Editing Ina Coolbrith (section)

==Librarian==
Coolbrith had hoped to tour the East Coast and Europe with Miller, but stayed behind in San Francisco because she felt obliged to care for her mother and her seriously ill, widowed sister Agnes who was unable to care for herself or for her two children. In late 1871 she took on the care of another dependent when Joaquin Miller brought her a teenaged Indian girl (widely rumored to be his own daughter) to care for while he went abroad again, this time to Brazil and Europe.<ref name="MillerTimeline2008">{{cite web |url=http://www.joaquinmiller.com/timeline/2008_08.pdf |title=Readers' Updates of the Joaquin Miller Timeline |last1=Guilford-Kardell |first1=Margaret |last2=McKeown  |first2=Scott |date=August 2008 |work=Margaret Guilford-Kardell's Bibliography on the Life, Times, and Exploits of Cincinnatus Hiner Miller |publisher=JoaquinMiller.com |access-date=March 2, 2010}}</ref>

{{Quote box
 |title=Beside the Dead
 |quote=&nbsp;It must be sweet, O thou, my dead, to lie<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With hands that folded are from every task;<br/>
&nbsp;Sealed with the seal of the great mystery,<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The lips that nothing answer, nothing ask.<br/>
&nbsp;The life-long struggle ended; ended quite<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The weariness of patience, and of pain,<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And the eyes closed to open not again<br/>
&nbsp;On desolate dawn or dreariness of night.<br/>
&nbsp;It must be sweet to slumber and forget;<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To have the poor tired heart so still at last;<br/>
&nbsp;Done with all yearning, done with all regret,<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Doubt, fear, hope, sorrow, all forever past;<br/>
&nbsp;Past all the hours, or slow of wing or fleet—<br/>
&nbsp;It must be sweet, it must be very sweet!
 |source=—Ina Coolbrith<ref name=CurrentOpinion1900/>
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At a literary dinner on May 5, 1874, Coolbrith was elected an honorary member of the [[Bohemian Club]],<ref name=Wood1958>{{cite journal |last=Wood |first=Raymund F. |year=1958 |title=Ina Coolbrith, librarian |journal=California Librarian |volume=19 |pages=102–104}}</ref> the second of four women so honored.<ref>{{cite book |publisher=Bohemian Club |year=1895 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oi4KAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA58 |title=Constitution and by-laws of the Bohemian club of San Francisco |chapter=Honorary Members |page=58}} Coolbrith was second of the four women given honorary membership in the club. The first honorary female member was Margaret B. Bowman, wife of club co-founder [[James F. Bowman]], she being elected by acclamation during the first formal Bohemian Club meeting. By 1895, three more women were honorary members, including Coolbrith in 1874, author [[Sara Jane Lippincott]] (pseudonym Grace Greenwood), and actress [[Elizabeth Crocker Bowers]], wife of actor David P. Bowers. Coolbrith outlived them to become the last female club member.</ref> This allowed the members of the club to discreetly assist her in her finances, but their help was not enough to cover her full burden. Coolbrith moved to [[Oakland, California|Oakland]] to set up a larger household for her extended family. Coolbrith's sister Agnes died late in 1874, and the orphaned niece and nephew continued to live with Coolbrith.<ref name=Herny22/> Coolbrith wrote "Beside the Dead" in grief from the loss of her sister. Her mother Agnes died in 1876.<ref name=Moulton1889>{{cite journal |last=Moulton |first=Charles Wells |year=1889 |title=Ina D. Coolbrith |journal=The Magazine of Poetry and Literary Review |volume=1 |pages=312–315 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3TxXAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA313}}</ref>

To support the household, in late 1874 Coolbrith took a position as the librarian for the Oakland Library Association, a subscription library that had been established five years earlier. In 1878, the library was reformed as the [[Oakland Public Library|Oakland Free Library]], the second public library created in California under the [[Rogers Free Library Act]] ([[Eureka, California|Eureka]] was first).<ref>{{cite web |publisher=Oakland Public Library |url=http://www.oaklandlibrary.org/about/history.html |title=History |access-date=July 8, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090612124350/http://www.oaklandlibrary.org/about/history.html |archive-date=June 12, 2009 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Coolbrith earned a salary of $80 per month, much less than a man would have received. She worked 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. Her poetry suffered as a result. She published only sporadically over the next 19 years<ref name=Herny22/>—working as Oakland's librarian was the low point of her poetic career.<ref name=Redman/>

