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Fall 1987/Winter 1987-88

World Order

Diversity: A Way to Unity

Editorial

Robert Hayden: A Critical Look

at the Criticism

Peter E. Murphy

A Portfolio of Poems

Introduced and Selected by

Herbert Woodward Martin

Canada’s Earliest Bahá’í History

Will. C. van den Hoonaard

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World Order

VOLUME 22, NUMBERS 1 & 2 • PUBLISHED QUARTERLY

WORLD ORDER IS INTENDED TO STIMULATE, INSPIRE, AND SERVE THINKING PEOPLE IN
THEIR SEARCH TO FIND RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND CONTEMPORARY
RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS AND PHILOSOPHY

Editorial Board:

FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

BETTY J. FISHER

HOWARD GAREY

JAMES D. STOKES

Consultant in Poetry:

HERBERT WOODWARD MARTIN

Subscriber Service:

CANDACE MOORE HILL

WORLD ORDER is published quarterly by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, IL 60091. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to WORLD ORDER, 536 Sheridan Road, Wilmette, IL 60091. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, or of the Editorial Board. Manuscripts can be typewritten or computer generated. They should be double spaced throughout, with the footnotes at the end. The contributor should send three copies —an original and two legible copies—and should keep a copy. Return postage should be included. Send manuscripts and other editorial correspondence to WORLD ORDER, 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, IL 60091.

Subscription rates: U.S.A., Canada, Mexico, 1 year, $10.00; 2 years, $18.00; single copies, $3.00. All other countries, 1 year, $15.00; 2 years, $28.00; single copies, $3.00. Airmail, 1 year, $20.00; 2 years, $38.00.

WORLD ORDER is protected through trademark registration in the U.S. Patent Office.

Copyright © 1990, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.
ISSN 0043-8804

IN THIS ISSUE

2   Diversity: A Way to Unity

Editorial

4   Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor

7   Robert Hayden: A Critical Look at the Criticism

by Peter E. Murphy

17   A Portfolio of Poems

Introduced and Selected

by Herbert Woodward Martin

39   Canada’s Earliest Bahá’í History

by Will. C. van den Hoonaard

50   Authors & Artists

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Diversity: A Way to Unity

HAVE YOU ever noticed that in reading books, watching films, listening to music, looking at the products of graphic artists, the more specific the work of art is, the more you seem, without having begun with that intention, to learn about the human condition?

The descent to the particular may concern time (as when one contemplates the artistic products or other artifacts of the Middle Ages, for example). Or it may be the differences and the disagreements between generations that inform a novel. Or perhaps it is ethnicity in its condition as a minority in an alien place (as for example the Chicano in Los Angeles), or in a culture embodying a place, race, language, and religious environment quite different from our own (as found in certain Japanese films) that commands our attention. It may even be more or less profound variations from a social norm (mental illness, homosexuality, obesity) within our own society that we find uncomfortable to contemplate.

In any case the more particular the treatment of such a subject, we come to realize, the deeper is one’s perception of the universal situation of human beings. It is in the light of the greatest differences possible within the parameters of being human that the universal characters of humanity come most clearly into view. Further, you may have noticed that the reading of works in a foreign literature is more deeply felt, that the empathy with the characters and the understanding of the situations are more vivid if these works are read in the original language. In fact, the experience of thinking in a foreign language is another door to the understanding of peoples and thence to the understanding of people.

Is it not possible that the kind of understanding promoted by acquaintance with “other” kinds of people would prevent the excesses of nationalism, racism, religious prejudice that seem to go with the new freedoms that have been declaring themselves while the old totalitarian regimes are crumbling?

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Interchange LETTERS FROM AND TO THE EDITOR

THIS ISSUE is very much about promises— kept and pending. WORLD ORDER has always been committed to including poetry and other of the arts within its pages. Between 1968 and 1980, under the guiding hand of Robert Hayden, our distinguished first poetry editor, a succession of fine poems appeared in the magazine. During that time Hayden also compiled two major portfolios of poems, which appeared respectively in the Spring 1971 and Summer 1975 issues.

As Hayden wrote in his introduction to the first portfolio, “The making of a poem, like all other creative endeavors, is in the Bahá’í view a spiritual act, a form of worship.” Thus in selecting poems he chose them not on the basis of whether they were “secular” or “religious” in theme but whether they were good works of art. He also acknowledged the presence of a variety of schools, modes, and voices—each reflecting the “vitality of contemporary American poetry.” One has only to look through his two portfolios to be amazed at the extent to which they reflect the harmonious balance of these two values— quality and diversity—that guided his selections.

After Hayden’s death in February 1980, another distinguished American poet, William Stafford, served for a time as poetry editor. In the Summer 1983 issue he produced the magazine’s third portfolio, a collection gathered—in the tradition established by Hayden—to reflect a balancing of ideal and artistry.

With the present issue we are pleased to announce that a new poetry editor, Dr. Herbert Woodward Martin, has come on board. His first considerable task (with little time to catch his breath!) was to assemble WORLD ORDER’S fourth portfolio of poetry, which you can read in this issue.

Dr. Martin is himself a poet and a professor of English at the University of Dayton. He has published four books of poetry, a monograph on Paul Laurence Dunbar, and poems in numerous journals and magazines. In a bit of historical irony two of Dr. Martin’s own poems appeared in Hayden’s second WORLD ORDER anthology in our Summer 1975 issue. Thus with his appointment WORLD ORDER reestablishes contact with a poet whose work Hayden admired and renews our own efforts to publish works by poets who, in Hayden’s words, “are committed to some integrative vision of art and life.”

* * *

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READERS will also find two other articles in this issue. The first is an omnibus review by Peter E. Murphy of recent books about Robert Hayden, whose reputation continues to grow.

The second, by Will. C. van den Hoonaard, is a valuable contribution to our understanding of how the Bahá’í Faith was established in Canada and of the activities of the first Canadian Bahá’ís. Both articles, thus, involve historical assessments of great achievements, reflecting the theme of promise and fruition that animates this issue.

To the Editor

FAITH, REASON, AND SOCIETY

On every single point, whether the relativity rather than absoluteness of religious truth, the democracy of belief in a religion without dogma or clergy, or the historicity of reason in Bahá’í thought and praxis, Professor Saeidi [in “Faith, Reason, and Society in Bahá’í Perspective,” Spring/Summer 1987, pp. 9-22] manages to be both true to Bahá’í scripture and relevant to contemporary philosophical and sociological thought (especially the Frankfurt school and post-modernism). I can think of nothing World Order has published since its revival in 1966 that better and more satisfyingly fulfills its mission to “stimulate, inspire, and serve thinking people,” etc.

In regard to the knotty question of the historicity of the Universal Intellect, I think Professor Saeidi should consider the schema of Avicenna (Ibn Síná) as part of the background to Bahá’u’lláh’s Tablet of Wisdom and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Some Answered Questions. Avicenna considered all things either preexistent (qadím) or originated (hádith), and in turn divided each of these categories into two further types, essential (dhátí) and temporal (zamání). Only God is essentially preexistent or entirely uncreated. The primary emanation from God is the Universal Intellect or the Word of God. It is thus originated, but not in time, only in essence. It has always existed, for God was never without the attribute of Mind and Speech. Thus, if Professor Saeidi means by the historicity of the abstract Universal Intellect that it is subject to temporality, I think the Bahá’í texts weigh against this idea. On the other hand, the Universal Intellect emanates its rays upon the human minds of the Manifestations of God, and that emanation or interaction clearly occurs in history. I am not sure it affects his argument, but I would therefore argue for the historicity of the emanations of the Universal Intellect, but for the atemporality of the Universal Intellect as an abstract principle. (I make this argument at greater length in my “The Concept of Manifestation in the Bahá’í Writings,” Bahá’í Studies 9 [1982]: 6-8.)

This minor—some would say abstruse— quibble aside, I find Professor Saeidi’s article a fine, and exciting, starting-point for the development of a serious Bahá’í systematic theology, a task I hope he will address.

JUAN R. I. COLE

Ann Arbor, Michigan

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Robert Hayden: A Critical
Look at the Criticism

BY PETER E. MURPHY

A REVIEW OF RECENT BOOKS ABOUT THE LIFE AND WORK OF ROBERT HAYDEN: FRED M. FETROW’S Robert Hayden (BOSTON: TWAYNE, 1984), VII + 150 PAGES, BIBLIOGRAPHY, CHRONOLOGY, NOTES, INDEX; JOHN HATCHER’S From the Auroral Darkness: The Life and Poetry of Robert Hayden (OXFORD: GEORGE RONALD, 1984), XII + 298 PAGES, APPENDIX, BIBLIOGRAPHY, INDEX, NOTES; PONTHEOLLA T. WILLIAMS’ Robert Hayden: A Critical Analysis of His Poetry (URBANA: U OF ILLINOIS PRESS, 1987), XVII + 180 PAGES, BIBLIOGRAPHY, NOTES, APPENDIX, INDEX

Copyright © 1990 by Peter E. Murphy

WHEN Robert Hayden died in February 1980, only one of his nine books was in print, and his poetry was ignored by all but a small audience of dedicated readers. Now, a decade later, not only is a volume of his most important poems available, but also a volume of his essays and interviews as well as three books that will make his poetry more easily understood and appreciated by readers —both those who are discovering him for the first time and those who have been reading and cherishing his work for years.

In structure and in content, the three books—Fred M. Fetrow’s Robert Hayden, John Hatcher’s From the Auroral Darkness: The Life and Poetry of Robert Hayden, and Pontheolla T. Williams’ Robert Hayden: A Critical Analysis of His Poetry are very similar. Each presents an excellent biography of Hayden and then discusses many of his poems chronologically, tracing Hayden’s poetic development from the early forties through the late seventies, and describing the main themes and transformations of his career.

