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Karl Dewey Myers (1899-1951) was named West Virginia's first poet laureate from 1927-1937 by Governor Howard Mason Gore. Though Myers published several works in small magazines and newspapers, only two poetry collections survive: The Quick Years (1926) and Cross and Crown (1951).

Biography
Myers was born February 2, 1899 in the unincorporated town of Moore in Tucker County, West Virginia. He was born with a mobility impairment so severe it prevented him from attending public school as a child, and as a result, he taught himself. Myers memorized the United States Constitution and Declaration of Independence, to name just a few of many teachings. Never weighing more than 60 pounds and unable to walk, he often depended on his parents and friends, such as Gordon Shrader and Homer Fansler, to get around town and into the woods surrounding Moore and Parsons. Both places would later inspire his writing. In his teen years, his support dwindled after the death of his older brother, Howard, during the First World War in 1918, the death of his mother in 1923 and, later, his father’s death in 1932. Myers relied on his friends for places to live; however, due to his evolving temper and alcoholism, his stays did not last long. His writing career began at age 16, using either paper and pencil or, later, a green Oliver typewriter to compose verse. Elizabethan poets, such as William Shakespeare and Edmund Spence, had a significant impact on Myers, though he was also drawn to more contemporary writers such as Edgar Allen Poe. He was known for working diligently on his writing and discarding any work that wasn't to his liking and standard. He wrote each and every day on topics such as the trains rolling by heading towards Blackwater Canyon, as the Black Fork River swelled from excess rain, or people he met and knew, often dedicating a poem to specific people. Myers died at the age of 52 due to complications with alcoholism with very little to his name beyond his typewriter, journal, and two books of poetry. Unable to pay for a proper burial site, he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave at the Old Fellows Cemetery in Elkins, West Virginia. Though he went out of this world like so many writers before him, his friend and other admires attempted to move him to his family graveyard, but, unable to locate him, they laid a monument where they best thought him to be buried. The location of his grave was unknown because pauper graves were not appropriately recorded. His friend, Homer Fansler, took some dirt from his presumed grave and scattered it upon the earth of the Myers' family burial site in Moore.

Poetry
Myers' poetry reads similar to early American poets such as Henry David Longfellow, as he put particular emphasis on the natural world and emotion. As a regional poet, Myers had the ability to provide a detailed description of the area he wrote about. Myers captured Tucker County's essence with details most lack, from its characteristic allure to its human-made modifications. He also wrote about how the forest changed once the railroad and logging trains were built, how he could see the natural beauty mixing with that of the machine. It was not just nature he made a point to capture on paper; he wrote of friends and their attributes, creating a poem as unique as they were in his eyes. It was this kind of detail that prompted local children to gather wherever Myers wanted to hear stories and poems. While in some poems, such as “Price” and “Four Friends of Mine,” Myers writes in a vernacular dialect, he typically uses very traditional poetic diction and a closed poetic form, including a regular rhyme scheme and rhythm. The impact of American romanticism is especially evident by his use of symbolism and natural imagery.

"RESURGAM"

I saw a single star last night, A solitary eye of light

That stared a while on me below, And then slipped westward from my sight,

Through the soft, sweet, September after-

glow:

Ah! Westward, whence I cannot go.

Grant, Thou who fashioned that far sun,

That I, when my brief day is done, May then a new-born star arise,

Each night my westward courses to run

With the first sentinels that climb the skies, That I may be beholden of her eyes.

The Quick Years (1926)