MICHAELIS, ALINE TRIPLETTE (1885-1958). Aline Triplette Michaelis, poet, daughter of Frank and Bettie (Herndon) Triplette, was born in St. Louis in 1885. She was educated in St. Louis and Kansas City, and her early poems were published by the Kansas City Star. After marriage to F. G. Michaelis, she lived in Austin for several years before moving to Beaumont in 1919, where she worked as a staff member of the Beaumont Enterprise. Writing under her own name and the pen name Susan Arnold Taylor, she published more than 10,000 poems. Her poem "Courage" was distributed to servicemen with the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I.^qv Her column, "The Rhyming Optimist," was carried by King Features for some sixteen years and reached well over three million daily readers. Many of her poems dealt with nature; her work was characterized by its optimism. She published a volume of her verse, Courage and Other Poems, in 1931. She was the first woman to be named Poet Laureate of Texas,^qv an honor she held from 1934 to 1936. She was a Methodist. Aline Michaelis died on August 10, 1958, in Beaumont after a lengthy illness.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Beaumont Enterprise, August 11, 1958. Margaret Royalty Edwards, Poets Laureate of Texas (San Antonio: Naylor, 1956; rev. ed., 1966).

Margaret Royalty Edwards