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The Writing of
Jean Butridge Van Deusen
Mother loved to create, and she loved to see and understand
the beauties of the world around her. She was an artist
who painted on my mind, so that I would see what she saw. She was trained during
the Art Deco period, and all of her instincts were to say the
least, or draw the least, and make the viewer or reader join her in the artistic
completion. She was perfectly comfortable with the notion that each work was
distinct by reason of her audience. She didn't have to dominate the mind of her
collaborators; she was more than happy to fade into the background and let the
instantiation of each new piece belong to her readers or viewers.
Finding mother behind her pseudonym of Princesse Dorothy brought back memories of her cherished books of Oz, and of the nighttime stories we invented together of a group of titled, gossipy friends. I look back sadly while remembering that all of these women were always divorced, as was mother. I knew father only from mother's anger, and the quest of my life has been to find the key to his mind which, I believed, would be his poetry. In 1999 my husband Paul finally found both father and mother's poetry in the microfilm of the University of Chicago Daily Maroon. I'm so grateful that Paul, rather than I, was the finder, because it enabled him to become an integral part of this journey of understanding. And it gave him the opportunity to give me something of such deep importance that he glows with his gift. And that, in itself, is another gift. |
* | Night Lines | ![]() |
![]() | Evergreens | ![]() |
* | The First Violin | ![]() |
* | To the Anxious Big Man | ![]() |
![]() | Night Ecstasy | ![]() |
![]() | Sunset | ![]() |
![]() | Armistice | ![]() |
![]() | The Futility | ![]() |
![]() | "You Bid Me Come" | ![]() |
* | Parting | ![]() |
* | For The Saturnine Seaman | ![]() |
* | The Egoists | ![]() |
* | Winter Madness | ![]() |
![]() | February Days | ![]() |
![]() | Musing | ![]() |
![]() | "How shall I know spring" | ![]() |