As rice showers down, the happy couple runs to a car donning cans and ribbons along with the words “Just Married” sprawled across the back window. Smiling ear to ear, the groom disappears into the cab followed closely by the bride pulling her long white skirts around her.
This classic scene is what many of us picture when we think of a wedding. The white wedding dress is probably the most significant part of the scene but has this always been the case? White wedding gowns in a variety of materials and styles are held in countless museum collections across the globe including Westport Museum. But these ideals of bridal wear, along with the social definition of marriage, have been constantly changing throughout time.
The Iconic White Gown
White can symbolize virtue, purity and innocence in Western countries such as the United States in the 21st century, but in the past the color white specifically symbolized one thing: wealth.
Until synthetic dyes and electric washing machines became widely available in the 20th century, keeping clothing clean was a laborious task. Fine white textiles, especially with fragile lace, silk, and satin used only for one occasion would have been unfeasible for most. To marry, women of middle and lower classes would wear their “best dress,” usually in a shade of brown. Colors such as grey or light purple could be multifunctional as both wedding and funeral gowns.
White as the ideal wedding gown color spread in the 1840s with the publication of Godey’s Ladies Book. Although white was a wedding dress color among royals and the wealthy prior, Queen Victoria’s white wedding gown worn in 1840, became the ideal because of widely distributed media coverage of the nuptials of the young British Queen. Today Victoria is still credited with the “creation” of the white wedding dress.
Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom wedPrice Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha onFebruary 10th of 1840. Her white gown wasmade with materials manufactured in Britainto bolster the country’s silk and lace trades.(The Royal Collection Trust)
Changing Definitions
Just as the use and symbolism of white in weddings has evolved so has the social understanding of a marriage contract. Marriage as a legal agreement has existed for millennia, usually as an agreement between the father of the bride and the groom—with the father literally handing off his daughter to her husband. These marriage contracts, and their subsequent wedding ceremonies, were legally a transfer of assets—the woman—from one man to another.
In Westport in the 18th century a White woman could not own property, make contracts, or vote—women of color and immigrant women held even fewer legal protections. Legal contracts such as marriage did little to safeguard women through the 19th and 20th centuries; Women entering a marriage contract were free to do so under their own legal power in the mid-20th century. Throughout history “concubine marriage” allowed couples to engage in intimate relations and co-habitation when differences of religion or race did not allow for legal matrimony. Concubine marriages were formed by contract, meant to financially protect women, and sometimes her children, in the event of separation.
Opening Reception
Visitors explored several examples of wedding gowns—both white and the less traditional—in the Museum’s exhibition opening on March 10, 2023. Not only did our community get to admire these gowns in detail but also discovered how these iconic dresses relate to wealth, class, gender, and women’s rights.
Visitors enjoy the interactivity of the exhibit as well asthe gowns themselves.
Our textile collection contains over 1200 individual pieces; these gowns are fine examples but represent such a small part of our holdings. These gowns not only exemplify the changing silhouettes of bridal fashion but also the changing nature of women, and those presenting as female, in our society.”
– Nicole Carpenter, Programs and Collections Director
Many enjoyed creating their own wedding dress through the exhibit’s interactive magnet wall, highlighting wedding fashions from around the globe and how individualism is encouraged in multicultural ceremonies today. Explore our exhibit yourself through November 11, 2023.
With its turquoise waters and sunny skies, today the Caribbean is thought of primarily as a vacation destination. The Caribbean is integral to the idea of American wealth and almost always has been—not just as a leisure spot for those of means but in more nefarious ways as well.
A crucial leg of the Atlantic Slave Trade, also called the Triangular Trade, it was sugar colonies in the Caribbean that first brought captive Africans to the Western hemisphere. They harvested and processed sugar cane into white gold in brutal conditions.
Man scraping chocolate, c. 1680-1780, Unknown Artist Spanish, Photo by JR P
The first Caribbean sugar plantations began in Barbados in the 1640s. This highly profitable and inhuman farming system became the prototype for the plantations elsewhere in the West Indies and in the American South. By the end of the 17th century, trade between European-Caribbean and European-North American colonies was brisk, with goods moving back and forth and across the seas to Europe and Africa, the latter in trade for human beings to keep the system going.
In addition to sugar, Caribbean plantations produced spices like nutmeg, cinnamon and pepper transplanted from the Eastern hemisphere. Native foods like pineapple, allspice and cocoa became precious commodities arriving to ports like Charleston, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston destined for the homes of the wealthy.
