She was age 17. She was his first and, I think, only plural wife.They were the parents of my grandmother, Susan Elizabeth Redd Butler, who was born in 1880. I think of the 1880's as the magic generation because so many great artists and writers were born in the first half of that decade.
Take Antonio Porchia for instance, he was born in 1885 in Italy but moved with his mother to Argentina about 1900. Over his lifetime he wrote and published short epigrammatic poems of a particular distilled sensiblity in books he called Voces (Voices). About 250 of them were translated by W. S. Merwin into English and published by Big Table Press in a small book called Voices. They are really quite unlike anything else I know. Here is a small sample:
"I love you as you are, but do not tell me how that is."
"Everyone thinks that his things are not like all the things in the world. And that is why everyone keeps them."
"It is a long time now since I asked heaven for anything, and still my arms have not come down."
My writing group met tonight and had some fine discussions. I recommend you form a writing group if you can. It encourages and reminds one to write and revise.
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