Ina Coolbrith: the Bittersweet Song of California's First Poet Laureate [Signed]

[Place of publication not identified]: Shifting Plates Press, 2015. "Special centennial edition". xxiv, 336 pages: illustrations, portraits; 24 cm Fine to fine(-) with faintest of edges wear (a few very tiny, shallow bumps, hardly noticed; no jacket. Paperback. ISBN: 9780986124006, 9780986124013

Ina Donna Coolbrith (1841–1928)—born Josephine Donna Smith in the turbulent Mormon settlement of Nauvoo, Illinois—recast herself on the overland trail to California, adopting the mellifluous pen‑name “Ina” and the surname of a step‑father she wished to honor. She arrived in the Bay Area during the Gold‑Rush afterglow and soon became the most lyrical voice of its emerging literary culture. Publishing in the Overland Monthly beside Bret Harte and Mark Twain, she distilled Sierra light and Pacific melancholy into verses that suggested both a Western frontier and a classical Arcadia, giving nineteenth‑century California a poetic self‑image it had not yet possessed.Coolbrith served two decades as Oakland’s public librarian, transforming the modest collection into a civilizing refuge and encouraging young patrons such as Jack London and Isadora Duncan. After losing her home and manuscripts in the 1906 earthquake, she was sustained by a statewide subscription and, in 1915, was crowned California’s first poet laureate at the Panama‑Pacific International Exposition—a rare official laurel for a woman of her generation. Her volumes Songs from the Golden Gate and Later Verses remain touchstones of regional Romanticism, while her mentorship helped seed the next wave of West‑Coast letters. In Coolbrith, the mythic “queen of Bohemia,” California found both its earliest literary matriarch and an enduring symbol of western intellectual resilience.Contents: Prologue: leaving California. Part I. Searching for home. "California is a poem"; Blood atonement; "An unfinished poem". Part II. San Francisco. Precious metals and gems; A knack for rhyme; Pearl of her tribe; Unraveling; Loss of love and poetry. Part III. Oakland. The inferno; "A perfect day"; A strategic move; Noble mentor; Escape from the inferno. Part IV. San Francisco redux. Out of the fire; A wily muse; Into the flames; A laurel crown; "Lady moon". Part V. New York. Welcome to Manhattan!; Courting moonlight; Last dance. Part VI. Poetry as home. Heart-to-heart; "Dew before dawn". Epilogue: the Ina Coolbrith Circle. "Special centennial edition"--Cover.