Cacao tree
Cocoa became a must-have beverage at breakfast. Martha Washington was a fan while her husband, George, preferred a light tisane made from cocoa shells. In the most affluent homes, like Stratford Hall, the home of the Lees of Virginia, enslaved cooks ground chocolate using the same methods of the indigenous people of central America where Cacao originated. This stone called a matate was wide, and slightly cupped, resting on short legs and was heated. The cocoa beans were ground with a heavy stone that resembled a squat rolling pin.
I would take the liberty of requesting you’ll be so good as to procure and send me 2 or 3 bushels of the Chocolate Shells such as we frequently drink Chocolate of at Mt. Vernon, as my Wife thinks it agreed with her better than any other Breakfast.
– George Washington, 1794
La Prima Colazione (The Early Breakfast), 1754, Jean-Étienne Liotard, National Museum in Warsaw
By the early 1700s cocoa beans were being shipped to North American cities to be processed with spices into blocks for drinking chocolate and other uses. It may be surprising, for example, but chocolate cream pie, or chocolate tart was a common dessert in the 18th century.
The chocolate of this era was far different from what we know today—it was a grittier product and usually flavored with spices like nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice in a recipe like traditional Central American and Mexican preparations. The smooth, creamy chocolate we know today was not available until later in the 19th century when machinery was invented to grind the pure cocoa paste more finely and add back cocoa butter and sugar during the refining process.
Chocolate Pot, 1879, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2017.156a
Despite not being the melt-in-your-mouth product, we know today, chocolate was trendy enough in the colonial period to warrant its own sense of accoutrements including chocolate preparing pots, serving pots and drinking services. These remained popular into the later 19th century. Some examples of finer cocoa pots included swizzle sticks to reagitate the chocolate that naturally sunk to the bottom of the vessel before serving.
Chocolate Tart recipes are quite common in cookbooks of the period such as Englishwoman Hannah Glasse’s 1747 book The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. Modern readers might be surprised that Glasse’s recipe (and most others of the time) calls for rice flour which is used as a thickening agent. Rice and rice flour were commonly used since rice came to England and later America, via the robust British trade with the East and West Indies. Later, rice was grown in the southern American colonies as well. This recipe we share below uses cornstarch as a more effective thickener, however you can harken back to yore and substitute rice flour instead.
Traditionally this tart would have been served with a sugar crust on top like a crème brulee but we prefer to serve it with Chantilly cream (sweetened whip cream).
Chocolate Tart Recipe
Makes 1, nine-inch pie
Ingredients
1 tablespoon cornstarch or rice flour
¼ cup sugar (or to taste)
4 large egg yolks
2 cups heavy cream
1 tablespoon whole milk
6 ounces semisweet chocolate chunks or chips
Pinch of salt
1 9-inch pie shell, frozen or use our recipe here
Directions
In a medium bowl, mix cornstarch or rice flour, sugar and egg yolks and set aside.
Mix the cream and chocolate in a medium saucepan over medium heat and bring it to a boil, stirring constantly until the chocolate melts. Do not allow the mixture to boil.
Add the milk and pinch of salt. Stir well.
Using a ladle, pour 1/2 cup of the chocolate mixture in a very thin stream into the egg mixture, whisking vigorously the whole time. You may also do this in the bowl of a stand mixer.
Add the egg and cream mixture back to the pot with the remaining chocolate cream mixture and whisk well. Heat over medium heat, whisking well until thickened, about 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool completely.
Preheat the oven to 350F. If using homemade pie crust, line a 9-inch pie plate with rolled out crust. Pour the cooled chocolate mixture into the pie crust and bake until firm—about 40 to 45 minutes.
Remove from oven and cool completely. Wrap in plastic and cool at least 8 hours but preferably overnight. Serve with Chantilly Cream.
In early colonized America, New Year’s Day was celebrated on March 25th, following the Julian calendar used in Europe since antiquity. It was not until 1752 when the beginning of year was switched to the Gregorian calendar (losing eleven days in the process) that the first of the year became January 1st. In other cultures, the New Year varies in its beginning, from the Spring equinox in the Zoroastrian tradition, to early winter in the Chinese lunar calendar to the Fall in Judaism.
As in other cultures, certain traditions were followed on New Year’s Day in colonial America—many of which placed the day above Christmas as a festive day. At the time Christmas was often observed, particularly in Puritan regions like Connecticut, as a solemn religious holiday so it was New Year’s Day that was a day for visiting and enjoying treats a practice first observed by those of Dutch descent in the New York Colony.
