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2.
A tree — who's hung? Greymouth is pressed
Upon the earth-Swede, Flo Ingbrest.
A tree is indeed a tree, embodies as nothing else the very essence of the
arboreal. An image of the world's green beauty — but no less an
emblem
of its horror. Skilmer's panoramic imagination sees the tree as a
death-image, a very gallows with its dismal fruit. Painstaking Dantists ("In
our age," the poet dourly quipped, "there are no painless Dantists") may
well see here the influence of Dante's Wood of the Suicides.
Upon the earth-Swede, Flo Ingbrest.
We have learned little about Flo Ingbrest — Florence C. Ingbrest of 1222 Stitt St., Des Moines. Her very address is known only because it was found tattooed on the left hip of a sailor washed ashore at Tampa after the great hurricance of '23. It is clear that Miss Ingbrest meant much to the poet, who saw in this simple Swedish girl a power participating so fully in the chthonic matriarchal atavism of the dark earth itself that he calls her simply his "earth-Swede". Her earthy affections,
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