I also found this: a Reddit thread in which someone notes that Alexandre Dumas uses the phrase "triste fruits" to refer to hanged men in 'Vicomte de Bragalonne' . A possible source for the image. Though it's always possible multiple people arrived at the same image independently.
I first came across poems by Wylie when I was in high school (I don't recall which poems) but, under the spell of "Prufrock" and "The Waste Land," I thought her poems passé. Now I would rather read "Wild Peaches" than "The Waste Land," though of course Eliot's is an incomparably more important poem.
I can hardly react to the trolley poem now as if it were 1921--a year before "The Waste Land" was published, two years before Stevens' "Harmonium," a year after Pound's "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley"--but from my not particularly well-informed perch it seems--to restate what you said, I think--like a traditional poem enlivened by the example of Imagism.
The substack essay on Landor and the epigram led me to J.V. Cunningham, a poet I knew from only a single poem. Born in 1911, he was present when Imagism was new. According to a critic, Cunningham was "suspicious of much of modern poetry’s reliance on imagery. 'For him, poetry must engage some outer reality not simply by pointing at it with an image or expressing a mood in relation to it; the poem must treat experience, make something of it'” (the critic is Steven Helmling, the quotation is at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/j-v-cunningham). Wylie's images evoke many layers of reality, but arguably they don't "treat experience, make something of it." The reader can do that, though.
They were all seemingly going to work or coming back from it. The strange fruit brought forth Billie Holiday's song. It seemed as if the poem were looking at the riders, not unlike slaves, nailed to their life, as it was, without a life outside of it.
I love this poem, Sally: subtle, rich, the theological ending unexpected yet earned. The only thing I don't like is the punctuation — the comma splices, the awkward semicolons — which seems artificial, done solely to make each stanza a single sentence.
As mentioned and I am sure for many the term “strangest fruits” immediately evoked in me the haunting Billie Holiday song of 1939 also based on a poem.
This poem predates that one, and the song, by more than a decade, I think --- the poem that the song derives from is based on a 1930 photograph of a lynching. But I wonder if that phrase was in circulation before that --- it's certainly impossible for us, I think, looking back, to read the phrase "strange fruit" without that association.
Oh wow. This one is really striking. Haunting.
I also found this: a Reddit thread in which someone notes that Alexandre Dumas uses the phrase "triste fruits" to refer to hanged men in 'Vicomte de Bragalonne' . A possible source for the image. Though it's always possible multiple people arrived at the same image independently.
https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/11v7y1l/did_alexandre_dumas_inspire_the_billie_holiday/
I first came across poems by Wylie when I was in high school (I don't recall which poems) but, under the spell of "Prufrock" and "The Waste Land," I thought her poems passé. Now I would rather read "Wild Peaches" than "The Waste Land," though of course Eliot's is an incomparably more important poem.
I can hardly react to the trolley poem now as if it were 1921--a year before "The Waste Land" was published, two years before Stevens' "Harmonium," a year after Pound's "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley"--but from my not particularly well-informed perch it seems--to restate what you said, I think--like a traditional poem enlivened by the example of Imagism.
The substack essay on Landor and the epigram led me to J.V. Cunningham, a poet I knew from only a single poem. Born in 1911, he was present when Imagism was new. According to a critic, Cunningham was "suspicious of much of modern poetry’s reliance on imagery. 'For him, poetry must engage some outer reality not simply by pointing at it with an image or expressing a mood in relation to it; the poem must treat experience, make something of it'” (the critic is Steven Helmling, the quotation is at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/j-v-cunningham). Wylie's images evoke many layers of reality, but arguably they don't "treat experience, make something of it." The reader can do that, though.
They were all seemingly going to work or coming back from it. The strange fruit brought forth Billie Holiday's song. It seemed as if the poem were looking at the riders, not unlike slaves, nailed to their life, as it was, without a life outside of it.
I love this poem, Sally: subtle, rich, the theological ending unexpected yet earned. The only thing I don't like is the punctuation — the comma splices, the awkward semicolons — which seems artificial, done solely to make each stanza a single sentence.
I didn't know that Bluebeard's wives were hung by their hair, so was confused by those lines.
As mentioned and I am sure for many the term “strangest fruits” immediately evoked in me the haunting Billie Holiday song of 1939 also based on a poem.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Fruit
This poem predates that one, and the song, by more than a decade, I think --- the poem that the song derives from is based on a 1930 photograph of a lynching. But I wonder if that phrase was in circulation before that --- it's certainly impossible for us, I think, looking back, to read the phrase "strange fruit" without that association.
Definitely came to my mind, especially her voice singing it.