Nieuwjaarskoeken, a thin, crispy cinnamon flavored cookie imprinted with a design imprinted on both sides was eaten topped with whipped cream. Spiced wine was often shared among young women in a traditional called “wassailing.”
Sauerkraut was a common food for German Americans, while Southerners ate Hoppin’ John a dish of black-eyed peas flavored with salted pork or bacon and served with rice and mixed greens—featuring ingredients that came to North America with enslaved Africans and adopted universally.
Plate of Hoppin’ John
Today Americans in the South still eat Hoppin’ John on New Year’s Day for luck—a practice also followed by people in the Caribbean in various culinary iterations.
For the enslaved, New Year’s Day, was also called “Hiring Day” or “Heartbreak Day” because it was when debts of the previous year were settled among the White community. Enslavers would sell or hire out their human chattel to pay these debts, removing enslaved people from their community and family groups.
In 1862, New Year’s Day took on a different meaning with the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation declaring the end of enslavement in America on January 1st, 1863. On December 31st, 1862, the enslaved stayed up late through the night, waiting for sunrise and news of freedom. Today the day is celebrated as “Watch Night” in many Black communities.
Illustration of a slave staying up for Watch Night
Hoppin’ John Recipe
For the Beans
½ pound of bacon or ½ pound of pancetta diced into small pieces. Note: Bacon may be omitted. If omitting, use 1 tablespoon vegetable oil in its place
½ onion, minced
1 celery stalk, white part trimmed, and minced
½ green bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and minced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup dried black-eyed peas, soaked overnight in 3 cups of water or 1 can of black-eyed peas, rinsed
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 springs fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 bay leaf
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon of coarse salt or more to taste
3 cups vegetable or chicken stock
For the Greens
¼ pound of bacon or ½ pound of pancetta diced into small pieces or ¼ pound turkey bacon
½ onion, minced
1 garlic clove minced
6 cups of washed and trimmed greens of your choice: collard, turnip, kale, mustard or escarole
½ teaspoon salt or more to taste
2 cups chicken or vegetable broth or water
Cooked rice to serve.
Make the Hoppin’ John
Heat a large saucepan over medium heat and add the bacon. Cook until crispy and the fat is rendered. If omitting bacon, or if using, turkey bacon use 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil.
Once fat is rendered from the bacon, add the onion, celery and bell pepper. Cook until softened, about 5 to 6 minutes.
Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more.
Stir in the black-eyed peas and cayenne.
Add the thyme, bay leave, salt and pepper, and stock. Simmer, uncovered, 1 to 1 ½ hours for dried peas and 30 minutes for canned.
Make the Greens
Heat a large saucepan over medium heat and add the bacon. Cook until crispy and the fat is rendered. If omitting bacon, or if using, turkey bacon use 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil.
Add onion and cook until softened, about 5 to 6 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute more.
Stir in the greens and stir well. Cook until the greens are just wilted, about 3 to 4 minutes. Stir in the salt
Add the vegetable or chicken stock and stir well. Simmer on low for 30 to 40 minutes, uncovered.
Ladle beans over cooked rice in a bowl. Add greens on the side of the rice.
The “House on The Pond” is recognizable to many Westporters but from about 1919 to 1940, the lady who lived there – Lillian Wald – was even more famous still. A nurse and humanitarian most noted for her work among young people and with immigrants in New York City’s Lower East Side, Wald was a noted pioneer of American public health.
Born 10 March 1867 in Cincinnati, Ohio to German-Jewish parents Miss Lillian D. Wald, got her first taste of nursing when she was eighteen years old assisting the nurse her elder sister Julia had hired after the birth of her first child. Lillian’s interactions with the independently helpful woman sparked in Lillian a passion that would last a lifetime. Lillian resolved to become educated as a nurse and was accepted to the New York Hospital School of Nursing in 1889. After her graduation in 1891 she spent a brief time working in the New York Juvenile Asylum on West 176th Street in Manhattan. After seeing deplorable conditions and suffering exceedingly ill treatment of patients by medical staff, she determined a medical degree would gain her the respect and abilities to effect change for the youth of the city. In 1892 she enrolled at the Women’s Medical College (WMC) in New York City.
