Jill Spargur (1907–1929) was not Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) or Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950): writers who rode the wave of early 20th literature, reaching the shore of permanent poetic reputation. A tide of new women’s poetry was rising in those decades, with many authors trying to breast the swell. And like most of them, Spargur was pulled down into obscurity by the undertows of literary history.

But she might have made it to land, if she hadn’t died so young: just 22 years old, the author of a single locally published book. Appearances in St. Nicholas Magazine and the Literary Digest seemed to promise great things, and there’s something in her precocious verse that begs for only a few more years to mature into a genuinely memorable poet’s work.

A native of Pierre, South Dakota, she was still adolescently sentimental, falling into bathos, and she needed a wider reading to firm up her meters and diction. But it’s hard not to see her verse and think of what might have been. “Tragedy,” today’s Poem of the Day, is her only much anthologized piece, and in it readers can discern her faults. But even more, readers will see the promise in this teenager’s poem about no longer wanting a balloon when she was old enough to afford to buy it.

Tragedy
by Jill Spargur

I always wanted a red balloon,
It only cost a dime,
But Ma said it was risky,
They broke so quickly,
And beside, she didn’t have time;
And even if she did, she didn’t
Think they were worth a dime.
We lived on a farm, and I only went
To one circus and fair,
And all the balloons I ever saw
Were there.
There were yellow ones and blue ones,
But the kind I liked the best
Were red, and I don’t see why
She couldn’t have stopped and said
That maybe I could have one —
But she didn’t — I suppose that now
You can buy them anywheres,
And that they still sell red ones
At circuses and fairs.
I got a little money saved;
I got a lot of time,
I got no one to tell me how to spend my dime;
Plenty of balloons — but somehow
There’s something died inside of me,
And I don’t want one — now.

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.