PHOEBE'S REVOLT

A rhymed revolt by eight-year-old Phoebe Euphemia Brandon Brown who "said she had just one request:/ To dress the way her father dressed." The bustled household females hustle the rebel into a party in the hope that seeing girls dressed properly will change her mind. Refusing to capitulate, Phoebe stages a sit-in. . . and the tub water gets cold. Father takes her at her word and supplies the paternal paraphernalia. "Her father's clothes! And yet—somehow—/They didn't seem so lovely now./ The charm had paled. The lure was gone./ But Phoebe had to put them on". . . for seven days. But defrocking only silences her; it takes father's reminder (an old snapshot) to mother to summon a seamstress for "a simple sailor dress or two/ in sober, modest navy blue." Against a backdrop of 1904 New York and Edith Wharton gentility, Phoebe does her thing with style and wit. Girls who've balked at bows will sympathize; parents who spot the Gibson girl-gaslight details will have the first and last laugh.