{{quote box|quote="...I named you 'Noble'. That is what you were to me—noble. That was the feeling I got from you. Oh, yes, I got, also, the feeling of sorrow and suffering, but dominating them, always riding above all, was noble. No woman has so affected me to the extent you did. I was only a little lad. I knew absolutely nothing about you. Yet in all the years that have passed I have met no woman so noble as you."<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;—[[Jack London]], in a letter to Coolbrith<ref name=JackLondons/>|width=25%|align=left}}
At the library, her style was personal: she discussed with the patrons their interests, and she selected books she felt were appropriate. In 1886, she befriended and mentored the 10-year-old [[Jack London]], guiding his reading. London called her his "literary mother". Twenty years later, London wrote to Coolbrith to thank her.<ref name=JackLondons/>

Coolbrith also mentored young [[Isadora Duncan]],<ref>{{cite book |last=Daly |first=Ann |year=1995 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KvEOvbHSHCcC&pg=PA12 |title=Done Into Dance |publisher=Indiana University Press |page=12 |isbn=978-0-253-32924-0}}</ref> who later described Coolbrith as "a very wonderful" woman, with "very beautiful eyes that glowed with burning fire and passion".<ref name=JackLondons>{{cite web |last=Hartzell |first=David |url=http://www.jacklondons.net/inacoolbrith.html |title=Jack London's Literary Mother |publisher=JackLondons.net |access-date=February 20, 2010 |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091024140039/http://www.jacklondons.net/inacoolbrith.html |archive-date=October 24, 2009 }}</ref> Magazine writer Samuel Dickson reported that, at a soirée in 1927, an aging Coolbrith told him of the famous lovers she had known, and that she had once dazzled Joseph Duncan, Isadora's father. Coolbrith said that his attentions led to the breakup of his marriage. Duncan's mother left San Francisco and settled her four children in Oakland, little knowing that Coolbrith would soon meet one of her children, and help the young dancer develop a wider knowledge of the world through reading.<ref>{{cite web |last=Dickson |first=Samuel |year=1949 |url=http://www.sfmuseum.org/bio/isadora.html |title=Isadora Duncan (1878–1927) |publisher=The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco |access-date=July 9, 2009}}</ref> Duncan wrote in her autobiography that, as a librarian, Coolbrith was always pleased with the youthful dancer's book choices, and that Duncan did not find out until later that Coolbrith was "evidently the great passion of [Joseph Duncan's] life".<ref>{{cite book |last=Duncan |first=Isadora |title=My Life |url=https://archive.org/details/mylife0000dunc |url-access=registration |publisher=Boni and Liveright |year=1927 |edition=4 |page=[https://archive.org/details/mylife0000dunc/page/22 22] }}</ref>

Coolbrith's nephew Henry Frank Peterson came to work with her at the library, and began to organize the books into a [[faceted classification]] scheme that she specified, one which used one- and two-digit numbers to stand for general subjects, and three-digit numbers to indicate individual books in that subject.<ref>{{cite book|last=Miel |first=Charles L., trustee |others=Ina Coolbrith, librarian; Henry F. Peterson, first assistant librarian |title=Catalogue of the Oakland Free Public Library |publisher=Tribune Publishing Company |location=Oakland, California |date=April 1885 |url=https://archive.org/stream/catalogueofoakla00oakliala |access-date=February 22, 2010}}</ref> Before this, Coolbrith had resisted library trustee attempts to classify the books; she had wished to continue the reading-room atmosphere that she had established.<ref name=Redman/>

In 1881, Coolbrith's poetry was published in book form, entitled ''A Perfect Day, and Other Poems''. [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]], after Coolbrith's publisher sent him a copy, said "I know that California has at least one poet."<ref name=Examiner1892/> Of the poems, he said "I have been reading them with delight."<ref name=Examiner1892/> Yale poet [[Edward Rowland Sill]], professor at the University of California and a keen critic of American literature, gave Coolbrith a letter of introduction that he wished her to send to publisher [[Henry Holt (publisher)|Henry Holt]]. It said, simply, "Miss Ina Coolbrith, one of our few really literary persons in California, and the writer of many lovely poems; in fact, the most genuine singer the West has yet produced."<ref name=Loughead>{{cite journal |last=Loughead |first=Flora Haines |date=July 1902 |title=Books and Writers |journal=Sunset Magazine |volume=IX |pages=217–219 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FBQbAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA217}}</ref> Quaker poet and former [[abolitionism|abolitionist]] [[John Greenleaf Whittier]] wrote to Coolbrith from [[Amesbury, Massachusetts]], to share his opinion that her "little volume" of poetry, "which has found such favor with all who have seen it on this side of the Rocky mountains", should be republished on the East Coast.<ref name=Loughead/> He told her "there is no verse on the Pacific Slope which has the fine quality of thine."<ref name=Loughead/>

