Title: Rosa Marinoni and Joy Markham, Grandes Dames of Fayetteville in the 1930s-1960s

A neighbor recently told me that Rosa Marinoni and Joy Markham were the grandes dames of Fayetteville in their day. A grand dame is a highly respected middle-aged to elderly woman having extensive experience in her field. Rosa’s fields were poetry, writing, and sketching, and Joy’s fields were art, horses, and love of music. How did they know each other?  One way was through their children’s love of horseback riding.

Rosa and Antonio Marinoni’s son Paul and his wife Mary had eight children. Paul and Mary Marinoni raised their family on the land just north of Markham Hill and south of Wedington Dr.  The Marinonis were friends and neighbors to Joy Markham and Evangeline Archer who lived on Markham Hill.

In the Northwest Arkansas Times, July 8, 1961 section of the paper entitled ‘This ‘N That About Town’, Mary Alice Pearson wrote:

“Hilltop, home of Joy Markham, was a merry scene last Sunday afternoon when members of Northwest Arkansas Riding Club had a family picnic. Assisting Joy with all the preparations were Louise Laden, Evangeline and Laird Archer, Marjorie Budd, and Faye Biles. Many junior riders as well as senior riders arrived on horseback."
"Among the guests of the club were Carol Cornett, Sharon Alexander, …, Mary and Paul Marinoni with all the little Marinonis, and …"
"Drenched to the skin by a sudden deluge of rain, the riders felt like pioneers on a wagon train as they rode happily home.”

We already know about Joy Pratt Markham from previous Weekly Markham Hill Moments of History. This weekly is on her fellow grand dame, Rosa Marinoni. Excerpts below are from an online article about the University of Arkansas Special Collections celebration of National Poetry Month 2019 honoring Rosa Marinoni and from the article on Rosa Marinoni in the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas.

Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni was born in Bologna, Italy on January 5, 1888 and came to the United States with her parents in 1898 when she was 10. They lived in Brooklyn, New York. Her father was a journalist and drama critic. Her mother was a poet and artist. She married Antonio Marinoni in Brooklyn in July 1908 when she was 20 and moved to Fayetteville where her husband was on the faculty of the University of Arkansas (UA). He eventually became the head of the Department of the Romance Languages.  Rosa and Antonio maintained their European ties and, beginning in 1922, conducted European tours for the public during the summer months. The couple had twin daughters and two sons; two of their children died as babies. During WWII, Rosa was active in the American Red Cross. After the death of her husband in 1944, she married Luigi Passarelli, also a professor in the UA’s Romance language department, in 1946. He died in 1953.

In the mid-1920s Rosa began writing poems at a rapid pace and had work accepted in 60-some publications within the first two years of her career. Rosa was known in Fayetteville because she founded the University City Poetry Club in 1926 that met, often at her home Villa Rosa on West Lafayette, to discuss and promote poetry writing in the community, and which lasted forty-five years. Rosa and the community of poetry writers in Fayetteville were widely published in national and local magazine and journals, but they were also self-published and distributed their own writing within social circles.

Rosa was also a founder of the Northwest Arkansas Branch of the National League of American Pen Women. With the backing of this organization and of the Arkansas Federation of Women’s Clubs, Rosa promoted a wider appreciation of poetry, working through schools, women’s organizations, newspapers, and other means. As a result of these efforts, Governor Ben Laney proclaimed October 15, 1948, the first annual Poetry Day in Arkansas.

In addition to her support and encouragement of other poets, Rosa published more than 1000 short stories in seventy magazines, had poems in more than 900 publications in the United States and elsewhere, and published at least nineteen books, including collections of her poems and sketches.

Coming to Arkansas as an outsider, she was an enthusiastic promoter of the cultural richness she discovered in her adopted state. Between 1956 and 1967, she published an Ozark Series, comprising The Ozarks and Some of Its People (1956), The Ozarks and Some (More) of Its People (1958), Lend Me Your Ears!: A Beakfull of Humorous Verse (1966), and Whoo-Whoo the “Howl” of the Ozarks Says: Think and Wink! (1967).

The Arkansas General Assembly named Rosa poet laureate of Arkansas on March 28, 1953, and appointment she held until her death. In 1954, Rosa was named an Arkansas Traveler to be an “Ambassador of Good Will’ for the state. In 1969, Governor Winthrop Rockefeller proclaimed October 15 to be Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni Day.

Rosa died March 26, 1970, but the cultural significance of her work lives on because of her commitment to creating community, advocating for the poets of Arkansas, and her publications that are still available in libraries around the state.

Below are two of Rosa’s Ozark poems, inspired by the hills of Fayetteville, which include what is now called Markham Hill.

* Winter Dusk in the Ozarks *

Slow...silent...
The snow flakes have covered the orchard.
The trees droop heavily.
Each branch an arched bow
Straining beneath the unaccustomed burden.
A crackling staccato is heard at intervals,
As sap-frozen branches snap.
Fluffed sparrows
Huddle in close community
Along a barbed wire fence
Like birds strung on a spit to broil.
A rabbit hops diagonally across the snow,
Making shadowless half circles
Above the white expanse.
A woman with a brown shawl
Wrapped around her shoulders,
Stands in the doorway of a log cabin...
A kitten in her arms.

* Native *

We came upon it suddenly. The sun
Shone brightly on the mountain ledge. Below,
Trapped in the valley where the river curled,
Spread the dawn fog-an ocean white as snow,
From which like islands rose the humps of hills
Purple and black beneath the yellow sun.
Above us drops of light from tall pine trees
Dripped silently through blue space one by one.
Binoculars and cameras in hand,
We stood as poised between the earth and skies,
Well conscious chance had led us to trespass
Upon a sight not meant for mortal eyes.
A mountain lad in rags, his large feet bare,
Leaned to a tree. The surging pride that stills
The eager lips spoke through his eyes the words:
"This is My valley...these my native hills!"

Photos found online.

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