While enrolled at the WMC, Lillian volunteered to teach a home-nursing course to immigrant women from the Lower East Side. One morning, the daughter of one of her students came to fetch Miss Wald to assist her mother. The child rushed her through a series of side streets and alleyways until reaching a tenement on Ludlow Street. Then Lillian was led across a court, past open toilets to a rear building. There, the family of seven and two boarders were living in two rooms and the sick mother was lying on a dirty bed, suffering from a two-day old hemorrhage. The sight of this woman’s plight and the shock of seeing how many humans lived in similar conditions were the catalysts to change Lillian Wald’s future life. After this experience, Lillian found that she could be useful without a medical degree and decided to leave WMC.
With the help of Mary Brewster, a friend from nursing school, she acquired an apartment in a Jefferson Street tenement. The two began going about the neighborhood to help with the sick regardless of their religion or their ability to pay.
Lillian Wald with former UK Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, his daughter Ishbel and Lillian’s dog, Ramsay at her home on Round Pond Rd, Westport, CT, 1929; WMHC Collections
Soon, however, Miss Wald and Miss Brewster found that they had more work ahead of them than just the two ladies could handle, and so they increased their number to four and in 1895 moved to a house at 265 Henry Street which was donated by Jacob Schiff and would eventually become the Henry Street Settlement and Visiting Nurse Service.
Twenty years after Miss Wald initially arrived on the East Side, the Henry Street Settlement housed two kindergartens, carpenter shops, dancing schools, gymnasiums, debating classes and literary societies, as well as having three summer homes in the country for patrons to visit, a convalescent home, a library and study, and a place set aside for a sewing school. They offered lectures on subjects which ranged from government to sex hygiene, and there were clubs for boys and girls.
Over the years, Miss Wald became involved with numerous humanitarian efforts. She worked with the Board of Health to post nurses in schools and by 1914 had succeeded in having 374 school nurses city wide. Also, she and others formed the National Child Labor Committee in 1903. In 1905 Lillian met with President Theodore Roosevelt and suggested the idea of creating the Federal Children’s Bureau which would help educate and protect children in the workforce. The Bureau was eventually formed, but not until 1912 by President Taft.
Lillian also helped to establish the Nurses Emergency Council during the influenza Epidemic when it struck in the fall of 1918, at a conference of nurses called by the Red Cross Atlantic Division. Perhaps one of her most well-known contributions to society was her suggestion to Dr. Lee Frankel of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company to send trained nurses to the family of every policy holder where insurance representatives had reported illness. This visiting nurse service was approved by the Met Life board and speedily implemented not only in New York City, but to all policy holders throughout the United States and Canada.
Toward the end of WWI, Lillian rented a home for her ill mother to convalesce in during the summers on a small pond near the Saugatuck River in Westport. After her mother’s death in 1923, and after her own health began to decline in 1925, Lillian continued to summer at “her house on the pond” which she then purchased. Lillian retired from active work at the Settlement in 1933 and relinquished the presidency in 1937. However, her retirement was not spent quietly as she entertained many of her famous friends at her Compo home. Chief among them were Jane Addams, Albert Einstein, Former Mayor of New York City Fiorello LaGuardia (a fellow Compo resident), Governor and Mrs. Herbert Lehman, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald with his daughter Ishbel, and Eleanor Roosevelt.
For her 70th birthday in 1937 and the 20th anniversary of her residence in Westport, a book of words, signatures and illustrations was compiled by the members of the community. 1200 of Westport’s men, women, and children signed the book or provided illustrations. Each contributed $0.25 to make up a check for the Henry Street Settlements.
Lillian Wald with Jane Addams in Washington, D.C., 1916; Library of Congress Photo Collection
This unique book was cherished by Miss Wald and its pages were preserved at her request. Local artists who contributed to this book were James Daugherty, Charles Prendergast, Robert Lambdin, George Wright, Alice Harvey, Kerr Eby, Karl Anderson, Beulah Allen Northrup and Joe King. This book is now on display at the Henry Street Settlement and a facsimile copy was made and bound which can be viewed at the Westport Library.
Miss Wald remained active while in Westport, willing to help with local relief programs, and she maintained a phone on her bedside table so that she could be in constant contact with welfare and relief organizations. And in her last months, although she was quite ill, she instructed workmen to install flood lights around the pond so that the children who were apt to skate there in the evenings would be able to see.
Lillian Wald passed away September 2, 1940. Westport mourned her passing and many of her friends and neighbors pushed and eventually succeeded in her election to the Hall of Fame of Great Americans at New York University in 1970.
You can learn more about Lillian’s life and work by reading her books, The House on Henry Street and Windows on Henry Street or by visiting the Henry Street Settlement in New York City or by viewing their online exhibit at TheHouseOnHenryStreet.org.
