From the Seasonally Occupied Territories . . . | A year-rounder blogs about Martha's Vineyard
Write Through It | On Writing, Editing, and How to Keep Going
Description: My shirts have some stories to tell
I acquired this shirt when I was around 30. Both the shirt and the poem whose first line graces it were popular with women my age, give or take a decade. This may sound odd but it isn’t: the poet, Jenny Joseph (1932–2018), was 29 when she wrote it, in 1961.
The possibly odd thing is that Jenny Joseph hated purple . It didn’t suit her, she said. I can’t help wondering if that was always the case. She was an accomplished poet, the author of several children’s books, and an all-round interesting person, but the poem became far more famous than she. Once the internet came along, it circulated widely with no name attached, and it has been often “adapted” over the decades — Google “when I am an old cowgirl” if you don’t believe me.
That’s enough to turn anyone against purple even if they loved it to start with. We poem quoters and T-shirt wearers loved purple. Lavender was for lesbians, and what was purple but a deeper shade of lavender? (If a T-shirt came in multiple colors, you could count on the lavender ones selling out first.)
From the Seasonally Occupied Territories . . . | A year-rounder blogs about Martha's Vineyard
Write Through It | On Writing, Editing, and How to Keep Going