And faring out for regions unexplored...



When I am dead and sister to the dust;
When no more avidly I drink the wine
Of human love; when the pale Proserpine
Has covered me with poppies, and cold rust
Has cut my lyre-strings, and the sun has thrust
Me underground to nourish the world-vine,
Men shall discover these old songs of mine,
And say: This woman lived -- as poets must!

This woman lived and wore life as a sword
To conquer wisdom; this dead woman read
In the sealed Book of Love and underscored
The meanings. Then the sails of faith she spread,
And faring out for regions unexplored,
Went singing down the River of the Dead.

American author Elsa Barker was born in 1869, in Leicest, Vermont, to Albert G.
and Louise Marie Barker. Her first jobs were as a shorthand reporter, a teacher,
and a newspaper writer. In 1901, she was the associate editor of the
Consolidated Encyclopedia Library. From 1904-1905, she worked as a lecturer
for the New York Board of Education, and from 1909-1910, she served on the
editorial staff of Hamptons magazine.

Throughout her life, Barker contributed poems, short stories, and articles to
various magazines. Her twenty-year career as a novelist began in 1909 with
The Son of Mary Bethel. Her first volume of poetry, The Frozen Grail and Other
Poems (1910), followed soon after. In 1942, Barker won the Lola Ridge Award
for her poem "The Iron Age." She also achieved success with three books of
"automatic" writing: Letters from a Living Dead Man (1914), War Letters from
the Living Dead Man (1915), and Last Letters From the Living Dead Man (1919).
In this trilogy, Barker claimed to channel the words of a Los Angeles lawyer
named David P. Hutch, who died in 1912. Other publications include a one-act
labor play, The Scab, which was produced in New York and Boston in 1904-06,
and Stories from the New Testament for Children (1911).

Barker lived most of her adult life in New York City. From 1910 to 1914, she
lived in Paris and London; at some point during her residence, she apparently
studied under Carl Jung. She also lived on the French Riviera from 1928-1930.
When she died on August 31, 1954, she was one of the last surviving charter
members of the Poetry Society of America.

went singing down the River of the Dead...