Robert Hayden was born to Asa and Ruth Sheffey on 4 August 1913, but after his parents separated, he was raised by neighbors William and Sue Hayden. As a child, Robert’s poor eyesight prevented him from participating in sports. Hence he turned inward and became a friend of books and drama, and he began to write and publish poems. He attended Detroit City College (now Wayne State University) but left needing one credit hour to graduate. However, he took graduate courses at the University of Michigan after working for several years as a writer and researcher in the Detroit branch of the WPA Writers Project. At Michigan he won the [Page 8] prestigious Hopwood award for his first collection of poems, Heart-Shape in the Dust; and he met and studied under renowned poet W. H. Auden, who effected a great change in Hayden’s view of poetry. In fact, Auden, who had more influence on the early Hayden than anyone else, caused him to abandon the imitative style he had self-consciously assumed. At this time he also met and married Erma Inez Morris, a concert pianist and teacher, who encouraged and nurtured him until his death. The newly married couple, at odds with her family who were not enthusiastic about their wedding, spent their first summer in New York, where Erma introduced him to one of Hayden’s heroes, poet Countee Cullen, a family friend. Cullen honored Hayden by praising Heart-Shape in the Dust and asking Hayden to read from it “The Eagle,” a poem he especially liked. Erma also introduced Hayden to the Bahá’í Faith, and in 1943 (1942 according to Fetrow), they both became members.

In 1946 the young couple and their four-year-old daughter, Maia, moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where Hayden was to teach English at Fisk University for twenty-three years. These were trying years for the Haydens who, among other things, had to adjust their lives to the dehumanizing Jim Crow laws of the segregated South. For two years Erma left Nashville for New York so that Maia could attend an integrated school. In 1950 Hayden joined them during a year’s leave, but living in New York proved so exhausting and expensive that the family returned to Tennessee.

Hayden accomplished a good deal while teaching a full load of English classes at Fisk, which “wanted an English teacher, not a poet.” He published several more books, including Figure of Time, and began to gain an international reputation before achieving much recognition in his own country. His domestic “discovery” came in 1962 when Dr. Rosey Pool had Hayden’s next book, A Ballad of Remembrance, published with a London publisher, Paul Breman. Pool, who was Dutch, had become interested in poetry written by American blacks when she was a student at the University of Amsterdam. She used Negro spirituals to pray with others when she was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Although Pool is best known for her anthology of American Negro poetry, Beyond the Blues, she was also the first English translator of the famous diary of her former student Anne Frank. Pool, who later became a Bahá’í, encouraged Hayden to submit A Ballad of Remembrance to the competition sponsored by the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal. Among the other poets who competed were Derek Walcott, a native of St. Lucia, and Christopher Okigbo (Okebo, according to Williams) of Nigeria. Pool herself was asked to be one of the judges, as was Langston Hughes, the first prominent poet Hayden had ever met. Hayden won first place and was awarded the Grand Prix de la Poésie.

The remaining years of the sixties were both kind and harsh to Hayden. He published his Selected Poems with October House, a commercial publisher in New York, and was appointed poetry editor of World Order. Because of increasing departmental tension and a feeling that he was not being appreciated at Fisk, Hayden resigned in 1969 to teach as a full professor at the University of Michigan. He also accepted several visiting professorships, including one at the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference at Middlebury College.

In 1975 Hayden was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Poets for “distinguished poetic achievement,” an honor that carried with it a ten thousand dollar award. However, his most prestigious honor was his appointment as the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress for 1976-78, a position [Page 9] equivalent to Britain’s prestigious Poet Laureate. Hayden, who served two terms, was the first black ever appointed. He had been offered the position even earlier but, unfortunately, had been discouraged from taking it at that time because he had just been hired at Michigan.

On 24 February 1980, Hayden was celebrated, in absentia, at a testimonial by the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. This “Tribute to Robert Hayden” included music, dance, drama, and readings of poems, including two dedicated to Hayden by poet Michael S. Harper. The next day, 25 February, Hayden died.

Fetrow, Hatcher, and Williams all tell the story of Robert Hayden’s life thoroughly. Fetrow does so in thirty-eight clearly written pages. Hatcher’s fifty-page account is more anecdotal and is filled with quotations from Hayden and many of the people who influenced his life. Hatcher’s book also has a half dozen photographs of Hayden in various stages of his life. Williams, in thirty-three pages, includes verses from Hayden’s poems in order to highlight the effect of events in his life on his work.

One such series of events that brought Hayden into the depths of despair and controversy occurred at Fisk in 1966. Hayden had always insisted that there was only “good poetry” and “bad poetry” and that poetry should not be judged by any political or racial criteria. Rather than writing from the point of view of a “Negro poet,” Hayden insisted that he was a poet “who happened to be Negro.” Like Countee Cullen before him, he felt that any other point of view would lead to a separate set of standards and that the work of black artists and writers would be valued only as an artifact of a political movement, not as literature. At the First Fisk Black Writers’ Conference, organized in April 1966 by novelist John Oliver Killens, who had been named Writer in Residence, Hayden was attacked for his moderate views and for not using his poetry to further the cause of blacks in America. Influenced by his Bahá’í belief in the oneness of humanity, Hayden refused to support those who urged separation of the races. In his well-known introduction to Kaleidoscope, an anthology of Negro poetry, Hayden argues that to label any Negro writer a “spokesman for his race” places him in a “kind of literary ghetto where the standards applied to other writers are not likely to be applied to him.” Hayden lamented the need for a “Negro Anthology,” but he realized that the only way for many of the writers included in it to be published and read was to be collected in this way.

While both Fetrow’s and Williams’ books describe the controversy, Hatcher’s book includes a generous three-chapter section, “The Minotaurs of Edict,” which traces the history of black poetry in the United States and specifically addresses “The Problem of a ‘Black Aesthetic,’” and “The Birth of the Hayden Stand.” Referring to W. E. B. Du Bois, Alain Locke (who was also a Bahá’í), Countee Cullen, and others, Hatcher carefully shows how Hayden formulated his unpopular position in light both of his poetic mentors and of his firm belief in the Bahá’í teachings. In spite of the fresh honors Hayden received internationally at Senegal and of the increasing acceptance and publication of his poems in literary journals and the commercial press, Hayden suffered. Hatcher’s book, more than Fetrow’s or Williams’, shows in detail the disheartening effect of the dissension on Hayden. Hatcher, through his interpretation of Hayden’s poems from a Bahá’í point of view, helps the reader to understand Hayden’s commitment to the Bahá’í Faith.

OVER HIS forty-year career, Hayden greatly matured in his style, sophistication, and choices of subject matter. His critics concur that his earliest poems, the ones that won him his first awards and publications, contain [Page 10] strong echoes of the poets he had admired, particularly Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Stephen Vincent Benet, and Shakespeare, Shelley, and Keats. Yet they also agree that these early poems foreshadow the tremendous poetic talent Hayden eventually manifested. Fetrow observes that “In his early ‘heritage poems’ Hayden often unknowingly falls or consciously plunges into a similar process or pattern: he imitates his predecessors in subject matter, theme, or even figuration, but alters their perspectives and changes their conclusions.” Williams notes that “While they [the poems in Heart-Shape in the Dust, his first book] are obviously, and often blatantly imitative, they hint at Hayden’s eventual synthesis of his own concerns with the poetic tradition.” Hatcher writes that “Most of the poems in Heart-Shape in the Dust are imitative, though the breadth of Hayden’s sources implies a young poet who was continually experimenting, who was hardly dominated by interest in one poet or group of poets.”

Hayden began to develop his own voice in the forties. Having read Rilke and Yeats, and having been encouraged by Auden, he began to take the imaginative leaps that make his middle and later poems as original, interesting, and important as they are. In A Ballad of Remembrance, revised and reissued as Selected Poems, Hayden combines poems such as “Night, Death, Mississippi,” “Runagate Runagate,” and his well-known sonnet, “Frederick Douglass,” all written about Afro-American subjects, with poems of personal experience like the frequently anthologized “Those Winter Sundays” and “The Whipping,” and poems written out of his experience as a Bahá’í, such as “Dawnbreaker” and “Bahá’u’lláh in the Garden of Ridwan.” Hayden continued to develop such themes, frequently interposing them, up until his death.

The influence of the Bahá’í Faith on Hayden’s poetry has not been widely appreciated and, in fact, has been frequently misunderstood. Gratefully, Fetrow, Hatcher, and Williams acknowledge, in varying degrees and detail, the influence of Hayden’s faith on his art. In a section on “Transcendence” Fetrow writes:

Some poems from his early collection directly announce this perspective by describing life as viewed through it. A few are artistic efforts to capture the constantly changing surfaces of life. Others rather directly express Bahá’í religious views, acknowledging a higher, spiritual reality and presenting a view of life that derives from his faith in the certainty of a divine providential hand in all change, whether large or small, tragedy or triumph.

He suggests that Hayden responded to human suffering by “hoping against hope in his belief in the Bahá’í Faith,” and that “recalling Bahá’u’lláh’s redemptive suffering reminds Hayden that the promised millennium of human harmony would be preceded by dark eras of chaotic evil and mass suffering.” Fetrow concludes this section by writing that Hayden’s faith allowed him “a transcendence, a ‘vision’ with which to counter the all too recurrent nightmares.”

Williams also reports the religious commitment in Hayden’s poems but does not analyze too deeply the effect it had on Hayden. Her strongest assertion on the subject is that Angle of Ascent

is concerned not only with Hayden’s attitude toward man and society, but also, we noted, with his attitude toward God. The book reveals his deepening attraction to the Bahá’í religion. . . . To opt for Baháism [Page 11] was not only to reject a social hierarchy, an economic system, and a political government, but to revolt against a moral order that was content to treat the black man, the red man, and the yellow man each as but half a man; and it meant to subordinate, if not to spurn, the theology in which the moral order claimed to be based.

