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Showing posts from November, 2023

RUJ in IN

 Poets from Indiana, Robert Underwood Johnson I know, you're like, wait, that guy looks old. Yep, Robert Underwood Johnson died in 1937. He lived through the Civil War, served as an ambassador to Italy, went camping with John Muir (yes, that one), argued for copyright laws, argued for land conservation and women's rights. He hung out with Teddy Roosevelt, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Ulysses S. Grant, Henry James, and many others. And yes, he grew up in Indiana and graduated from Earlham College in Richmond at the age of 14. Still, even more importantly, he was a poet with many books to his name. I first came across his work in Eletha Mae Taylor's Indiana Poetry  compilation. It contains this poem, "Titian's Two Loves, in the Borghese."               One forgets not the first dead he sorrowed over;                One forgets not the first kiss of the first lover.               Not the dust of ages could remembrance cover               How in Titian's golden kin