CHAPTER 16
Belle W. Cooke
That I shall ever win to them; and yet
I cannot lout the thought, the hope, the lure.
I am not sure
ARTHUR W. RYDER; FROM THE SANSKRIT.
In the fall of 1934, during a literary discussion, an Oregon writer asked with sincere curiosity: "Who was she? Who was Belle W. Cooke?"
Most people in Oregon, except the older pioneers and a few book collectors, will probably receive men- tion of her name with the same inquiry, because of the neglect into which her poetry has fallen during the last 50 years.
It was not long ago that the author of this history first became familiar enough with her verse to realize that she had suffered an unmerited obscurity. His in- terest, which ended in a conviction that she was much too good a poet to be so completely forgotten, was started in an accidental way. He was looking through the early volumes of Bret Harte's Overland Monthly in the Portland Library, when he found in the De- cember number, 1871, the following book review:
Tears and Victory. By Belle W. Cooke Salem, Oregon: E. M. Waite
This is a home production; as such, it is deserving of pleasant mention. The printing, material, and binding of this volume are all good. When we have said this, we have exhausted about all we have to say. There is something of fluency, something of prettiness, in some of the verses; but there is a very little of poetry. It is merely a simulation, a counterfeit, of true poetry. Occasionally there flits a pleasing