In contrast to Fetrow and Williams, Hatcher’s book is full of details and references that explain how Hayden the poet uses the Bahá’í Faith to come to grips with the “dark eras of chaotic evil and mass suffering” to which Fetrow alludes. The chapter entitled “The Birth of the Hayden Stand” shows how Hayden formulated his world view based on the Bahá’í teachings that stress the oneness of humankind. Hatcher shows how previous critics, including Williams in an earlier work, have misunderstood Hayden’s Words in the Mourning Time because

it is necessary to know something about the relationship of Hayden’s perspective as a Bahá’í to these poems in order to understand many of the individual pieces, as well as the thematic integrity of the sequence of the whole. In particular, to recover the central allusions of this volume, one must have some notion of the Bahá’í concept of history as the purposeful education of man on this planet.

Hatcher further comments that “For . . . some other critics, the Bahá’í allusions in this volume are shortcomings. . . .” He then explains how, in the title poem, “Words in the Mourning Time,” Hayden’s references to the assassinations, the violence at home and in Vietnam, the starvation in Biafra, and the other calamities taking place in the sixties, are seen and spoken by a persona who is not just any voice, but a “Bahá’í voice, immersed in the throes of violent change, intellectually aware of the ultimately propitious direction of history, but feeling, nevertheless, the legitimacy of grief in this time of mankind’s mourning.”

In his ‘Transcendence’ section, Fetrow reports that Hayden was ambivalent about his Bahá’í beliefs, particularly in the sixties when his life was most turbulent. He tells us that Hayden called himself a “‘skeptical believer’”; but rather than exaggerating this, Fetrow acknowledges that Hayden’s “precariously tenacious faith in a higher reality and an ultimate good” enabled him to continue living and writing and improving at both.

Hayden discusses the effect of the Bahá’í Faith on his poetry in an autobiographical essay titled “From The Life: Some Remembrances”:

“I saw very little influence on my work for the first several years, but now I realize it has given me a base, a focus. I am not very pious, certainly not in any sense a goody-goody. Indeed, I still struggle with my faith; it harrows up my soul, as I guess it is supposed to do. And I confess that as an artist I find it extremely difficult to conform to the letter of the law. But I have learned from it that the work of the artist, the scientist, the philosopher, all sincere effort in any discipline has spiritual value and is both a form of service and a form of worship. This thought sustains me when the dark times come, and they come for me all too often, I must admit.”

Fetrow and Williams do, finally, credit Hayden’s Bahá’í identity as having a beneficial effect on his poems. However, rather than its being just another factor, Hatcher shows us that it is a major, perhaps the major, influence on his poetry. A reader interested in understanding this relationship will benefit greatly from Hatcher’s book.

Fetrow, Hatcher, and Williams analyze many of the same poems and their interpretations, although different, are frequently [Page 12] complementary. Nowhere do they disagree more, however, than on “The Diver” from Hayden’s Selected Poems. Hayden had publicly commented that this is a private poem with a personal meaning and that he was motivated to write it by a “‘sense of his own inadequacies.’” He also stated that “The Diver” “‘is actually a metaphor,’” “‘about the nature of reality and “the very thin line” between the real and the fanciful.’” Here is the poem as it appears in Hatcher and Williams. Fetrow’s book, unfortunately, does not include the complete texts of the major poems discussed.

THE DIVER

Sank through easeful

azure. Flower

creatures flashed and

shimmered there—

lost images

fadingly remembered.

Swiftly descended

into canyons of cold

nightgreen emptiness.

Freefalling, weightless

as in dreams of

wingless flight,

plunged through infra-

space and came to

the dead ship,

carcass that swarmed with

voracious life.

Angelfish, their

lively blue and

yellow prised from

darkness by the

flashlight’s beam,

thronged her portholes.

Moss of bryozoans

blurred, obscured her

metal. Snappers,

gold groupers explored her,

fearless of bubbling

manfish. I entered

the wreck, awed by her silence

feeling more keenly

the iron cold.

With the flashlight probing

fogs of water

saw the sad slow

dance of gilded

chairs, the ectoplasmic

swirl of garments,

drowned instruments

of buoyancy,

drunken shoes. Then

livid gesturings,

eldritch hide and

seek of laughing

faces. I yearned to

find those hidden

ones, to fling aside

the mask and call to them,

yield to rapturous

whisperings, have

done with self and

every dinning

vain complexity.

Yet in languid

frenzy strove, as

one freezing fights off

sleep desiring sleep;

strove against the

cancelling arms that

suddenly surrounded

me, fled the numbing

kisses that I craved.

Reflex of life-wish?

Respirator’s brittle

belling? Swam from

the ship somehow;

somehow began the

measured rise.

The diver in his literal descent experiences the “rapture of the deep,’” caused, perhaps, [Page 13] by nitrogen narcosis or, as Fetrow suggests, “a brief infatuation with submerged suicidal tendencies.” The persona describes the beauty of the undersea world as he descends until reaching the “dead ship.” Only as he enters it, does the persona use the first person “I,” at last committing himself and giving in to exploring. Fetrow sees this as a journey of introspection where the diver “plumbs the depths of his creator’s psyche, measuring the strengths of the poet’s desire to break through the bonds of social and moral restraint in pursuit of potentially self-destructive pleasures.” Acknowledging that the poem describes a “deeply personal emotional crisis,” Fetrow continues. “Hayden thus personally embodies, and artistically portrays, the classic struggle between the Freudian id and superego. The diver’s yearning . . . represents more than narcosis, more than even a death-wished-for release from emotional perturbation.” He concludes his analysis of the poem by stating that the diver, by choosing to return to the surface, has not given in to the urge to “forsake all external considerations,” including “‘respectability,’” “identity,” and “conformity,” that has seduced him. It is the “belling” of “social and moral restraints” that reminds the diver that he must ascend.

Williams agrees that the diver stays too long in the depths because he is “enchanted by what he sees there”—forbidden and unknown objects that have long been lost to the surface, plus the new life of the marine creatures that swim in and out of it all. After making a significant comparison of “The Diver” to Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale,” Williams agrees with Fetrow that there is a death wish expressed here and suggests that the diver “would gratify the senses at the expense of elevating the spirit.” She provides lines from Hayden’s 1960 notebook that were deleted from the final draft to point out the sensual tone of the poem.

I swam to her,

anxious, elated,

feeling more

keenly now

the iron cold,

the hammering thrust

and heavy tension of the heavy depths

While Hatcher acknowledges the various psychological, sexual, and literary interpretations that “The Diver” has evoked, he insists that this difficult poem is not “a longing for death” but, instead, is a “‘profound intensification for life’”; he argues that the ascent of the diver is comparable to the “artist entering the cage to confront and control his lions. . . .” “the diver’s desire to ‘fling aside the mask’ is an aspiration for enlightenment, not obliteration.”

Hatcher sees two important elements in this poem: that which takes place beneath the surface of the sea, exemplified by the ship with all of its natural and unnatural wonders, which he considers a “vision of Bahá’u’lláh,” and the “rise,” which takes place as a result of the consolation and confirmation of that vision. He then suggests that “The Diver,” the introductory poem in Selected Poems, is a preface for the ten poems immediately following it and that this descent, a “rejection of a death wish,” is necessary for the eventual rise of the persona who “emerges from despair and grief to the hope of reconciliation and resolution.” While it is impossible to know what Hayden meant in this poem, Hatcher, referring to both Bahá’u’lláh and Plato, interprets the poem’s symbolism from a Bahá’í perspective. Readers will have to decide for themselves which interpretation is more satisfying and helpful.

UNFORTUNATELY, most people do not read poetry—Hayden’s or anyone else’s. This is a [Page 14] deprivation, as William Carlos Williams reminds us in “Asphodel”:

It is difficult

to get the news from poems

yet men die miserably every day

for lack

of what is found there.

It is difficult to invest the time and to conjure the intellectual and emotional energy to “get the news” and the benefits from poems. Fred M. Fetrow, John Hatcher, and Pontheolla T. Williams have worked hard and honestly to make Robert Hayden’s life and poetry more accessible so that we gain a better understanding of his poems. Each of the three books contains detailed notes and sources. Each has used firsthand interviews with Hayden and, after he died, with his wife, Erma. The result is that each of these three books is illuminating and a pleasure to read, and I have learned from each of them. As companions to the Collected Poems, and perhaps the Collected Prose, they will give the reader an emancipated view of one of the century’s most thoughtful and eloquent writers, a poet who makes us think and feel so that our own lives become less “miserable” and more worth living. In his own words:

And that’s the beauty part,

I mean, ain’t that the beauty part.

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[Page 17]

A Portfolio of Poems

THERE is a real fear mixed with an unfailing sense of arrogance that allows me to try to follow in the footsteps of World Order’s former poetry editors: Robert Hayden and William Stafford. Their sensibilities were so correct that I cannot help but tremble as I embark on the venture of trying to read and edit poems the magazine has already received and those it will receive.

Robert Hayden and William Stafford are poets of the first order, and I, quite naturally, stand in their shadows. As this editing process begins, I have only my sensibilities to recommend me. I hope that they are finely tuned, for in truth I have long gone to school to the poems of both these gentlemen (though I hasten to add that they can in no way be held responsible for my still-developing taste). I can only promise to do my best in choosing works that speak to the delicate spirituality of men and women.

The task I am undertaking is awesome. In many ways it is both fire and water. Both elements offer danger and excitement, especially when one stumbles on the constrastive individual voices of Anne Marie Blum, Roswitha M. Petretschek Shelton, Cal E. Rollins, Lucia V. Caruso, and Bob Mullin. Each of these poets is new to me and exciting in an individual way. Each lives in a different part of the country, but all are a testament to the continuing growth of a vital American poetry.

