go, and sing.”

Preference for music and singing over strict construction · Letter to Alfred Gordon

Marjorie L. C. Pickthall

About Marjorie L. C. Pickthall

Marjorie L. C. Pickthall

14 September 1883–22 April 1922

Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall was born on 14 September 1883 at Gunnersbury, then in Middlesex, England, and died on 22 April 1922 in Vancouver, British Columbia. During her lifetime she was among the best-known and most admired poets in Canada, a writer whose delicately fashioned lyrics, religious imagination, and…

More by Marjorie L. C. Pickthall

Poems by Marjorie L. C. Pickthall

More remarks by Marjorie L. C. Pickthall

“Don't keep reminding me I'm a poet. I very seldom feel equal to living up to my own Immortal Verse.”

Ironic self-deflation of the public poet-persona she felt she could not inhabit · Letter to Helen Coleman, 7 December 1908

“Poetry is all very well. But when you are reduced to seventeen cents and some stamps.”

Comic collision of lyric vocation and cash shortage · Letter to Helen Coleman, 7 December 1908

“I attended your Auntie's literary gathering some time ago, and disgraced myself by refusing to act up to my poetry.”

On the gap between the woman and the expected poet-persona · Letter to Helen Coleman, 28 February 1909