Wilma Dykeman's poetry
originally published in Bluets, May 1938.
the award-winning student periodical published by Biltmore College.

quoted in Solon Bryan's newspaper column,
The Highway House

Personal History

Three things there are that I can't comprehend:
Men, fractions, and a treacherous friend.

Three things there be that I'll never do"
Eat carrots, swear, and marry you.

Three things there aren't that I wish might be:
More beauty, more money, your love for me.

Wilma Dykeman, 1938

To My Mother

To a person who's strong throughout his days
The world for long has heaped up praise;
But here's to a woman who's strong, yet kind,
Idealistic without being blind,
Who can lead and push and sympathize
Flaunt faith in the world's sarcastic eyes;
Who neither writes nor paints nor sings.
And yet sees beauty in simple things.
Here's to a woman the world does not know,
And yet without her small steady glow
The world would much less beauty have known,
In a wife, a daughter, and a mother -- my own.

Wilma Dykeman, 1938

In 1937, while she was a sophomore at Biltmore College, the junior college which became the parent school of the University of North Carolina, Asheville, Wilma Dykeman's verse was impressive enough to attract the attention of Solon Bryan, director of the Piedmont Lyceum Bureau.  The Piedmont Bureau offered concerts, festivals, artists, lectures, and Chautauqua programs throughout the South in towns, cities, colleges and high schools. In his newspaper column, "The Highway House," Bryan says, "I find it such a pleasure ..." to include several poems by undergraduate Dykeman.  It was under the early instruction of Virginia Bryan, Solon Bryan's daughter, that Wilma Dykeman found her calling. She went on to become the well-known author of The French Broad, The Tall Woman, and many other highly acclaimed fiction and non-fiction works about the people and places of her native Appalachian mountains.

Related collections at UNCA:
University Archives, Publications, Bluets, 1929-1960
Solon H. Bryan Collection