The present portfolio also contains the older, more masterful voice of Judson Jerome and the emerging youthful voice of Len Roberts, who first appeared in World Order in a portfolio edited by Robert Hayden.

The form of the poems, for all intents, is open rather than closed— that is, it relies on the individual line, rather than on rhyme and stanzaic scheme. In addition, the writers have caught the voices and the rhythms of the country. And there is a control of another type. The music in these poems is not hopeful, for it reflects the dissonant despairs intendent with the coming of the atomic bomb.

Still the poets presented work with detail and a hopeful vision. Theirs is the spirit that so often appeared in the portfolios of my predecessors who distinguished themselves first as men of letters and second as tireless editors and teachers who were always alert to new voices that touched on the human condition and to the humanity they espoused and believed was in all of us. I hope they look over this new folio and smile approvingly as we share old voices and introduce new ones to the readership of World Order.

—HERBERT WOODWARD MARTIN

[Page 18]

Confrontation: Road Town Harbour

Wind thrums the rigging while we rock at anchor.

Wind billows your white burnoose. Your black hands rise,

lifting it like unfolding wings. Its hood

obscures your face except for flashing eyes.

You talk about the barricade, old friend,

that one day soon will find us face to face.

Night howls around us. Whitecaps flash their teeth.

No friendship then will heal the wound of race.

The deck beneath us lifts, subsides, and tilts.

The tent of night is silk shot through with stars.

Tomorrow you are off to Africa

to take commands from savage commisars.

I hear waves crashing on the crescent beach

that fans outside the Pirate Cabaret.

My back is to the rail. The damp salt wind

whips hair against my cheeks in perilous play.

We still can laugh—although your laugh is shrill.

This wild night follows, remember, a day of calm.

What gesture now? Long sleeve of woolen robe

flaps once, then furls. I stare at your pallid palm.

—Judson Jerome

Copyright © 1990 by Judson Jerome.

[Page 19]

Ways of Staying Faithful

Try to touch me soon

even though you feel 5, maybe 600 miles away.

I’m sure I’ll still feel it.

Try to touch me soon

even though I’ve fallen asleep again at your side.

And don’t forget to write next day to let me know . . .

I like the way correspondences grow.

—John Druska

Copyright © 1990 by John Druska.

Fewer Words

Silence is docile

but the highest

form of communication.

Some people climb

mountains in search

of it. Even in China

a walnut tree knows

it should be among

the first to lose

its leaves. The closer

together two people get

the fewer words they need.

—Ken Letko

Copyright © 1990 by Ken Letko.

[Page 20]

Summer before the fall, 1982

(for George, in Beirut)

I waited for you

but you were not yet born

Rashid Hussein, “Letter to a Woman”

Dry season and harmattan are not

like summers, really, in occupied places

this season is ending badly again.

it may be a childhood without summers

the women crying for their dead

in late fall too the ruins face

everywhere in a burst of skull and brick

the caption under this picture I hold

says human debris, with deliberation;

I am too bothered by heat to tease

out to completion: tone, laconic; posed horror.

simply this for now:

the righteous can do no wrong

the weak must expect what they can

your idea of pain cannot be older than that,

I tell myself, fatigued by too much summer.

in the letters of Rashid Hussein

the land draws near me

thyme is eaten with olive oil

for breakfast in those places

Sabrah, Chatila beyond

the inhabited world there

Rashid once shouted

“Believe me

I am weary of crying.

What do you want me to bemoan

Horses

Sheep . . .”

(hot ice and wondrous strange snow, the line

comes easily enough: I am wary of too much

that is new, snuffle in the old things I know.

we met, you remember, with the alps rising sharp

and whitelaced beyond a third floor window.

in Austria.)

[Page 21]

I think: Galilee

in a dry burst of summer

adam raising cain in eden.

thank god, he says, I can still sleep

it won’t, hot as it is, burn stone.

—Lemuel Johnson

Copyright © 1990 by Lemuel Johnson.

The Naming Field

Every morning my son looked up

from over his toast and jam and said Walk,

and I said Yes, but by the time we got

to the third tier I didn’t know the names

of the flowers, I’d forgotten which vines

strangled the walnut, the oak, and to nearly

every questioning look he gave me I had to

shrug my shoulders, hold my hands up as though

testing for rain. I tried to tell him my father

had been a breadman in a city, that my mother

had planted only green beans, carrots, beets,

a few common roses, one spring

a sunflower that grew only four feet and suddenly

died, but he kept laying stalk after weedy stalk

at my feet, refusing to hear my excuses, running

back into the field which engulfed him again and again

in its green arms, embraced his small

white body like any seed, finally took

him in completely, until I could not find him

there, no matter how hard I looked.

—Len Roberts

Copyright © 1990 by Len Roberts.

[Page 22]

Removing the Mole

As I felt the doctor cut the mole

out of my left leg, birthmark in the same

place my mother had hers, I remembered

the dark kitchen on White Street, the picture

of her standing by the cupboard, a slice

of white bread covered with sugar in one hand,

a butter knife in the other. I saw again

the rollers in her hair, the quilted bathrobe

she wore over flannel pajamas, her sunken

eyes and full lips, the pug nose, the poverty

of her, the loss of her mind there in that kitchen,

and I wondered if the man taking the picture

had felt it, the one who had to focus in the dark,

who had to wait in the dark until she had spread the bread

with butter and sprinkled the sugar, the one who said

nothing until he snapped the bulb, throwing

light all over her otherwise disguised face,

catching her like an animal in its dark hole,

her half-crooked Oh telling him what he did not want

to know.

—Len Roberts

Copyright © 1990 by Len Roberts.

Knowing You

Knowing you as collector

of the overlooked, the undervalued,

I gather seeds in Bishop’s Woods.

Half-exposed nuts, shells as neatly

sectioned as orange segments; a full-

term nut, encased in three-quarter

dress shell, a model of earth geology

crust cut away to exhibit core;

Knowing you authorizing vision

exposing fully the wild walnut.

—E. S. A. Martin

Copyright © 1990 by E. S. A. Martin.

[Page 23]

Ode to a Dove Flying
(For Teachers of the Cause)

Oh, dove on wings of grace ascending,

Severed of the ground, not depending

Upon the world and its base deception,

Arise to the heights of an exalted reception.

Happiness is the sweet fruit and seed

Upon which the precious bird does feed.

The Spirit’s inspiration the teacher’s heart’s desire,

See his eyes aflame with the unforgettable fire.

Consuming the heights on searching wings,

Bearing the treasure the Holy Spirit brings.

Teacher, guide, by the song of His melodious voice,

you call others’ hearts to rejoice.

Bequeathed by Him knowledge to speak the hidden outright.

Oh, the delight! Oh, the delight!

—Lucia V. Caruso

Copyright © 1990 by Lucia V. Caruso.

Black Birds

Purple leaves reel on my porch like

Yellow, wind-blown snake skins.

The freckled grass blades rustle.

A few black birds stalk through the

Grass, all noisy and forlorn.

—Roswitha M. Petretschek Shelton

Copyright © 1990 by Roswitha M. Petretschek Shelton.

[Page 24]

The Stranger

There is a timber picket-fence around my

House; it is filled with splinters.

A lawn surrounds my house, a soft-skin

Blanket sprinkled with white dots.

They bathe in the glimmering heat.

I walk through my knee-high daisies

Light-hearted like their swaying heads

On fine, unbending stems with sticky hair.

A lady bug tipples up a stem, pausing

For rest. A stranger pauses by my fence;

I go into my house and shut the oak door

Heavily behind me. Nothing else will

Lure me out again except daisy or bug.

—Roswitha M. Petretschek Shelton

Copyright © 1990 by Roswitha M. Petretschek Shelton.

[Page 25]

Foreign Soil

The front walk of our house is uncovered

from the layers of ice and snow.

And now that I see the asymmetric slate

with its overall design of a swan’s neck,

memories fill in where the stones

leave a space.

But one day the scene will be changed

and I will be awakening in rhythm

to an unfamiliar landscape.

It will be like this:

I will be putting my son to sleep,

rocking him in a dark room

where the moonlight draws the silhouettes

of leaves on a wall.

The night has seeped in

and laps easily within the corners.

When I leave I will look out the window

and be frightened at the strange trees.

Thinking back, I will remember my study,

the white picket fence and the slate walk,

my friends whose faces I could touch.

—Marlaina Tanny

Copyright © 1990 by Marlaina Tanny.

[Page 26]

Missionary

Autumn in Nairobi and another life

rearranges itself inside your head. Black sand,

tiger lilies and the same incurable

dream. In the sunlight you

are the honest missionary anxious

for supplies and the jungle’s

hum. You cross borders.

You are unwilling to accept the evidence

of frailty so you strike out

making small advances in the underbrush.

Your vision falls easily from

your hands. In this helpless country

it is all you can do to remember reasons.

Once a tall woman squatted over

you asking for medication. You pulled

open the door of your hut. You showed

her the patterns the saffron sun

made on the floor. Her song

was a million tiny prayers rushing

forward like streams. You thought

it revealed everything.

Evenings in Nairobi, haunted by a soft

mosaic of faces. This is not like other

countries. No one is content here. You tell

your family how the good life runs like

a documentary, all the while

thinking, “There is a moral here, but I’m

not certain what it is.”

[Page 27]

Purpose quickly becomes the sound

of mountains collapsing in the

distance. Even if she was beautiful,

you are guilty. There is no

excuse. There never is.

In the madness you prefer the cold blossoms

of flowers. You consider the rituals

of the fog. Still you hear the muffled

catch in your voice, her song seeping

under the door and the sound of noble gestures

beating at your window. This is the refrain.