A whole host of cultural illuminati have lived or worked in Westport for a time. Famously, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald wrote, and Desi loved Lucy. More recently, Lynsey Addario and Justin Paul graduated from Staples High School and went on to do amazing things. We can lay claim to talented residents in myriad fields.
When the town graciously selected me as its first Poet Laureate, a question arose about which famous poetic forebears (I am decidedly not famous) might have lived or written in Westport. A subsequent search yielded surprisingly little. A rumour that I plan to research had it that Robert Frost may have alit here for a while, but that is as yet as unconfirmed as a Yeti sighting.
Never mind, I thought. What about everyday poets and poetry? Part of my mission as inaugural Poet Laureate of our hamlet is to make poetry less mysterious and inaccessible, and to create community through what we can all share through words. So I decided to dig a bit into Westport’s more quotidian poetic life. It turns out that we have a rich and quirky history of verse, created by many little-known, but homegrown, bards.
My research has been neither exhaustive nor scientific, but I have found a great deal of poetry in some unexpected places. The Westport Museum for History and Culture and the Westport Library both yielded quite a few surprising finds:
Autograph Books
Back in the day, graduating seniors would bring small autograph books to school prior to the end of the term, and get friends to sign them. We often do this now with big, heavy yearbooks, but these fragile pages in the Westport Museum’s archives hold sentimental and endearing gems within their bindings.
In 1925, Marie Durner wrote: “When rocks & hills divide us/And you no more I see/Just think of the name ‘Midgie’/A school pal dear to thee”. F.W. Dunn philosophized: “When everything seems rotten/And the outlooks [sic] very bad/Just think of SHS/And then you’ll have to be glad”. And ‘Dint’ Maurer quipped: “Merrily we trot along/O’er the future ‘o path/But take heed! Don’t fall/For every fall means a step/Nearer to your grave.”
Image Courtesy Westport Museum Collections
Christmas Cards
For some neither the brief “happy holidays” nor the more voluminous ‘our family’s year in words’ would do. When some Westporters sent holiday greetings, they did it in verse. In 1946 Adelaide and Jack Baker wrote: “Far-flung adventures? None this year/Those who are building cannot roam/Shingles and brick and plumbers are/Elusive, so we stayed at home/And, as we made new homes for others/Found that our own was still more dear”. The Sanford Evans family sent this Christmas greeting in 1925: “Our chimney pots/Are good and big – and our/Yule-logs burn with cheer/For all that/We’re expecting – Are they/Big enough this year?” And in 1933 The Steinkraus Family put out Ye Westport Primer, with a seasonal abecedarius printed in red and green, beginning with “A is for artists you see all around;/This is the town where they do abound/ B is for the beach, a fine place to swim;/We loll on the sand to get vigor and vim”, and ending with “Z’s for the zassafrass in our backyard,/(You’ve got to admit that Z’s very hard.)” Christmas illustrations, including Santa in his reindeer-pulled sled flying across a red full moon, abound.
Town Clerk
In the 1867-1886 volume “Births Marriages Deaths for Westport, a creative Town Clerk included some lovely verse in the blank spaces of the ledger where he recorded the quotidian events that made up our townsfolk’s lives. He harkens back to the eighteenth-century poet George Crabbe who had, a century earlier, also recorded the lives of his fellow villagers in rural England, and shares his words, perhaps to reflect his own emotions, on several pages of his recordings. One, from 1834 is an excerpt from Crabbe’s The Parish Register and, reads: “To Muse, I ask, before my view to bring/The humble actions of the swains I sing/How pass’d the youthful, how the old their days;/Who sank in sloth, and who aspired to praise/Their tempers, manners, morals, customs, arts/What parts they had, and how they employed their parts/By what elated, sooth’d, seduc’d, depressed/Full well I know the records give the rest.”