Beginning as early as 1865 in San Francisco, Coolbrith held literary meetings at her home, hosting [[poetry reading|readings of poetry]], and topical discussions, in the tradition of European [[Salon (gathering)|salons]].<ref name=Hicks228/> She helped writers such as [[Gelett Burgess]] and [[Laura Redden Searing]] gain wider notice.<ref>{{cite book |last=Glyndon |first=Howard |year=2003 |url=https://archive.org/details/sweetbellsjangle0000glyn |url-access=registration |title=Sweet bells jangled |publisher=Gallaudet University Press |page=[https://archive.org/details/sweetbellsjangle0000glyn/page/14 14] |isbn=978-1-56368-138-7}}</ref>

[[File:Abierce.jpg|thumb|upright|left|alt=Monochrome photograph portrait of a man in his mid-20s shown from the shoulders up, wearing a dark coat, white collared shirt and dark, thin, bow tie, the man's shoulders squared forward but his head turned somewhat to the right, looking right, with light-colored hair in short, oiled waves on the head, light-colored eyebrows, and a wide, light-colored mustache extending just beyond the corners of the mouth.|Until he criticized her in writing, Coolbrith considered [[Ambrose Bierce]] a good friend.]] 
Once warmly social with her, in the 1880s Ambrose Bierce turned his caustic pen to criticism of Coolbrith's work, and thus lost her as a friend.<ref name=Gale/> In 1883, he wrote that her finely-wrought poem "Our Poets" should have been made a dirge, as the great poets of California were dead. He wrote that the periodical she worked for should be named the ''Warmed-Overland Monthly'' because it delivered nothing new. Regarding her poem "Unattained", Bierce complained of "this dainty writer's tiresome [[wikt:lugubrious|lugubriousness]]."<ref name=Gale/> In response, Coolbrith sided with those who said his incessant needling led local writer David Lesser Lezinsky to suicide.<ref name=Gale/>

{{Quote box
 |title=The Poet
 |quote=&nbsp;He walks with God upon the hills!<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And sees, each morn, the world arise<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;New-bathed in light of paradise.<br/>
&nbsp;He hears the laughter of her rills,<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Her melodies of many voices,<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And greets her while his heart rejoices.<br/>
&nbsp;She to his spirit undefiled,<br/>
&nbsp;Makes answer as a little child;<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Unveiled before his eyes she stands,<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And gives her secret to his hands.
 |source=—Ina Coolbrith<ref name=CurrentOpinion1900/>
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Coolbrith published poems in [[The Century Magazine|''The Century'']] in 1883, 1885, 1886 and 1894.<ref>Library of Congress, American Memory. Cornell University.<br />{{cite journal |last=Coolbrith |first=Ina |journal=The Century |volume=25 |issue=5 |date=March 1883 |title=February |url=http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/moahtml/title/lists/cent_V25I5.html}}<br />{{cite journal |last=Coolbrith |first=Ina |journal=The Century |volume=31 |issue=2 |date=December 1885 |title=The Poet |url=http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/moahtml/title/lists/cent_V31I2.html}}<br />{{cite journal |last=Coolbrith |first=Ina |journal=The Century |volume=31 |issue=4 |date=February 1886 |title=Retrospect |url=http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/moahtml/title/lists/cent_V31I4.html}}<br />{{cite journal |last=Coolbrith |first=Ina |journal=The Century |volume=48 |issue=6 |date=October 1894 |title=The Flight of Song |url=http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/moahtml/title/lists/cent_V48I6.html}}</ref> All four poems were included in Coolbrith's 1895 book, ''Songs from the Golden Gate''—a re-issue of her earlier 1881 collection, with some 40 poems added.<ref name=CurrentOpinion1900/> In New York, Coolbrith was acknowledged by a reviewer in the monthly journal ''Current Opinion'' as "a true, melodious and natural singer. Her work is characterized by great delicacy and refinement of feeling, and comprises dainty love songs, verses of deep religious feeling, stately odes, written for special occasions, and charming bits of description."<ref name=CurrentOpinion1900/>