This is what you have been waiting

for all your life. In the gold of

the season you discover your importance.

And the jungle drifts through your fingers

and settles itself around you like

a quiet mission or another life, with

the power of a country thumping in your hands.

—Anne Marie Blum

Copyright © 1990 By Anne Marie Blum.

[Page 28]

Hey, Man, Where’s My Lines?

I was walkin’ down this two-lane, see?

And steppin’ real fine

down them double yellow lines?

Two-steppin’, you might call it,

side-steppin’, doin’ my little jig,

tryin’ to get where I was going,

movin’ round, but GETTIN’ there,

if you follow my drift.

And I’m singin’, you know?

singin’ blues—but I ain’t that blue.

You can do that, you know?

Sing your heart out

like there ain’t no tomorrow,

not for you, anyways,

not when you so down in the heels

you can’t see your eyelids

through the salt-water-fall.

You can sing ’em HIGH, I mean,

send them low-down blues

high as a kite,

high as them clouds up there,

them big white ice-cream clouds

high over the back hills,

the far ones, back a bit,

not them little wispy nothings

over-head directly.

You see them ice-cream clouds,

hear them blues,

and sing your eyes out

till you get those babies

right up where they belong,

carrying your weighed-down baggage—

all thousand pounds of it—

right into the big, beautiful,

flying aer-oh-plane.

Not a real plane, mind you,

jest an idea, you know,

gettin’ your sorrows into high gear,

singin’ them out,

your big baggage blues, you know?

singin’ ’em out

till you’re flying, REAL high,

[Page 29]

up where you always wanted to be,

wanted to be all-ways,

always knowed it, needed it,

wanted to be there all the days—

night-times, day-times—night-times, too.

Sure I wanna be there night-times, too.

Get off’n this low-down runway

and I’m OUT-a here.

Real far. Real high. Real fast.

—Michele F. Cooper

Copyright © 1990 by Michele F. Cooper.

[Page 30]

Musing about My Rights

for Vanessa and Birgit

Bahia de Banderas
Puerto Vallarta

“You’ll never amount to anything,”

my grandmother used to say to me,

her black face shining like the bay.

Childhood was experiment then,

penultimate though to the seed she forced.

I knew from the way she gnawed

my silence: plenty of sleep

in the grave,

your blood’s as red (or blue) as theirs,

love yourself and open that book.

Prophecies about our world just flowering.

“Anything” from a lesser light

would have been hard winter.

“Your rights are God’s,” she'd say.

I only saw her once with her eyes closed.

—Cal E. Rollins

Copyright © 1990 by Cal E. Rollins.

The room smells of sleep

The room smells of sleep;

dawn shortens the gray shadows

and dispels my ghosts

—Judith A. Tugwell

Copyright © 1990 by Judith A. Tugwell.

[Page 31]

Beautiful Place

For souls it is death to become water, for water it is death to
become earth; out of earth water arises, out of water soul.
—Heraclitus

When I drowned, no one blamed Dennis. He almost drowned,

too, trying to save me. He later developed a style of telling the

story that insisted upon his decision, once his arm was around

my neck, to go to the side with the rock shelf. Help from our

friends swimming at the other side never occurred to him. When

he told the long version, women pinched their eyes and bit their

lip, and men were sour.

While Dennis had struggled in the middle of the quarry, I

floated freely. I mingled with the water beyond my fingertips. My

body raised flat while I waited to see our legs dangling and

kicking, his arm reaching, through the lime-colored water, until

panic caught him, too, and he let go.

Dennis still wonders: had he thought of our friends . . . He

remembers, too, the weight of panic, like the pull off a tall

building, untouchable as it touches, and shakes his head. He

feels better with the story. The broad quarry and lime-bright

pool, acres round, acres deep, still speak in a language he’s heard

just once. On the horizon, the trees and roads of the country are

broken neatly by the great pit, as though he could reach across

and pull the edges together. I wait to feel the brown fields pass

overhead.

But irony does not amuse the dead. When Dennis dies, it will

be a glorious day. He will go to the beautiful place with rolling

hills and grass and flowers in bloom. Birds will sing and squirrels

chase in the trees. His friends will dress in their finest, their faces

filled with emotion, and the voice of God will proclaim his good

life. Then, by twos and threes, they will leave and the men will

come to fill in the hole.

—Matthew Riley

Copyright © 1990 by Matthew Riley.

[Page 32]

The Ride

Adulthood

is the 7:15

you catch in a hurry

before you can look

in a mirror,

even to see

if your hair is combed,

much less to glean

the glimmer in your eye

or the turn of your lip.

Before you know it,

you’re on your way,

sitting,

even if you don’t want to sit,

because chairs

fill the car

and sitting

is what everyone

does.

So you sit

and forget

and ride,

not thinking

of your destination

or even the fact

you’re on a journey

at all.

But the time finally comes

when the ride’s end is near

and there you are

standing at the exit,

alone,

about to leave

ready or not

with somebody

you don’t

even

know.

What’s more,

though you at last have time,

you’re too fearful

now

to look

at your reflection

[Page 33]

in the darkened window

of the door leading out

because you don’t know

what you might

see—

and you don’t

want

to know.

—Bob Mullin

Copyright © 1990 by Bob Mullin.

(For my son Sharaf, and for the Bahá’ís
suffering persecution in Iran)
7 Jalal 140 B.E.

It’s early in the year.

Nothing much has happened yet.

It will.

It’s early in my life.

Nothing much accomplished yet; a few things.

More will come.

It’s early in the Era.

Many things have happened already—

But only a select few have recognized

the beginning of a new millenium.

Those who have, rejoice.

Those who haven’t, sleep.

The cries of an infant Faith are waking the world!

“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done . . .”

It will happen.

O New World of Bahá’u’lláh: BE

—Christine Boldt

Copyright © 1990 by Christine Boldt.

[Page 34]

Falling Water Elegy

The meaning of the name dispels

dispute, the Indians called it

Falling Water, and so it is,

and so it sounds, Sheboygan’s

a water town, the Lake’s

to the East, to the West—

the Falls, and all around

the town, the Elms slim

and silent, pierce the cold

blue sky, echoing the pristine

joy of all beginnings. The crimson

silos answer to the present—

the future’s waiting to be born

protected in its seed by love

and healing hands—for there are

a few among the Landlords, merchants,

priests, who know the Word fully

revealed, ancient in glory, newly

born in light. Somewhere there’s

a beginning. They feel it, know

it, and can name the Name.

Water draws the people like

a magnet. The fountain in the Plaza

fills their mouths to overflowing,

the boats are reeling in the harbor,

waiting for release, to seize

and capture trout—the Falls

rush over rocks and rills, cry

out immersion in the ocean

of discovery. Water’s all around

the town. Now there’s talk

of flooding in the coming rains.

The people wonder if the funnel

clouds will reach the North.

Fear quickens in the hearts

of builders of ships, creators

of plastics, gloves and plumbing

ware. The dialect of German tongues

spins webs of discord and concern.

The margins lack profits, downtown’s

a ghost, with shopping to the West,

and what of the invasion of Asians

and Latinos? The world is out of

balance. Their vision turns to

continents, the ocean’s edge.

[Page 35]

I flee the core of discontent

and walk through Vollrath Park.

Here in the greenness of summer

youth, I live again. What if the poles

reverse themselves—the earth

trembles on its axis? Eternity is now.

This Park where once I skated

in the winter, picnicked in the fall,

holds more than springtime memory.

I seek the Kingdom of the trees,

and listen to the sound of water

falling on the leaves.

—Joan Imig Taylor

Copyright © 1990 by Joan Imig Taylor.

Gardenia

grown from ground

pulled toward sun

seed of man

(scent of earth)

select, the best!

Perfection rests

in Paradise.

—Christine Boldt

Copyright © 1990 by Christine Boldt.

[Page 36]

Basilica de Guadalupe/Mexico City

My grandmother was Baptist in my boyhood,

but walked all the way on her knees

to the mission at San Xavier del Bac

outside of Tucson.

Our Lady of Guadalupe

proves my boyhood, too,

in this poetic place. That boy,

no more than 15, crawls on his knees,

while the priest takes flight.

Neither waits for the other.

I see nothing of Juan Diego

in the Virgin’s eye; I am not moved

by her image and the story of roses.

This graceful company of angels feeds

from the Mother, though, and she is

soft, like a new beginning.

Only the stained glass

and its right-rendering of the sun

is more luminous.

—Cal E. Rollins

Copyright © 1990 Cal E. Rollins.

[Page 37]

[Page 38]

[Page 39]

Canada’s Earliest Bahá’í History

BY WILL. C. VAN DEN HOONAARD

Opposite page: Edith Magee Inglis

Copyright © 1990 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. I am particularly indebted to Rosanne Buzzell, Archivist of the Eliot Bahá’í community, Maine; to the staff at the National Bahá’í Archives, Wilmette, Illinois, especially Lewis Walker; to Joseph W. P. Frost of Eliot, Maine; and to Marjorie Durnin Inglis, daughter-in-law of Edith Magee Inglis, for their active support of this research project. I also wish to express my heartfelt appreciation to the University of New Brunswick for its offer of resources to conduct the research.

The Initial Contact

DURING the third week in September of 1893, a woman and her two daughters, ages thirteen and ten, boarded a Canadian Pacific Railway train in London, Ontario, bound for Chicago. That trip would eventually result in the first stirrings of the Bahá’í Faith in Canada. Esther Annie (Mrs. Jonathan) Magee and the Misses Edith and Harriet Magee belonged to a prominent family in Canada’s “City of Parks.” The roundtrip fare of $9.30 was a small sacrifice to attend the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago. The Parliament gathered together for the first time in human history the widest possible array of religious leaders, including Hindu and Buddhist representatives. It paralleled the World’s Columbian Exposition, also in Chicago, to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the New World by Columbus.

