A Collection of Poems by Anna Switzer-Howard

This is a collection of poems written by my departed Aunt Anna Switzer-Howard. Aunt Anna was a housewife in the small rural community of Pawnee near Springfield, Ill. Aunt Anna raised eight children in the decades of the late 40s until the early 70s. Aunt Anna had the very busy life of a housewife struggling to manage a large household on a modest income. You will find a deep appreciation for the beauty and the symmetry of nature, and her respect for and faith in its Creator. Her poems are about love of family, strength of character, responsibility, Christian duty, and morality. They are about appreciating the simple joys that all of us are given, regardless of our station in life, but which many of us miss because we are too self-absorbed. They are about the love, heartbreak, happiness, and serenity of a woman who lived the life of a mother raising children in the heartland of America in the decades of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Hers was a life that was extremely well lived, and her poetry is not braggadocio or self-aggrandizement. To the contrary, it is honest, simple, appreciative, and loving – as she was.

Her poems are a compliment to all of the women of her generation who mothered our generation so well. They are a salute to those who saw themselves as “only” mothers and wives, and did it tirelessly, faithfully, and rarely complained nor asked for accolades. Aunt Anna and mothers of her quality took selfless pride in the accomplishments of their children, and wept silently out of a sense of their own failure for their children’s mistakes.

Aunt Anna died in November of 2005. She apparently wrote these poems over much of her adult life. They were not shared with or known to anyone until two of her children discovered them by accident just a few years before her death. They had been written on pages, scraps of paper, and were hidden away in a cedar chest in her bedroom.

Please read Aunt Anna’s poems. Their simplicity of construction belies their beauty and elegance. She did not use the magnificent metaphor or the grand simile, or complex meter or brilliant alliteration. Rather, her unpretentious assembly of ordinary words creates poetic verse that flows softly, meaningfully, and with a comforting grace. Aunt Anna’s poetry should be a tribute to millions of American mothers in her generation who likewise shared her morality, her strength of character, her love of family, and her appreciation of nature, but lacked such an elegant voice to express it.

I have copyrighted these poems per agreement with her children, my cousins; and am publishing them as way of paying respect and gratitude for her life by myself and my cousins. I plan to make hard copies available on demand.