Vivian Yeiser Laramore

Vivian Yeiser Laramore (born Vivian K. Yeiser, 1892 – 1975) was Florida's second Poet Laureate from 1931–1975. After her second marriage, she used the name Vivian Laramore Rader. She was a teacher of poetry and created the Laramore-Rader Poetry Group from her home in Miami, Florida. She is the first and only woman Poet Laureate of Florida.

Biography Vivian K. Yeiser was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, on November 16, 1892. She was the daughter of William and Carrie Blaine Yeiser. Her father worked in Dr. McRae's Drug Store in Sanford, Florida. She had a half-brother from her father's first marriage. The family moved to Jacksonville when she was a child to open the Tropical Bottling Company.

Laramore died in 1975 in Miami at age 83.

Poetry After moving to Miami in 1920, Laramore published over 50 poems in 13 magazines from 1920–1923, including the Ladies' Home Journal, Woman's World and Contemporary Verse. Her first collection of poetry, called Poems, appeared in 1924. Her second collection, Green Acres, was published in 1926.

Laramore was appointed Poet Laureate of Florida by Governor Doyle E. Carlton in 1931.

She was a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers and past president of the Miami branch of the National League of American Pen Women.

Laramore preferred contemporary poetry and disliked reading prose. She named Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sara Teasdale, Robert Frost, and Robinson Jeffers as poets she liked to read. Robert Frost said of her, "To me Florida will always be the poetry of Vivian Laramore Rader."

I’ve shut the door on Yesterday, Its sorrows and mistakes; I’ve locked within its gloomy walls Past failures and heartaches.

And now I throw the key away To seek another room, And furnish it with hope and smiles, And every springtime bloom.

No thought shall enter this abode That has a hint of pain, And every malice and distrust Shall never therein reign.

I’ve shut the door on Yesterday, And thrown the key away. Tomorrow holds no doubt for me, Since I have found Today.

Poems

Green Acres (1926) Flamingo (1932) Florida Poets: being an anthology of poems published in the Miami Daily News (1933) The technique of poetry, as taught by Vivian Yeiser Laramore (1938) Had Sappho written sonnets (1939) Poinciana poems (1953) Ode to Life and selected Poems (1967)

Musical scores "When you are near" (1925, with Blanche Crook) "Mango Moon" (1936, with Olive Dungan) "My Florida" (1937, with Mana-Zucca) "Tropic Sea Melody" (1949, with Olive Dungan)

Honours, decorations, awards and distinctions

Poet Laureate of Florida (1931–1975) Bishop Prize (1929)

References/Notes and references