Sweet Bells Jangled- Laura Redden Searing-A Deaf Poet Restored

Glyndon, Minnesota, a small town not far from Fargo, owes its name to a curious history. A railroad town founded by a Civil War veteran, it was named after poet and journalist Howard Glyndon, who, it turns out, was the pen name of Laura Redden Searing, one of those faded mid-19th century bards whose verses bring to mind rosewater and hoop skirts. Those poems have been unearthed and set against the context of the author's life in the new collection Sweet Bells Jangled Laura Redden Searing, a Deaf Poet Restored, edited by Judy Yaeger Jones and Jane E. Vallier. A deaf poet let's start there. Redden, born in 1839, was left deaf by brain fever, probably spinal meningitis, at the age of twelve. Add to that the murder of her father in 1848, and her job as a Civil War correspondent, and you have a pretty grim youth. As Vallier writes in her introductory essay, Before the poet can sing, speak, or write she must be wounded beyond the imagination of her readers. Redden definitely qualified. Softcover, 224 pages