Background
Henry Meade Bland (1863-1931), was a native California poet who
succeeded Ina Coolbrith as the state's Poet Laureate (1929). After graduate
study at the University of the Pacific (1890-91), Stanford (M.A. 1895) and the
University of California, he taught English at San Jose State Teachers
College(1899-1931), the forerunner of San Jose State University. During the
early years of the twentieth century, Bland penned reviews of the works of
California writers for Town and Country. He was the friend of Joaquin Miller
(his daughter married Miller's grandson), Jack London, John Muir, Edwin
Markham, and other California literary figures. His verse was published in
Sierran Pan & Other Poems (1924) and six other volumes. His prose writings
include Stevenson's California (1924) and Prose & Poetry for Children
(1914). Edwin Markham wrote of Bland's poetry that it contained "lines of true
beauty and mystic music." David Starr Jordan noted that Henry Meade Bland's
poetry was "always sane."