In September 1892, Coolbrith was given three days' notice to clear her desk, to be replaced as librarian by her nephew Henry Frank Peterson.<ref name=Redman/> A library trustee was quoted as saying "we need a librarian not a poet."<ref name=Redman/> Coolbrith's literary friends were outraged, and published a lengthy opinion piece to that effect in the ''[[San Francisco Examiner]]''.<ref name=Examiner1892/> Peterson's plans for the library were quite successful, however; under his guidance circulation quickly grew from 3,000 to 13,000.<ref name="Redman">{{cite web | url=https://archive.org/details/TheDismissalOfInaCoolbrithRevisited | title=The Dismissal of Ina Coolbrith Revisited | access-date=February 20, 2010 | last=Redman | first=Joe | year=2006}}</ref> Peterson opened the library on Sundays and holidays and increased accessibility to the stacks—he was praised by trustees for his "management improvements".<ref name=Redman/>

In 1893 at the [[World's Congress of Representative Women]], held at the beginning of the [[World's Columbian Exposition]] in [[Chicago]], Coolbrith was described by Ella Sterling Cummins (later Mighels) as "the best known of California writers... who stands peerless at the head."<ref>{{cite book |last=Cummins |first=Ella Sterling |year=1893 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/stream/congressofwomenh00congrich#page/186/mode/1up |title=The Congress of Women |chapter=The Women Writers of California |access-date=February 20, 2010}}</ref> Coolbrith was commissioned to write a poem for the Exposition, and in October 1893 she brought with her to Chicago the poem "Isabella of Spain" to help dedicate [[Harriet Hosmer]]'s sculpture ''Queen Isabella'' which stood before the Pampas Plume Palace within the California Pavilion.<ref>{{cite web |last=Silver |first=Mae |date=March 17, 1994 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080527235337/http://www.shapingsf.org/ezine/womens/1894fair/main.html |url=http://www.shapingsf.org/ezine/womens/1894fair/main.html |title=1894 Midwinter Fair: Women Artists |publisher=Clover Leaf Media |archive-date=May 27, 2008 |access-date=January 26, 2010}}</ref> Listening to Coolbrith were well-known women such as suffragist [[Susan B. Anthony]] and journalist [[Lilian Whiting]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Cook |first=Joel |title=The World's Fair at Chicago |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FqFBAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA12-PA85 |chapter=Reception in Honor of Harriet Hosmer's Statue of Isabella |publisher=Rand, McNally & Co |year=1891–1893}}</ref> During Coolbrith's visit, [[Charlotte Perkins Gilman|Charlotte Perkins Stetson]], her friend from the Pacific Coast Woman's Press Association (the two women served as president and vice-president, respectively), wrote to [[May Wright Sewall]] on her behalf; Stetson observed that Coolbrith could benefit from introductions to Chicago's best writers.<ref>{{cite web |work=The May Wright Sewall Papers |url=http://digitallibrary.imcpl.org/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/mws&CISOPTR=1271&REC=15 |title=Letter from Charlotte Perkins Stetson to May Wright Sewall |last=Stetson |first=Charlotte Perkins |access-date=July 9, 2009}}</ref>

Coolbrith's difficulties in Oakland, followed by her trip to Chicago, unsettled her friends, who did not wish to see her move away and "become an alien" to California.<ref name=Stedman>{{cite journal |last=Stedman |first=Edmund Clarence |author-link=Edmund Clarence Stedman |date=December 1893 |title=Books and Authors |journal=The Californian Illustrated Magazine |volume=V |issue=1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I8zPAAAAMAAJ |page=284}}</ref> John Muir had long been in the habit of sending Coolbrith letters, as well as the occasional box of fruit (such as cherries picked from the trees on his [[John Muir National Historic Site|Martinez estate]]). He made such an offering in late 1894, accompanied by a suggestion for a new career which he thought would keep her in the area: she could fill the position of San Francisco's librarian, recently vacated by [[John Vance Cheney]]. Coolbrith sent a response to Muir, thanking him for "the fruit of your land, and the fruit of your brain".<ref name="Muir letter 1894">{{cite web|url=http://content.cdlib.org/dynaxml/data/13030/2p/kt0199r42p/files/kt0199r42p-d3e53658.jpg |title=Letter from Ina Coolbrith to John Muir, November 19, 1894. |last=Coolbrith |first=Ina |work=Collection of letters to John Muir |publisher=Online Archive of California |access-date=February 22, 2010}}</ref> After signing the letter "your old-time friend", she added a post-script comment: "No, I cannot have Mr. Cheney's place. I am ''disqualified by sex''."<ref name="Muir letter 1894"/> At that time, San Francisco required that their librarian be a man.