Gravestones
Poetry comes to us from beyond, or more precisely from, the grave in some cases. While most of the headstones in the numerous cemeteries around town provide the most basic information – names and dates – some loved ones memorialized those they lost with verse. While these poems may not have been penned by locals, they were placed by locals, where they have served to sprinkle lasting poetry around town. In Willowbrook cemetery, in a quiet corner overlooking Main Street, a stone book lies atop a large column memorial for Julia Snowdon Hotchkiss. Its open pages reveal an anonymous quote often referred to by revered rabbis: There is no death/What we call death/Is but surcease/From strife/They do not die/Whom we call dead/They go from life/To life. Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s words from The Little Prince grace Marla Seigel’s pink granite marker: “In one of the stars I shall be living/In one of them I shall be laughing/And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing/When you look at the sky at night.” Hilaire A. Roth rests beneath Robert Burns’ verse from his poem A Red, Red Rose: “So fair you were, my bonnie lass/So deep in love was I/And I will love thee still my dear/Till all the seas go dry.” It surprised me to find so much poetry nestled amongst the much older and less crowded together, albeit virtually unreadable, headstones in the Greens Farms lower cemetery. Time, wind, water, and moss have erased or obscured much of the script, but some remains clear. For instance, Dorothy Z. Thompson’s family laid her to rest beneath the first lines from Walt Whitman’s A Clear Midnight: “This is thy hour O soul/To fly free among the stars/And ponder the themes/Thou lovest best.” Ghosts of poetic lines adorn, too, the headstones of Betsey Smith and Eliza Whitehead.
Local Authors
If it’s too chilly or muddy or buggy to tramp through local graveyards in search of bards’ words, head to the library and make your way downstairs to the poetry section where ‘local author’ stickers affixed to certain books’ bindings will lead you to homegrown balladry. Westporter Steven Herz composes paens to a painful time in his Marked: Poems of the Holocaust, and our town features prominently in Jonathan Towers’ Westport Poems. And although Regan Good may now reside in Brooklyn, her second collection of poetry, The Needle, harkens back largely to her childhood here in Westport. In the Westport Museum for History and Culture you will find a poem by Robert B. Northrop’s grandfather Robert DeWitt Allen dated March 30, 1900, describing a treacherous schooner trip up the Saugatuck. Captain Sam Allen piloted the Henry Remsen with a steady hand in this excerpt:
With all aboard and under way,/White water in her scuppers lay./Then stood her in around the bluff./He got her in near Eno’s dock,/But could not get by Judy’s rock./That night the wind came in nor’west,/But Sam just raved and could not rest.
— Robert DeWitt Allen
Sara Krasne, the Museum’s Archivist, reports that “Judy’s Rock probably refers to Judy’s Point which was originally called Judah’s Point after David Judah (the first Jewish person to live in Westport).”
Local Newspapers
Not far from the poetry section you will find several immense, heavy black leather-bound tomes, in no particular order, stacked on the bottom of one of the metal shelves. Open these to travel back in time to the mid-century past and thumb through the yellowing and fragile pages of Westport’s local newspapers. Features like “Pupil Patter”, “Poems by Pat”, and most prolifically, “Town Pump”, feature original verse by poetic locals.
You will also find news stories about local elementary school poetry competitions, observations of poetry month, and even a poetic letter to the editor of the Westport Town Crier and Herald (July 5, 1957).
Poetry Box
One local resident in particular does her part to promote Everyday Poetry every day. Donna Ryzinski, who holds an MFA from Goddard College in Vermont, has for the last decade participated in a poetry reading group. Every other week these poetically inclined women congregate and recite a preselected poet’s verse. Each member, the oldest of whom is ninety-five, selects the featured poet and hosts the gathering on a rotating basis. But Ryzinski has taken this love of verse one step – or about three to be exact – further. Roughly that many paces off Sturges Highway in front of her home stands a small wooden box atop a matching post. Her husband fashioned this “best Christmas gift ever” from the door of an Upper West Side brownstone door. About the size of a large toaster oven, a front door of glass faces the street. Since 2015, she has placed a poem inside for all passers-by to stop and read. She prints off and changes the contents roughly once a week, and chooses from a wide variety of poets, as does her poetry reading group. The day I visited it featured a poem by local, well known poet Sophie Cabot Black. Ryzinski says that the poetry box brings her as much joy as she hopes it brings her visitors. She has witnessed two women scale a steep snowbank to access the verse within. One person approached with the reverence of a walking meditation and stood in tadasana (mountain pose) before accessing the words. A woman left tulips and a note: “Thank you for making my walks that much better”. And a gentleman stood in the driveway shouting, “I love this! Never stop doing this!”
It seems that while no wildly famous poets have made Westport their permanent home, many of their words have alighted here through our many poetry-loving residents. Moreover, many of them have created their own “words, words, words” (Hamlet, II.ii) of their own which, while may not have reached the audience of a Dickenson or Whitman, nonetheless imbue our little hamlet with the spirit of poetry.
In my role as Westport’s inaugural Poet Laureate I hope to tease out, encourage, and spread poetry around, knowing that it creates connection and community.
Special thanks to Sara Krasne for her assistance in researching this article.
