made her literary debut in the SATURDAYEVENING
QUILL,a short-lived but impressive literary maga-
zine founded by a group of writers including HE-
LENEJOHNSONand DOROTHYWEST. During the
three-year existence of the magazine, Gordon pub-
lished a number of poems and short stories. Bio-
graphical and editorial notes that accompanied the
works in the Quillreveal that Gordon’s work was
receiving high praise from other quarters. Her first
published story in the Quillwas “SUBVERSION,” a
work selected by the O. Henry Memorial Award
Prize Committee as one of the most impressive
works of short fiction in 1928.
Gordon’s short fiction is marked for its eco-
nomical and pointed accounts of tragic romance,
loss, and heartbreak. Her protagonists range from
deluded wives to devoted husbands. The home
lives of these individuals are often haunted by the
unknown as in “IF WISHES WERE HORSES,” a
short story about Alfred Pomeroy, a hardworking
department store clerk who is thoroughly unset-
tled by his encounter with a fortune-teller. He is
perplexed by the prediction, unable to understand
how he might be “the maker of his wife’s dreams.”
Without embellishment, Gordon relates Alfred’s
sudden death. The story closes with the report of
his wife’s departure on a luxury cruise to Europe;
the trip is financed by Alfred’s $50,000 life insur-
ance policy. Other stories, including “Hostess,”
and “Subversion,” suggest the searing pain of be-
trayal and the life-threatening results of infidelity.
Gordon’s short fiction contributes to the powerful
feminist writing about taxing domesticity, the limi-
tations of romance, and the complicated nature of
self-destruction.
Gordon’s poems focus on traditional themes
of love, loss, and natural beauty. She uses the
first-person voice often, and the speakers fre-
quently contemplate the possibilities of romance
and passion in the natural world. Poems such as
“Let Your Rays,” “Elysium,” “I See You,” and
“April Night” reveal the heady influence that a
vibrant and fertile earth can have on lovers and
imaginative individuals. In “Sonnet for June,” a
four-line poem that offers only a portion of the
traditional rhyme scheme of an Italian sonnet,
the speaker is transported into an unself-con-
scious and sensual rhapsody: “I breathe deep
draughts from the fragrant earth... / Which
quickens me with ecstasy and mirth; And all the
day, I kneel at your altar.” In “April Night,” the
speaker cries out to June, an ambiguous reference
to a woman or to the month. “O glorious-tinted
June, have pity!” declares the speaker, who admits
to being “ravished” by the “primrose beauty” of
the April night. The poem concludes with a sub-
missive and worshipful posture that is characteris-
tic of Gordon’s poems: “You are eternal as a
mountain pine, / All day, I kneel below your
petalled shrine.” These and other poems reflect
Gordon’s romantic sensibilities and fascination
with the natural world.
Edythe Gordon filed for divorce from her hus-
band Eugene in 1942 and then essentially disap-
peared from the public record. However,
biographer Lorraine Elena Roses has uncovered
poems published in 1938 and evidence that Gor-
don may have relocated to North Carolina and
worked as a social worker. The date and location of
Gordon’s death have not yet been determined.Bibliography
Gordon, Edythe Mae. Selected Works of Edythe Mae Gor-
don.Introduction by Lorraine Elena Roses. New
York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1996.
Saturday Evening Quill.Boston, Mass.: 1928–1930.Gordon, Eugene(1890–unknown)
The editor of the SATURDAYEVENINGQUILL, a
popular but short-lived BOSTONmagazine, Gordon
was a journalist by trade. A Florida native, he
worked at a number of Boston newspapers follow-
ing his years of schooling at HOWARDUNIVERSITY
and BOSTONUNIVERSITY. In 1919 he began writ-
ing editorials for the Boston Post;by the mid-1920s,
he was on staff at the Boston Globe.
Gordon was a member of the SATURDAY
EVENINGQUILLCLUB, a Boston literary club that
encouraged and published aspiring authors. The
group also included members of the African-
American social and literary elite among its
members, such as FLORIDARUFFINRIDLEY, the
daughter of the suffrage leader Josephine St.
Pierre Ruffin. The periodical published a majority
of Harlem Renaissance women writers, including
Florence Harmon Gill, HELENE JOHNSON, and
DOROTHYWEST.190 Gordon, Eugene