Distributed for CavanKerry Press
Eleanor
In Eleanor, Gray Jacobik presents sixty-two poems written in the voice of former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Set against the backdrop of many of the major national and international events of the twentieth century, this famous historical figure has much to say. This collection includes poems about Eleanor’s husband Franklin, her children, her mother-in-law, her intellectual mentors, and her most passionate and intimate friendships. Other poems focus on Eleanor’s evolving relationship to servants, issues of class and human rights, as well as her service to the world community. Jacobik’s monologues constitute a sustained imaginative work that embodies Eleanor Roosevelt’s emotional experience, moral conflicts, fears, losses, desires, and aspirations.
Eleanor Roosevelt was a bold and outspoken advocate for issues that are still relevant today: social justice, economic security, freedom from war and violence, and the rights of workers and immigrants. Modern readers will find much to admire, and much that resonates, in the themes of this collection. Publishing one hundred years after the Nineteenth Amendment granted women the right to vote, this collection reminds us how far we have come, and how much further we have yet to go.
Eleanor Roosevelt was a bold and outspoken advocate for issues that are still relevant today: social justice, economic security, freedom from war and violence, and the rights of workers and immigrants. Modern readers will find much to admire, and much that resonates, in the themes of this collection. Publishing one hundred years after the Nineteenth Amendment granted women the right to vote, this collection reminds us how far we have come, and how much further we have yet to go.
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Reviews
Table of Contents
Prologue
I was born Anna Eleanor Roosevelt
Substitutes and Servants
The first servant I remember
Our laundress at Tivoli was quite Madeleine’s
A nurse who attended my children, Blanche
To his lasting humiliation, my Grandfather Roosevelt
I was married before I was told that a maid,
I cannot now remember the name
When Franklin was appointed
When one has servants, you never forget
Sometimes from a train or car window
Allenswood
The education I received
Here was Mademoiselle Souvestre: her brilliant talk
Early Marriage
A few years after Franklin and I married
Our third child was born in my fourth
My mother-in-law furnished our house
Betrayal
Shipboard from Great Britain to New York
Aftermath
I was alone on my thirty-fifth birthday
There was that messy business
When Franklin became ill he was struck first
I do not advocate the way Franklin handles
The day I drove her from Hyde Park
Friends and Lovers
Brilliant blue-sky days and deep green pines
If I was going to inspect institutions
I was at war with myself for the visions of Earl’s
Earl touched my body
Franklin would succeed in the election
Earl’s love forced me to overcome the barrier
Earl and I were Lady and Knight Errant
She’s all yours, Hickok. Have fun!
Hick was glorious company and now
Ares sent The Depression then War; Eros, Passion
Years later, when Lorena and I would take
During the 1932 campaign, although Hick ought not
Sometimes, beside David on a plane or in a car
Once, in 1948, David and I had two days in Zurich
Before I bore six children, I cut quite the figure
The truth is never wholly palatable: David is
Should Fate ever permit me to choose just one
A Politician’s Wife/First Lady
I have known only a few very happy marriages
When I think of those months
As we were leaving Albany to fly to Chicago
Visible from the small window of the plane
Political expediency and gallant affability
I was in California and could not attend Marian
Painful for me, at times to be so delicately
That frightful clanging––
In 1939, when the S.S. Saint Louis
I’d cringe inwardly when I’d hear Franklin
Slowly, along the eight hundred miles
After The White House
Who was I if not Franklin’s
The fate of war refugees was an issue I cared
Once, when I chaired the Commission
Hollywood made a movie about Fala, and he was
Aboard the Tuscaloosa once in the West Indies,
Finding myself First Lady of the State
I turn over the word horror
When I was a young girl
Epilogue
When I look back over my life
I was born Anna Eleanor Roosevelt
Substitutes and Servants
The first servant I remember
Our laundress at Tivoli was quite Madeleine’s
A nurse who attended my children, Blanche
To his lasting humiliation, my Grandfather Roosevelt
I was married before I was told that a maid,
I cannot now remember the name
When Franklin was appointed
When one has servants, you never forget
Sometimes from a train or car window
Allenswood
The education I received
Here was Mademoiselle Souvestre: her brilliant talk
Early Marriage
A few years after Franklin and I married
Our third child was born in my fourth
My mother-in-law furnished our house
Betrayal
Shipboard from Great Britain to New York
Aftermath
I was alone on my thirty-fifth birthday
There was that messy business
When Franklin became ill he was struck first
I do not advocate the way Franklin handles
The day I drove her from Hyde Park
Friends and Lovers
Brilliant blue-sky days and deep green pines
If I was going to inspect institutions
I was at war with myself for the visions of Earl’s
Earl touched my body
Franklin would succeed in the election
Earl’s love forced me to overcome the barrier
Earl and I were Lady and Knight Errant
She’s all yours, Hickok. Have fun!
Hick was glorious company and now
Ares sent The Depression then War; Eros, Passion
Years later, when Lorena and I would take
During the 1932 campaign, although Hick ought not
Sometimes, beside David on a plane or in a car
Once, in 1948, David and I had two days in Zurich
Before I bore six children, I cut quite the figure
The truth is never wholly palatable: David is
Should Fate ever permit me to choose just one
A Politician’s Wife/First Lady
I have known only a few very happy marriages
When I think of those months
As we were leaving Albany to fly to Chicago
Visible from the small window of the plane
Political expediency and gallant affability
I was in California and could not attend Marian
Painful for me, at times to be so delicately
That frightful clanging––
In 1939, when the S.S. Saint Louis
I’d cringe inwardly when I’d hear Franklin
Slowly, along the eight hundred miles
After The White House
Who was I if not Franklin’s
The fate of war refugees was an issue I cared
Once, when I chaired the Commission
Hollywood made a movie about Fala, and he was
Aboard the Tuscaloosa once in the West Indies,
Finding myself First Lady of the State
I turn over the word horror
When I was a young girl
Epilogue
When I look back over my life
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