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Show NEWS DT HER DECREEGAUSES Strange Melancholy Writings Give Leaders New Interest Inter-est in Life N. E. A. Staff Special. NEW YORK, April 2S "So the' roots of my soul j "Floating among depressions negative, "So the blooms of my will "Swinging dead in a bondage of sighs." That's the way "America's most! beautiful woman," Mrs. Leonard M. Thomas, used to talk in her poetry. It has Just been learned that Mrs. Thomas and her, 'husband were di-yorcedintrisnKntlis di-yorcedintrisnKntlis ago.. , BtlftVl'&ers orNopogt. PhiladLel- i phia and New York have thereby a new interest in life. They havej pounced upon Mrs. Thomas' weird free verse, much of It melancholy, seeking seek-ing something that they may connect with the wreck of the Thomases married mar-ried life. Mrs. Thomas is back in New York with her two children.! - Praised by Artist. Paul Helleu, French artist, called Mrs. Thomas, who was once Miss Blanche May Oelrichs "the most beautiful beau-tiful woman in Amerma." She was a leader of Newport and Philadelphia society. But all the time she led cotillions and talked with folks whose conversation conversa-tion never strays far from the dance and the shortage of liquor, she was hiding a terrific secret, Mrs. Thomas was an authoress! Strange Verses. j Free versers who proudly imagined themselves "free" gave the Croix de License with palm to Mrs. Thomas for her freedom. Her creations are among tho most meterless and rhymelcss yet produced. Slie calls' an apple a "green-vined snowball," and as for the wind, she says: "Oh, that the wind mleht sing into the distance of my depth disturbing its terrible tranqlulty. Her book "Poems," was published by Brentano's under the name of "Michael Strange," and it was a long time before her Newport neighbors discovered it. It shocked them, some say, to find that their beautiful leader had "forgotten "for-gotten herself" so far as to write free verse. Now they have exhumed the book and" are trying to find a connection between be-tween the verses and tho wreck of her married life. Once she wrote "You cannot like me ("Knowing not that 1 smel'i "Oh the moon! the sea!" J Here's a fragment that might puzzle I even an expert eight grader of the 'phrazlng class: I "Yet behind them leaving a soul fractured certainly "From collision with double tombs." Somebody called this "a charming orchard idyll: "Apples "Lacquered In Chinese green, shining! "Like a wind-blown cheek '"Apples "Savoring in thoir juice their fragrance frag-rance "Of entire orchards. "They tasting of stiff rose-colored petals "Varnished in moon dew, "Iridescent of the sun. "Thoy tasting of autumnal earth, "Earth exhaling through vaporous frost tho aroma "Of Harvest and Death! "Apples "Green-vined snowballs appeasing "Both hunger and thirst! "Apples "Savoring in their juice thoir fragrance frag-rance "Of entire orchards." oo |