Born: March 10 1841, United States
Died: 29 February 1928
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Josephine Donna Smith (birth name)
Ina Donna Coolbrith was an American poet, writer and librarian, prominent in the San Francisco Bay Area literary community. Called the “Sweet Singer of California”, she was the first California Poet Laureate, as well as the first poet laureate of any U.S. state.
She began publishing poetry in Los Angeles as a teen, receiving positive notice from critics and established poets such as Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce and Alfred Lord Tennyson. She held literary salons at her home in Russian Hill, introducing new writers to publishers. She also befriended poet Joaquin Miller and helped him achieve international fame. While he lived out their mutual dream of touring Europe, she stayed behind to care for her mother, ill sister and her sister’s children, as well as Miller’s illegitimate daughter. She moved to Oakland and became the city librarian. Her poetry suffered as a result of her long work hours, but she continued to help other aspiring poets. She mentored a generation of young readers including Jack London and Isadora Duncan. After serving the community for 19 years, Oakland’s library patrons called for reorganization, and Coolbrith was fired. She moved back to San Francisco and was invited to be the librarian of the Bohemian Club.
Coolbrith started to write a history of California literature, including much autobiographical material, but the fire following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed her work. Author Gertrude Atherton and Coolbrith’s Bohemian Club friends helped her re-settle in a new house, and she resumed writing and hosting literary salons. She traveled to New York City several times and, with fewer worldly cares, greatly increased her poetry output. On June 30, 1915, Coolbrith was named California’s poet laureate, and she continued to write poetry for eight more years. Her style was more than the typical melancholic or uplifting themes expected of women at the time; her poems encompassed a wide variety of subjects and were noted for being “singularly sympathetic” and “palpably spontaneous”. Her sensuous descriptions of natural scenes encouraged poets to incorporate greater accuracy without trite sentiment, preceding the Imagist school and the work of Robert Frost. Later California poet laureate Carol Muske-Dukes wrote that, though Coolbrith’s poems “were steeped in a high tea lavender style”, influenced by a British stateliness, “California remained her inspiration.”