The World Exposition had captured the hearts and minds of Ontarians and Londoners alike. More than two thousand people from Ontario attended, and on a typical day some twenty people from London could be found boarding the train to Chicago. Toward the closing of the exposition, a local London agent sold sixty-two train tickets in one day. Newspaper articles spoke of the vast amounts of money withdrawn from local banks to pay for these journeys, amounting to $40,000— approximately $400,000 in today’s terms.

In addition to attending the World’s Parliament of Religions, the Magees also had a personal interest in going to Chicago, for Guy Magee, Esther Annie’s brother-in-law, a prominent journalist who was covering the Parliament of Religions, lived there. All of the Magees, including Guy, had been raised in an “atmosphere of tolerance and universality”; Guy’s interests included comparative religion. Born in Philadelphia in 1842, he had lived in London, Ontario, and then moved to Chicago in 1889. There, as city editor first of the Tribune and later of the Inter-Ocean, he gained early prominence in his journalistic career. He had covered the American Civil War and was one of two journalists to accompany General Sherman on his march to the sea from Atlanta— not a small feat, given the fact that General Sherman disliked journalists.

It is not entirely clear who of the Magee [Page 40] family first heard, on a rainy Saturday in Chicago, 23 September 1893, the name of Bahá’u’lláh from a paper read on behalf of the Rev. Henry Jessup. But, according to some, it was Harriet who first heard of the Bahá’í Faith in Chicago. Little is known of the Magees’ immediate response to the news of the teachings or the death of Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith. The later effects of the mention of Bahá’u’lláh’s name on the London-side of the Magee family were both profound and lasting.

Canada’s First Bahá’í: Edith Magee

EDITH MAGEE is known to have made many visits to see her uncle, Guy Magee, and probably heard on those occasions more about the new religion, although he never became a Bahá’í. By 1898 Edith’s visits to her uncle and his family became so frequent that she obtained an “unclassified” standing in Form VI (Grade 12) at the London Collegiate Institute in her home town; “unclassified” is reserved for those who have either taken very few subjects or who have been absent most of the term. A warm and loving relationship developed between Edith and Guy Magee’s two daughters, Hester Lane and especially May Marguerite, who were by this time ten and twenty-one years old, respectively.

On 26 January 1898 Ibrahim Kheiralla had finished the last course he gave in Chicago on the Bahá’í Faith, the same year that Guy Magee interviewed a Bahá’í. Kheiralla was a Syrian convert to the new religion and was one of the first two Bahá’ís to have come to America. Later that year Guy must have sent word to Edith, his niece in London, for she spent the late summer in Chicago. There is an account that states that one of the Magees had become a Bahá’í and returned to Canada. The 27 September 1898 London Advertiser suggests that Edith returned on 26 September. Members of her family accepted the Faith soon thereafter.

Edith was born prematurely on 28 June 1880 during her mother’s visit to Chicago. She declared her faith in Bahá’u’lláh when she was eighteen years old. Although her school career was not remarkable—we have only the one reference to her standing in school—she loved music and singing, and she danced. She performed at local fairs, including the “Kirmess [a fair], that elaborate combination of fair feminity, chic wardrobes and fragrant flowers.” Her talents extended to performing for hospital benefits. For example, there is a striking picture of Edith in a nurse’s uniform. She also performed at the Asylum for the Insane, where she delighted the audience with the song, “Dream of Me.” By the time she was twenty-two, she was giving solo recitals in churches. Her musical talents were later put to good use at Bahá’í gatherings, particularly at Green Acre, an important Bahá’í retreat in southern Maine. Soon thereafter, in 1902, Edith moved to New York to continue her music lessons.

As described by her daughter-in-law, Marjorie Inglis, Edith was very much her own [Page 41] person and very outspoken. She considered herself to be Irish-English, not Canadian, British, or American. A trove of turn-of-the-century photographs shows an extremely beautiful, poised, young woman. She did not inherit the large ears of her father’s side of the family but had an evenly sculptured face with the broad chin typical of her mother’s family. Each photograph reveals Edith’s perfect grace, whether it shows her sitting in an ornate chair, or standing on the stage, or wearing an elaborate hat, or reclining on a love seat. The way she holds her head, the position of her hands, and her general demeanor exemplify a strict and highly cultured upbringing. As she moves into her thirties, her serious composure gives way to a relaxed, easy expression verging on humor.

Edith Magee’s Paternal Family

A GOOD DEAL is known about the paternal side of the family. Jonathan Magee, Edith’s father, was born in 1849 in London, Ontario, of Irish Methodist parents. After Guy and Alfred, he was the third son. The family was well-to-do, and Jonathan led a life of private pursuits, which included farming in Crumlin, a village of fifty people on the Canadian Pacific Railway line, five miles east of London. Toward the end of his life he also dealt in real estate. He traveled at least once to California to improve his health. There are pictures taken of him in Oregon, which means that he took either an extended trip to the West Coast or several such journeys. In any event, he was a great traveler and collected spoons and demitasses wherever he went. Very attached to her father, Edith faithfully kept his collection. Jonathan Magee died on 31 December 1902, leaving an estate of $4,900, including a store and a house at 752 Richmond Street, London.

Jonathan’s parents were Mary A. Magee and George Greeg Magee. A passenger and immigration list index shows that a George Magee arrived in Philadelphia in 1841. George and his wife moved to London, Ontario, where on 23 October 1843 he purchased land on Nelson and South streets. Eventually, the family lived at 140 Maple Street. Upon George’s death on 25 December 1890, he left $86,142 to his wife, the equivalent of nearly $900,000 today. Jonathan’s mother, Mary, was also Irish Methodist. She died on 26 June 1903, about six months after the death of her son, Jonathan, leaving an estate of $45,526.25. She left nothing to Jonathan’s children, Edith and Harriet, but instead left everything to one of her sons, Alfred; his two children, Lillian Mary and John; her daughter, Emma; and her nephew, James Magee, a lawyer in Queen’s Court. These records suggest that a split had developed between Jonathan, his wife, and children, on the one hand, and all the other Magees, on the other. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the beneficiaries of the various estates did not include the Bahá’í members of the family.

[Page 42] Edith Magee’s Maternal Family

VIRTUALLY nothing is known about the maternal side of Edith Magee’s family. But it was that side of the family who took the lead in accepting the new revelation. Soon after Edith’s return from Chicago in September 1898, four other female members of the household declared their faith in Bahá’u’lláh: Edith’s mother, Esther Annie Magee; Edith’s sister, Harriet (better known as “Hattie”); and, according to one account, two sisters of Esther Annie—Rose and Vail.

Esther Annie Magee (who was to become better known through her middle name) was born of English Methodist parents—Mr. and Mrs. Edward Gauge. After Esther Annie’s husband decided to move back to London, Ontario, from Crumly, she and her family lived at 625 Wellington Street. According to Edith’s daughter-in-law, Esther Annie was very much a matriarch. She eventually followed her daughter to New York, where she continued to serve the Bahá’í Faith as a member of the New York City Women’s Board and as secretary of the Women’s Unity meeting in that same city. Frequently, Esther Annie would spend the summer at the Green Acre Bahá’í School in Eliot, Maine; she appears in a photograph taken there with Bahá’u’lláh’s son and appointed successor, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Who was undertaking extensive travels throughout Europe and North America after His release from prison in Akka, in 1908.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá spoke highly of the Magee family. For example, an early Bahá’í, V. Haack, in a postcard to Harriet Magee, described seeing ‘Abdu’l-Bahá off at the train station in Paris on 12 June 1913 and related hearing “the Master say such beautiful things about your whole family.”

Esther Annie Magee received several tablets from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. One account cites the following exhortation by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: “Be like Mrs. Magee; be a lion in the Cause of God.” There is no known source for this statement, however. In yet another tablet ‘Abdu’l-Bahá suggests that she “should continually communicate with them [the Japanese].” It seems that Esther Annie Magee never reached Japan, for, by the time the tablet arrived, she had already passed away on 25 December 1918 in Montclair, New Jersey.

It is not known why ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had chosen Esther Annie to undertake a trip to Japan. However, London, Ontario, was a center of nationally important church gatherings, which highlighted the missionary work of the Presbyterians in China, of the Baptists in India, and of the Methodists in Japan and China. The Presbyterians were, in fact, planning to spend $150,000 on foreign work in 1902. One may ask whether it was Esther [Page 43] Annie’s Methodist background, with its emphasis on missionary work in Japan, that prompted ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to ask her to devote that interest to the Bahá’í Faith. Edith’s future husband, William Otto Inglis, had already taken a widely acclaimed trip to Japan in 1906, four years before their marriage.

Harriet Ann Magee, Edith’s sister, was the third important Bahá’í in London. Born around 1883, she, too, was educated in the broadest sort of way. She followed her mother to New York City and could often be found at the Green Acre Bahá’í School, where she met ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in 1912. Some very touching words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá are found in one of his tablets to her. She also appears in the same photograph as her mother with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá at Green Acre.

Harriet’s life was dedicated to the improvement of social conditions. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had encouraged her to continue her interest in the education of a Persian girl through the Women’s Unity in New York City, an organization she had served as secretary. Another Bahá’í facet of her life concerns the diary of Ahmad Sohrab, which was begun by his writing “wonderfully descriptive letters” to Harriet, regarding the events and life of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

Harriet apparently had tuberculosis and had to sleep outdoors in tents, often in winter. A letter written by Dr. Hills Cole, a close friend of the family, mentions Harriet “who has been ill in bed for a long time. . . .” Two and a half years after the photograph was taken with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá at Green Acre, Harriet died at Green Acre on 16 January 1915, which occasioned ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s sending a tablet to Esther Annie, speaking of Hattie’s physical suffering. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said that he would “never forget her, for she was one of the most important personages.” Although Harriet died at the age of thirty-two, she made a long-lasting impression on the citizens of Eliot, Maine. There were even plans for a Harriet Magee Memorial Library in Eliot.

