Frederica
A Sequence of Poems
by Stephen Knauth
Odilon Redon, The Golden Cell, or The Blue Profile, 1892 British Museum, London, England
Author’s Note: Frederica is based on the life of a young Indiana woman who lost her fiancé in the First World War. She married soon after but her husband, also a veteran of the war, died suddenly of pneumonia, leaving her to raise three children during the Depression. In 1939, she was legally declared insane and committed to Evansville State Hospital. In subsequent years she was released to live with her grown children but ultimately she was recommitted to the same asylum and died there in 1957. The story is drawn, in part, from medical records, hometown newspaper articles, and oral/aural family history. Frederica is my grandmother.
I am both a prisoner and an escaped prisoner.
— Thomas Merton
Contents Detail, Unfinished Work Counterpane Her Faith Print Columbarium Stigmata Procession, 1918 Her Green In Love’s Name The Visitor Her Sky Honeymoon Obsidian Butterfly Breakfast Her Likeness
Ceremony Furlough Her Art Sabbath Before War La Mer Independence Day Sensorial Quartermaster Wildlife Grace Transfer Night Duty Mother Slips Through a Seam of Evening Woman, Seated Royalty
Stephen Knauth’s latest collection of poetry is The River I Know You By from Four Way Books. His poems have appeared in North American Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Daily, The Cortland Review, and others.