In the last half of the nineteenth century more than one hundred women worked as primary keepers of American lighthouses. Twice as many were assistant keepers and many more worked without pay or recognition in their husbands or their fathers namesthis at a time when it was widely believed that the ideal woman was submissive and homebound.
The poems in A Fixed White Light enter the lives of six of these courageous and mostly forgotten women, giving readers the opportunity to experience their heroism as well as their trials in a time when they were often met with skepticism and discrimination.
| Acknowledgments |
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9 | (7) |
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Midnight at the Top of the Tower |
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11 | (2) |
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13 | (3) |
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16 | (1) |
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The Lighthouse Keeper's Wife |
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17 | (2) |
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Polishing the Fresnel Lens |
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19 | (2) |
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21 | (2) |
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23 | (2) |
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25 | (4) |
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29 | (1) |
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30 | (3) |
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33 | (1) |
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34 | (2) |
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36 | (1) |
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37 | (4) |
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Learning Mantinicus Light |
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41 | (3) |
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Under the Storm-Scraped Sky |
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44 | (1) |
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45 | (1) |
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46 | (1) |
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On the Island's North Hip |
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47 | (2) |
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49 | (4) |
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53 | (2) |
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55 | (2) |
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57 | (2) |
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59 | (1) |
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60 | (1) |
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The Lighthouse Keeper Refuses a Boat to the Mainland |
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61 | (1) |
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62 | (3) |
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65 | (2) |
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67 | (1) |
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None But a Donkey Would Call Saving Lives Unfeminine |
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68 | (1) |
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After Twenty Years Working Without a Contract Ida Considers Addressing the Superintendent of the Board of Lighthouses |
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69 | (2) |
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71 | (3) |
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74 | (1) |
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75 | (2) |
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77 | (2) |
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79 | (2) |
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81 | (2) |
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83 | (1) |
| Notes |
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84 | |
Poet Laureate emerita for the small seaside town of Rockport, Massachusetts, Suellen Wedmore had a 24-year career as a speech and language therapist. She has been published in The Ledge, Green Mountains Review, College English, Phoebe, Cimarron Review, The MacGuffin, The St. Louis Review, The Harvard Review, and many other journals. Her work has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize and she was awarded first place in both the Writers Digest Rhyming and the Non-Rhyming Poem contests. Her chapbook, Deployed, was selected as winner of the Grayson Press annual contest and in 2014 she won first place in the Studios of Key West Robert Frost Contest.
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