There is virtually no reliable information about Esther Annie’s two sisters, Rose and Vail, except in two letters from Esther Annie to Harry Randall and Alfred E. Lunt, two prominent early Bahá’ís; in one letter she speaks of planning to leave for Chicago to attend the 1917 “Centennial Celebration of Baha.Allah” with her sisters.

The First Results of the Bahá’í
Group in London

BY 1898-99 Canada’s first Bahá’í group consisted of Edith Magee (eighteen years old), her sister Harriet (fifteen), her mother Esther Annie (forty-two), and possibly the two sisters of Esther Annie, Rose and Vail. The requirements of Bahá’í membership were, in the very early days of the Faith in North America, quite different from what they are now. Certainly, those early Bahá’ís were not asked to resign church membership, nor did they think it was inconsistent for them not to cut their ties with their respective churches. The Magees were Methodists, who participated actively in the affairs of that church. The London City Directory for the years 1898 through 1907 reveals no listing for the newly formed Bahá’í group. In addition, the local newspapers make no mention of the group, although toward the end of 1898, the London Advertiser carried a series of articles on “Some [Page 44] Modern Religious Ideas,” which provoked interest and comment. There was no reference to the Bahá’í Faith.

There is, however, no question that the acceptance of the new revelation by the Magees had an impact on their friends. Esther Annie began organizing a study group in the late 1890s, probably using notes from Kheiralla’s classes in Chicago. The Magees were a highly visible family with the best ethnic credentials, for London, Ontario, at least—namely, British and Irish. For example, James Magee, a cousin of Edith’s father, regularly made headlines with some of the more important court cases he handled as the prosecutor for the government. Thus the influence of the Magees extended throughout all of the well-established families of London. It might have been through James Magee initially that the United States Consul, Henry Stark Culver, and his family became acquainted with the other Magees, which eventually led to the Culvers’ acceptance of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh.

In April 1898, James Magee had asked Henry Culver to testify in court regarding a personal loan of $5.00 he had made to a man who was later murdered at the London Music Hall. There is no reason to assume that contact between the Magees and the Culvers stayed at that formal level. London had intricate personal linkages among the various classes of people. In that social context the Culvers followed with bemused interest the fact that the Magees had become Bahá’ís. A transcript of an interview taped in 1982 with Dorothy Cress, the daughter of the Culvers, conveys the atmosphere of those days when she was asked by the interviewer how she had become a Bahá’í:

Well, of course, through my father and mother, I guess. Yes, I guess so, that must have been it. I’ll tell you how my mother became a Bahá’í. We lived in Canada, in London, Ontario, a little town . . . and a friend of ours—a Mrs. Magee, she had two daughters—Edith and Harriet. . . . One time, I don’t remember, but my mother said, “Well I think Mrs. Magee has gone crazy.” And why she’d gone crazy was because she’d heard that Christ had come back—Christ had come back to the earth. Of course, it was ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and then, so from then on, Mrs. Magee, they became more and more interested and . . . all became Bahá’ís; then my mother did too.

Dorothy Culver Cress’ account does not tell us when her parents became Bahá’ís, but it must have been in London, Ontario, and before Henry Culver was assigned to go to Cork, Ireland, in 1906. From the fragments of information available, it appears that the four Culvers (parents and daughters, Louise and Dorothy) must have become Bahá’ís after 1898, when Edith Magee had returned from Chicago but certainly not later than 1906 when the Culvers left for Cork, Ireland. Considering, moreover, that by 1903 all of the Magees had already left for New York, it may be assumed that the enrollment of the Culvers must have occurred between 1898 and 1903. Later records indicate that Mr. and Mrs. Culver formally became Bahá’ís in 1906. In essence, then, there were nine Bahá’ís in London, Ontario, around the turn of the century.

Henry Culver was an attorney in Delaware County, Ohio, where he also became mayor for four years. In October 1897, Henry joined [Page 45] the State Department and became Consul at London, Ontario. In 1910, the Culvers moved to Saint John, New Brunswick, where they established a Bahá’í community. May Maxwell, the most prominent Bahá’í in Canada, who visited the Bahá’ís in that city in 1917, described the Culver family as forming the “nucleus of the group here . . . a beautiful Bahá’í family, filled with the spirit of service, and are a real ornament to the cause of God.” Henry Culver retired from his post in Saint John in 1924 and joined the Eliot, Maine, Bahá’í community in 1925.

The personal circumstances of the Magee family, however, precluded the possibility of their permanently establishing the Bahá’í Faith in London. The family had already begun spending more and more time in New York City, which, on the Michigan Central Railway, could be reached in only slightly over fifteen hours. Edith’s solo at the Ladies of St. Paul’s Guild in early May 1902 is the last record of her stay in Canada until she returned to attend her father’s funeral on 2 January 1903.

The Magees in the United States

WHEN Edith Magee decided to study music in New York City, and after her father died, New York exercised a stronger attraction than London for her mother and her sister. Soon after 1903, all of the Magees, who were a close family, moved to the city on the Hudson. By 1907 the London City Directory carried the last listing for the Magees at 625 Wellington Street, a house they had occupied since 1896 as its first tenants.

Two features stand out in the life of the Magees in the United States. First, Edith Magee’s singing career (she was a contralto) became more and more a dominating influence in her life. Second, the Magees as a family became mainstay summer residents of the Green Acre Bahá’í School in Eliot, Maine.

Edith Magee was often asked to perform at Bahá’í gatherings in New York City, such as singing a “sacred solo” at the regular Sunday morning meetings, or at the Fifth Annual Bahá’í Convention in April 1913. In April 1920 she chaired the Music Committee at the Bahá’í Temple Unity Convention held in New York City. Her abilities as an artist were also well used at Green Acre, where she would be asked to be in charge of the Decorations Committee.

Edith’s qualities as a soloist were also appreciated by many others in New York City. In May 1911 she was hired by the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church for $950 a year. In April 1914, because the church did not rehire her, she, together with the choir director and famed organist, Harry Rowe Shelley, sued the church for breach of contract. They won their case in the lower court, but lost it in the appeal process. It is not quite certain whether this is the same Edith Magee, for by 1914 she was married to William Otto Inglis. However, she may have continued to use her maiden name professionally as a singer. One [Page 46] can speculate as to why the church did not continue to hire her, despite its verbal agreement to do so. It could be that, when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá visited New York City in 1912, Edith Magee Inglis’ position as a Bahá’í became more clearly understood and her contributions to the Bahá’í community more visible, which may have caused some irritation at the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church. It could also be that Edith’s dismissal from the choir coincided with the merging of the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church with the Baptist Cavalry Church, resulting in the formation of a very large choir. One can also speculate that this experience may have led Edith to abandon her singing career.

But it is not Edith’s singing for which the Bahá’ís in the United States remember the Magees (nor the fact that they established the first Bahá’í group in Canada). The Magees are first and foremost identified with the early days of the Bahá’í Faith at the Bahá’í school at Green Acre. The life of the Magees and Green Acre are, indeed, closely intertwined.

However, it is not clear what led the Magees to spend time at Green Acre. It was hardly a “Bahá’í” school in the 1910-12 period. It is possible that the Magees met Sarah Farmer at the World Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and that they came to Eliot and Green Acre because of its founder, Miss Farmer.

Nevertheless, to the Magees belongs the distinction of having met ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and hosted part of His stay in Eliot. Edith herself has left two accounts of her experiences with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá at Green Acre. In one, she charmingly describes a dance interlude of a young girl of seven or eight and explains how ‘Abdu’l-Bahá asked Mason Remey to dance with Mrs. Stancill, both early Bahá’ís, and the latter, “a little stout old lady.” She also described ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s trip to Mount Salvat and to “Bittersweet,” Sarah Farmer’s home.

The second, and perhaps the most amusing, account relates to her entertaining ‘Abdu’l-Bahá on the afternoon of 21 August 1912, after His visit to Mount Salvat. Edith describes the food served—pilau of chicken served with Persian salad of lettuce, tomato, mint, onions, and cucumbers. The dessert was watermelon, “its pink heart in vivid contrast with the greenery of the table and the white figure of the host.” Fourteen or fifteen guests were present, including Louise Culver, whom Edith knew from London, Ontario. When ‘Abdu’l-Bahá arrived about five o’clock, Prime Cottage (now called “Winter Hill”) had been converted into a spectacular bower of green and flowers. Edith records that,

After tea was served ‘Abdu’l-Bahá retired to a bedroom upstairs to rest until dinner which we were giving that evening. . . .

Finally when all [the preparations for dinner] were ready I asked one of the Persians if he would announce dinner to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. He said, “I’ll tell you what to say and you go up.” “All right,” I said and repeated the phrase over and over again on my way upstairs. Upon entering the room I spoke my piece whereupon ‘Abdu’l-Bahá sat on the side of the bed and rocked with laughter. What had happened? Had I lost the pronunciation or had the Persians played a joke on me. I never did find out.

At eight o'clock, all left the table and entered the living room where a group of people from the Inn at Green Acre and some townspeople had gathered. Two hours later ‘Abdu’l-Bahá left, descending the rocky and rutted road, and leaning on the arm of Edith’s [Page 47] husband, William, “with whom He shook hands, American fashion, in saying goodbye.”

Edith Magee Inglis’ Married Life

ON TUESDAY, 25 October 1910, Edith Magee married William O. Inglis, a journalist like her uncle Guy Magee, at the Church of the Ascension in New York City. Edith was thirty, and William forty-eight. “W.O.,” as he was known, pursued her for some time before she married him. She anticipated problems with someone who was as meticulous as William and who did not want to give up his houseboy and valet.