In 1894, Coolbrith honored poet [[Celia Thaxter]] with a memorial poem entitled "The Singer of the Sea". Thaxter had been to the ''[[Atlantic Monthly]]'' what Coolbrith was to the ''Overland Monthly'': its "lady poet" who submitted verse containing "local color".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Patterson |first1=Daniel |first2=Roger |last2=Thompson |first3=J. Scott |last3=Bryson |year=2008 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eahYM-4DT0kC |title=Early American nature writers |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |page=328 |isbn=978-0-313-34680-4}}</ref>

{{Quote box
 |title=The Sea-Shell
 |quote=&nbsp;"And love will stay, a summer's day!"<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A long wave rippled up the strand,<br/>
&nbsp;She flashed a white hand through the spray<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And plucked a sea-shell from the sand;<br/>
&nbsp;And laughed—"O doubting heart, have peace!<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When faith of mine shall fail to thee<br/>
&nbsp;This fond, remembering shell will cease<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To sing its love, the sea."<br/><br/>
&nbsp;Ah, well! sweet summer's past and gone,—<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And love, perchance, shuns wintry weather,—<br/>
&nbsp;And so the pretty dears are flown<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On lightsome, careless wings together.<br/>
&nbsp;I smile: this little pearly-lined,<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Pink-veined shell she gave to me,<br/>
&nbsp;With foolish, faithful lips to find<br/>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Still sing its love, the sea.
 |source=—Ina Coolbrith<ref name=SongsGoldenGate>{{cite book |title=Songs from the Golden Gate |last=Coolbrith |first=Ina |page=52 |year=1895 |publisher=Houghton, Mifflin and Company |location=Boston and New York |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YYiwAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA52}}</ref>
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A second poetry collection, ''Songs from the Golden Gate'', was published in 1895. It contained "The Mariposa Lily", a description of California's natural beauty, and "The Captive of the White City", which detailed the cruel mistreatment of [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native American]]s in the late 19th century.<ref name=NewAnthology/> In addition, the collection included "The Sea-Shell" and "Sailed", two poems in which Coolbrith described a woman's love with deep sympathy and unusually vivid physical imagery, in a way that presaged the later [[Imagism|Imagist school]] of [[Ezra Pound]] and [[Robert Frost]].<ref name=NewAnthology/> The book included four [[monochrome]] reproductions of paintings by [[William Keith (artist)|William Keith]] that he had devised as visual representations of the poetry. It was well received in London, where editor [[Albert Kinross]] of ''The Outlook'' papered the walls of the [[London Underground]] with posters announcing "his great discovery".<ref name=Mighels>{{cite book|last=Mighels |first=Ella Sterling |title=Literary California: Poetry, Prose and Portraits |publisher=Harr Wagner Publishing |location=San Francisco |year=1918 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/literarycaliforn00migh/page/19 19], 27 |url=https://archive.org/details/literarycaliforn00migh}}</ref>

Connections among Coolbrith's circle of friends resulted in a librarian job at San Francisco's Mercantile Library Association in 1898, and she moved back to Russian Hill in San Francisco. In January 1899, artist William Keith and poet [[Charles Keeler]] obtained for her a part-time position as librarian of the Bohemian Club, of which Keith and Keeler were members. Her first assignment was to edit ''Songs from Bohemia'', a book of poems by [[Daniel O'Connell (journalist)|Daniel O'Connell]], Bohemian Club co-founder and journalist, following his death.<ref>{{cite book |first=Daniel |last=O'Connell |author-link=Daniel O'Connell (journalist) |year=1900 |url=https://archive.org/details/songsfrombohemia00connrich |title=Songs from Bohemia |publisher=A. M. Robertson}}</ref> Her salary was $50 each month,<ref name=Wood1958/> less than she had been earning in Oakland, but her duties were light enough that she was able to devote a greater proportion of her time to writing, and she signed on as sometime staff of [[Charles Fletcher Lummis]]'s ''[[The Land of Sunshine]]'' magazine.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Lummis |first=Charles F. |author-link=Charles Fletcher Lummis |date=December 1899 – May 1900 |magazine=[[The Land of Sunshine]] |volume=XII |title=Title page |url=https://archive.org/stream/outwestland12archrich#page/n10/mode/1up}}</ref> As a personal project, she began to work on a history of California literature.