[To "Voices from 19th-Century America"]

Bad poetry knows no century or region. "Eulalie" was Mary Eulalie Fee Shannon (1824-1855), who grew up in and around Cincinnati, Ohio, before marrying newspaper editor John Shannon in 1854 and moving to Auburn, California. Her poems were published in her husband's newspaper, making her probably California's first published woman poet. That is probably her major distinction as a writer.

Buds, Blossoms, and Leaves was produced in Cincinnati, and most of the poems may have been written there; many individuals to whom she directs poems were from the area, and the landscapes she extolls seem more midwestern than western.

It's a serviceable volume of serviceable rhymes by a serviceable rhymer; one poem begins with the unintentionally humorous line, "O! would I were a poet!" Not quite as bad a poet as Julia A. Moore ("The Sweet Singer of Michigan"), Eulalie does visit that neighborhood: "The Angel's Visit" features the Angel of Death apparently stalking and drowning a young man because "[t]he angels in heaven were making a crown" and needed one more "jewel". Most of Eulalie's verses are pleasant and unmemorable: rhymed expositions on death and landscapes and death and seasons and death. "Tomb" is rhymed almost always with "gloom"; "breast" more often than not is paired with "rest". The collection is distinguished mostly for the subject matter of some of its poems: Hungarian patriot Lajos Kossuth's tour of the United States is memorialized in "Kossuth's Address to America" and in "Song--The Magyar Chief," which was sung at a concert in Cincinnati; "The Gold Comet," "Lines suggested by the Death of Mr. James D. Turner," and "The Desert Burial" concern the California Gold Rush.

My copy was presented to a reader by F. W. Fee, Esq., who probably was one of Mary's relatives.

Eulalie was often inspired by those she knew. James D. Turner ("Lines") led a group of Ohioans to California, where he found more success as a businessman than as a miner. Jacob Burnet ("Lines Respectfully Addressed to Judge Burnet") was one of Ohio's early politicians; his biography is available online. Peyton Short Symmes ("Bard of the Early West!") was a distinguished lawyer and a trustee and supporter of higher education in Cincinnati. Mrs. E. C. Hawkins ("Invocation") probably was the wife of Ezekiel C. Hawkins, a major Cincinnati daguerreotypist.

More about Eulalie can be found at http://www.rootsweb.com/~kygenweb/kybiog/fleming/shannon.mef.txt and at http://www.singingtreepress.com/PoetryContest/bio-eulalie.htm.