Lucille M. Nixon (December 24, 1908 – December 22, 1963) was a poet and school supervisor from

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for ) is a charter city in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. Th ...

. In 1957 she became the first foreigner selected to participate in Utakai Hajime, the Imperial New Year's Poetry Reading of

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. Nixon performed a 31 syllable

waka WAKA (channel 8) is a television station licensed to Selma, Alabama, United States, serving as the CBS affiliate for the Montgomery area. It is owned by Bahakel Communications alongside Tuskegee-licensed CW+ affiliate WBMM (channel 22); B ...

about the

Hōryū-ji is a Buddhist temple that was once one of the powerful Nanto Shichi Daiji, Seven Great Temples, located in Ikaruga, Nara, Ikaruga, Nara Prefecture, Japan. Built shortly after Buddhism was introduced to Japan, it is also one of the oldest Buddh ...

, a Buddhist temple she had visited on a trip two years earlier. After her reading, she won the praises of Emperor

Hirohito , Posthumous name, posthumously honored as , was the 124th emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession, from 25 December 1926 until Death and state funeral of Hirohito, his death in 1989. He remains Japan's longest-reigni ...

, who encouraged her to continue writing Japanese poetry so she could become a "bridge" between Japan and the United States.

Bibliography

She authored a number of books. Among them are: *''The Choice is Always Ours: The Classic Anthology on the Spiritual Way'', Dorothy B. Phillips (Editor), Lucille M. Nixon (Editor), Elizabeth B. Howes (Editor) *''Sounds from the unknown; a collection of Japanese-American

tanka is a genre of classical Japanese poetry and one of the major genres of Japanese literature. Etymology Originally, in the time of the influential poetry anthology (latter half of the eighth century AD), the term ''tanka'' was used to disti ...

'', Lucille M. Nixon (Editor), Tomoe Tana *''Young ranchers at Oak Valley'' *''Living in Japan''

Death and legacy

Nixon died in 1963. An elementary school in Palo Alto currently bears her name.About Lucille M. Nixon Elementary School
Retrieved 18 August 2007.

References

1908 births 1963 deaths 20th-century American poets Poets from California American women poets 20th-century American women writers {{US-poet-1900s-stub