To celebrate National Poetry Month, we’re featuring the favourite poems or poets of Thunder Bay Public Library Staff.
Lori K, a member of our circulation desk staff at Brodie, is a fan of the pre-Raphaelites:
When I was a teenager, I was given a book of Pre-Raphaelite paintings and poetry, each both beautiful and sad. I particularly loved the work of Christina Rossetti who was a poet at the time when women did not pursue poetry or art, struggling to maintain her identity while being overshadowed by her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
When I am dead, my dearest
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
Thunder Bay Public Library's Book Blog 
Reblogged this on Nature’s Abhorred Vacuum and commented:
Wonderful !!!
I’ve been reading Jan Marsh’s biography of Christina Rossetti recently, and would highly recommend it for an in-depth discussion of the poet’s attempts to reconcile her ambition as poet with the accepted role of Victorian women. She did so much more than I had realised.