“Imagination haloes effective writing, illumines and beautifies those phrases that a too-strong searchlight might mar. Images should be summoned, not stunned by excessive detail. Effective description inks the image, lifts the silhouette against the flame. Effective description is the wizard-wing, inducing vivid flight. Effective description is the lightning streak, followed by thunders of thought.” (Betty Earl, 1923)

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—: The Shell & The Tear :—

I shaped a poem from a shell;
Its fragile curves I loved full well.

I shaped another from a tear—
A little human sorrow-sphere.

The first was formed with matchless grace;
Its thin perfection shone like lace.

The second, less divinely wrought,
Held only one shy, wistful thought.

I sent them forth, believing well
The tear would come; would stay, the shell.

But lo, life knew another way!
The shell came back; the tear did stay.

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—: Spirit :—

A dead leaf
Summons grief;

A dead tree
Bends the knee;

A dead man,
Wrecks god’s plan.

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—: Then Night :—

Like snowy sheep that stray
Beyond the bars,

One by one, the waifs of cloud
Slipped far away

Until the great half-heaven lay
Golden with its stars.

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Betty Earl (p. 1917-1923, etc.) was a poet and short-story writer from Nevada, Missouri. Little is known of her life, apart from a few poems published in the late-1910s and early-1920s in magazines like American Poetry and Tempo, and was also included in the anthology The Poet’s Pack, edited by John G. Neihardt.

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