The Hearkening Eye

Hildegarde Flanner

Hildegarde Flanner had lived in what she called the “Western Earth” for fifty years when this collection was published in 1979. She began writing in the nineteen twenties and states in her introduction, “It was not necessary to go to Paris to write poetry.” Her verse is replete with the cadences and landscape of the West. Flanner’s poetry has both urban and contemporary themes, but its main emphasis lies with Earth—cicadas, valley weeds, sassafras and Judas trees. Flanner’s imagery takes the reader beyond the surface of description. Her rhymes take a closer view that nudges the reader into the realm of the metaphysical.

A sample poem from the book

Eve of Elegy

The last cicada prays for love

This bright November night,

Singing alone to his own song

The quavering gospel of delight

With which he late persuaded

The delicate mob of pearly kin,

The music-shaken mystics

Who tremoloed to him.

Sing on, you widowed melody,

Tender monotonist,

With sweet obsessed voice

Rejoice, rejoice

A music that should mourn its dead

(Where pathos dangles on the twig),

But stutters with hope and joy instead.

Sing on, so solitaire, so wed.

One listener will praise

The blameless errors of your ways,

Since music at this hour of night

Mends all,

Love that has no meeting,

Faith that has no choice,

Forsaken, Forsaken,

And

Rejoice, rejoice!