Catch a couple of Jeanette Hardage’s poems in the most recent edition of Bloom literary magazine, published by Red Penguin. Her poems “Conquest” and “Sister’s Mind” are included. “Conquest” has only appeared before in a June 30, 2021 blog post, while “Sister’s Mind” was first published …
Read MoreLooking Ahead
The poems of Jeanette Hardage often express her hope in a heavenly future. The poem below, handwritten by in April 1997 and never before published, instead anticipates possible future joys on earth. At first the reader may get an impression of disappointment with life, until …
Read MoreLooking Back
On this fifth anniversary of Jeanette Hardage’s passing, it seems fitting to contemplate her death through the lens that she provided as she reflected on her own experience of losing someone dear. The poem below is included in her Faith and Other Matters anthology. Lastingness …
Read MoreBeautiful Surrender
Jeanette Hardage anthropomorphizes nature in the poem below with its imagery of fog “conquering” a hill. As a frequent resident of coastal California, she had many opportunities to witness this phenomenon. She first wrote this in 1961, probably as a class assignment. She reworked it …
Read MoreI Have Known Rain
Some of Jeanette Hardage’s most powerful verses are those that dwell on painful subjects. She frequently employed nature as a metaphor in her poetry. In the poem below, published in Faith and Other Matters, she uses rain to express her heartfelt sadness, melancholy, even despair. …
Read MoreIn Love With the Sea
Owen Hardage started going to sea when he was just a young boy, making his first trip across the Pacific Ocean at the age of eight in 1934. As a young man, he served in the Navy during World War II, then later made a …
Read MoreSpring Rebirth
As spring bursts forth again, enjoy Jeanette Hardage’s poem below, originally entitled “April 10: For Doug,” which celebrates the growth, beauty, and hope of the season. She penned this sonnet in honor of her younger brother Doug, pictured here with a teenaged Jeanette along with …
Read MoreAn Hour and Twenty Bucks
In an undated journal entry, Jeanette Hardage shared the experience of visiting a “third hand” bookstore in Dartmouth, UK. It was located in a repurposed old stone church called St. Barnabas and it was characterized by the kind of haphazard organization that often seems to …
Read MoreIn Praise of Cats
The Hardages were cat people. They spent many an hour stroking, feeding, grooming, and talking to cats, not to mention cleaning up their messes, looking for lost ones, and taking injured ones to the vet. Jeanette Hardage loved T.S. Elliot’s The Naming of Cats, and …
Read MoreA Child’s View of Death
On January 24, 1935, Jeanette Hardage’s younger brother Patrick died when he was not quite 7 weeks old. She included a poem about this experience in her Faith and Other Matters collection under the title of “Susie’s Question.” Since she was only just approaching her …
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