Lola Ridge

‘The Dream’: A Poem by Lola Ridge

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By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Lola Ridge (1873-1941) was born in Ireland but lived much of her adult life in the United States. She’s not read much now, but she was a pioneer of what some call ‘Anarchist poetry’, though her style might be co-opted more broadly under the banner of modernism. ‘The Dream’, a short poem by Ridge, shows why she’s worth reading.

‘The Dream’ by Lola Ridge

I have a dream
to fill the golden sheath
of a remembered day….
(Air
heavy and massed and blue
as the vapor of opium…

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A Short Analysis of Lola Ridge’s ‘Mother’

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By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Lola Ridge (1873-1941) is not much-remembered now, much less read. Yet she was one of a number of female modernist poets active in the first half of the twentieth century: poets who helped to move English (or Anglophone: Ridge herself was not English) verse away from roses and iambic pentameters and into fresh new territory. Her short poem, ‘Mother’, gives a snapshot of her distinctive style.

Mother

Your love was like moonlight
turning harsh things to beauty,
so that little wry souls
reflecting each other obliquely
as in cracked mirrors . . .

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