Word: mcginley
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...verse might not produce an instant livelihood, she took a job teaching English in a junior high school in New Rochelle, 17 miles north of New York City. She sold a few verses to The New Yorker, then got a plaintive note from Fiction Editor Katherine White: "Dear Miss McGinley: We are buying your poem, but why do you sing the same sad songs all lady poets sing?" Phyllis took the hint, began turning out light and amusing verse...
...Rochelle, her principal showed something less than approval of the new schoolmarm's extracurricular pursuit. One day he summoned her to the office, brandished a copy of The New Yorker with a McGinley poem in it, and confided the hope that this moonlighting would not interfere with her classroom commitments. At the end of the year, the schoolteacher decided not to let classroom commitments hobble her muse. She resigned...
Unexpected Banns. The poet in Phyllis McGinley marked time for cautious years, however, before zeroing in on her life's theme. Measured against the high standards she had set as a little girl, New York in the Depression 1930s...
Until Phyllis McGinley, no poet had ever successfully domesticated the muse, or, for that matter, had even tried to. Her singular achievement is that she has brought off the match without undue strain on either partner. The Hayden household in Larchmont rang to the rhythms of recited poetry. "We used to sit around the fire while she read it to us," Daughter Julie recalls. "It was mostly ballads-and Yeats and Chesterton too. She chose dramatic stuff because she believes that poetry should appeal to the emotions. Mother and Patsy would always cry at the sad parts...
...side of a baby lamb!" Two years ago, at 60, he retired from his position as public relations analyst at Bell Telephone, five years before compulsory retirement age. "Well, really," he said in explanation, "there were 70,000 people at the telephone company, and there was only one Phyllis McGinley. I felt I should nurture and do everything I could to help this great performer function...