Irene Wilde — Driftwood Fires

Irene Wilde’s first book begins beside a dying fire and moves through three states—Flame, Embers, Ashes—as love, memory, Los Angeles streets, desert travel, art, work, grief, and wit change temperature. Its short lyrics sit beside narrative poems about shopkeepers, prospectors, women artists, school, and city life. Wilde had already crossed the country, worked in journalism, married, and served on the jury that acquitted Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle; she would later become a Los Angeles librarian, prizewinning poet, and novelist. This edition resets all thirty-three poems from Driftwood Fires, preserves the three-part design and poem subtitles, and uses the original illustrations only in the brief archival opening.