William, an Episcopalian, never became a Bahá’í, although there is no reason to assume he had no interest in the Bahá’í Faith. In the 1940s, after thirty years of marriage to Edith, and at the request of Margaret Ford, an American Bahá’í, he looked into Moses G. Farmer’s exhibits at the Smithsonian. Moses was Sarah Farmer’s father. William discovered that a “dinky little [electric] car” was invented in 1847 and that a model made by Moses was on display at the Chicago Exposition in 1893. In 1946 he wrote an article on the Bahá’í Faith entitled “Bahá’ís Would Make a Spiritual Peace.” He sent a draft to Horace Holley, Secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, who called it a “fine introduction to the Faith,” recommending several places of publication.

Some of William’s many contacts included New York’s policemen upon whom he called, on more than one occasion, to stand by to rescue Edith from violence during her marches on Fifth Avenue as a suffragette. As a journalist, William had friendships with many well-known individuals. He worked for the New York Herald (five years), The World (fifteen years), and Harper’s Weekly and carried out special assignments for Joseph Pulitzer.

William was often seen with the prominent leaders of his day and was not infrequently quoted by other journalists for his political insights. He knew John D. Rockefeller, with whom he played golf and whom he helped substantially in assembling the personal archival materials on the history of Standard Oil. It is an interesting coincidence that the junior Rockefeller knew Harry Rowe Shelley, the organist who, with Edith, sued the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church referred to earlier. William also knew Cornelius Vanderbilt and Woodrow Wilson, whom he helped persuade to leave the presidency at Princeton University and run for the governorship of New Jersey. William also advised Theodore Roosevelt on Cuba and the Panama Canal. One could explore the degree to which Mr. Wilson became aware of the Bahá’í Faith, albeit indirectly, through his link with William.

As yet, little is known of Edith’s own association with well-known people, although we do have a photograph of Marconi, his sister, “and her affinity,” taken on board the Merion. This photograph bears a likeness to the one of Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography. There is, however, no mention of a sister in the Dictionary. [Page 48] Edith’s association with Marconi was tied to her own Irish roots. Marconi’s mother was Irish, the daughter of an Irish whiskey distiller. Thus Edith’s acquaintance with Marconi also tied her to the world of brewers. Edith’s daughter-in-law relates how Edith would visit the Guinnesses, a family of Irish brewers, in Galway, Ireland.

However, it does seem clear, from her box of papers, that Edith maintained a vast network of Bahá’í friends who were eager to send her pictures of their travels abroad and within the United States. For example, Mrs. A. R. Beede sent her a card from the Catskills in New York in 1916. Others include H. D. Cole (who speaks of “Aunt Hattie”); V. Haack from Paris in 1913; Dr. Sarah A. Clock from Tehran; and Ahmad Sohrab from Dublin, New Hampshire, in 1912 (with the following written on the postcard: “Greetings from Dublin. Abdul-Baha will be in Green Acre on the 16th inst. Good News. Ahmad.”

Edith possessed the rare ability to match her personal interests and talents perfectly with her sizable financial resources—she had inherited $22,317.84 from her mother, in addition to $16,000 worth of real estate. Such funds freed her to study and practice music and to devote her energies to the Bahá’í Faith. Unfortunately, Edith lost much of her inheritance in the 1929 stock-market crash, after she had received “bad” advice.

Edith Magee Inglis’ Later Life

LITTLE IS known of Edith’s later life. She and William had one child, Edward (“Timolean”), who was born on 10 June 1912. At the time of Harriet Magee’s death, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote to her mother Esther Annie:

Convey on my behalf the utmost kindness and love to Mr. and Mrs. Inglis. I beg of God that in this affliction he may bestow upon them patience and consolation, and that they may educate their dear son [Edward] in accord with their highest and purest standard.

Like his mother, Edward (better known as “Timmy”) loved Green Acre. David Hofman, a retired member of the Universal House of Justice, recalls swimming across the Piscataqua River at Green Acre with “Timmy” in the summer of 1933.

Edward joined the Army. At Lake Placid, New York, during the late 1930s he met Marjorie Durnin, whom he married during World War II. The family, which had six children, spent a tour of duty in Germany and Iran. Edward never became a Bahá’í, although he was mindful of his mother’s devotion to the new religion. In one of his many letters from Tehran to her, he speaks of his Bahá’í landlords, Messrs. Mudaffir [sic] and Munajjim, and adds that he “hope[s] this will make for pleasant relations because everyone here is after your eye teeth if they think there is a chance to get them.” After her son and his family returned to the United States in 1959, Edith stayed with them in Arlington, Virginia, until her death in 1971. Edward retired [Page 49] in the 1960s as a Lieutenant Colonel and died in 1986.

Bahá’ís in Eliot, Maine, today still remember Edith Magee Inglis. Elizabeth Brewster Small Drymon, a Bahá’í at Green Acre since she was a child, described her as “very English speaking.” Edith apparently never spoke of her husband. Manny Reimer, a former director of Green Acre, remembered going to a Nineteen Day Feast in Edith’s home on the Moses Garish Farmer Road. She radiated grace and dignity and gave the impression that she was quite used to offering hospitality to what must have been many guests during her lifetime. Another person who had known her over the years describes her as a

tall, rather stately looking person—reserved and self-contained. There was more to her than what was on just the surface. She was formal with those who were not close to her, although she was very kind, taking people out driving who didn’t have their own cars.

Toward the end of her life Edith’s health began to fail, and she was no longer able to think clearly. She died on 18 June 1971 at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, leaving her son, six grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

The honor of permanently establishing the Bahá’í community of Canada rightfully goes to May Bolles Maxwell, who married the Canadian architect William Sutherland Maxwell and moved to Montreal in 1902—the same year that Edith moved to the United States. A study of Edith Magee Inglis’ life, however, has permitted us to connect many strands in early Bahá’í history: the first mention of the Bahá’í Faith in Chicago; the founding of Canada’s first Bahá’í group in London, Ontario; Green Acre Bahá’í School; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá; well-known people in American history; and the struggle of early Bahá’ís to ever more appreciate the scope and influence of their Faith.

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Authors & Artists

ANNE MARIE BLUM is a poet who works for the State Department.

CHRISTINE BOLDT is the manager of Automobile Invoice Service, which publishes New Car Cost Guide and the software version of Chek-Price.

LUCIA V. CARUSO is studying telecommunications and film at the University of Oregon at Eugene.

MICHELE F. COOPER is a poet, editor, and analyst and a part-time teacher at the University of Rhode Island, where she is completing her doctoral dissertation.

JOHN DRUSKA is a professor of languages and literature at Defiance College in Ohio and a member of the Ohio Arts Council Artists-in-Education program.

JUDSON JEROME is a distinguished American poet and editor. He is the author of numerous articles and textbooks on poetry, including On Being a Poet. He has recently published Flight from Innocence, a memoir of his first twenty years. Dr. Jerome is poetry editor for Writer’s Digest and associate editor for the Kettering Review.

LEMUEL JOHNSON is the director of the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan.

KEN LETKO is poetry editor for Mid-American Review and teaches English at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

E. S. A. MARTIN is a graduate student in the Ph.D. program in English at Miami University in Miami, Ohio, and an adjunct instructor at the University of Dayton.

HERBERT WOODWARD MARTIN is a poet, an actor-singer, and a professor of English at the University of Dayton. He has studied at the University of Toledo, at the Breadloaf School of English at Middlebury College (drama), and at Carnegie Mellon University (creative writing). He has published four books of poetry, the most recent being The Forms of Silence. He has been poetry editor of The Great Lakes Review and is currently poetry editor of World Order.

BOB MULLIN teaches English at Aloha High School in Aloha, Oregon.

PETER E. MURPHY, who holds a Master’s degree in English education from New York University, teaches English and creative writing in Atlantic City. He has published a number of essays on poetry and the teaching of literature and poetry. His poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, and he has recently published a volume of poems entitled Shaping Up. His many awards and activities include receiving the Robert Hayden Fellowship in Poetry from Louhelen Bahá’í School and serving as educational consultant and poetry advisor for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

MATTHEW RILEY is a graduate student in the doctoral program at Ohio State University, where he is studying the teaching of writing.

[Page 51] LEN ROBERTS has published four books of poetry and is professor of English at Northampton County Area Community College in Pennsylvania. He recently won a National Poetry Series award for his book Black Wings.

CAL E. ROLLINS, whose poems have appeared a number of times in World Order, is a retired English teacher and civil-rights analyst.

ROSWITHA M. PETRETSCHEK SHELTON is studying journalism at Virginia Commonwealth University and writing for the Richmond News Leader. This is her first professional publication.

MARLAINA TANNY is a poet and dancer, who is living in Barbados.

JOAN IMIG TAYLOR, whose poems have appeared in various journals, including World Order, is a writer.

JUDITH A. TUGWELL teaches English to Central American and Mexican immigrant teenagers.

WILL. C. VAN DEN HOONAARD is an associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Sociology at the University of New Brunswick. He is the social science editor of a Bahá’í encyclopedia project. His essays have appeared in the Summer 1984 and Fall 1984/Winter 1984-85 issues of World Order.

ART CREDITS: Cover design by John Solarz; photograph by Mark Sadan; p. 1, photograph by Mark Sadan; p. 3, photograph by Steve Garrigues; p. 6, photograph by Steve Garrigues; p. 15, photograph by Glenford E. Mitchell; p. 16, photograph by Steve Garrigues; p. 37, photograph by Steve Garrigues; p. 38, photograph, courtesy Will. C. van den Hoonaard; p. 52, photograph by Delton Baerwolf.

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