death_date birth_place nationality birth_date genre article_title name occupation
2013 1920 billings , montana american 1920 light verse joyce la mers
 joyce la mers poet
joyce la mers

joyce la mers -lrb- 1920 -- october 2013 -rrb- was an american writer of light poetry .
la mers was born joyce duncan in billings , montana in 1920 , the third child and only daughter of a successful livestock dealer .
the duncan family was devastated during the great depression , losing the family farm , and moved to fresno , california in 1938 .
during world war ii la mers dropped out of fresno state university , where she was pursuing a degree in journalism , and later married her boyfriend tom carlile .
she worked as a homemaker and mother to the couple 's two children until their divorce 17 years later , and subsequently got a job as a secretary and then as a copy writer at an advertising firm .
her 1960 marriage to her second husband , design engineer herbert la mers , produced one daughter , and lasted until his death in 2003 .
la mers published her first poem in `` the southern churchman '' when she was seven years old .
since then her poetry has appeared in `` the wall street journal '' , `` the saturday evening post '' , `` collier 's '' , `` light quarterly '' , and several anthologies .
her work , usually humorous and always metrical , has been characterized as `` a marriage of dorothy parker and ogden nash '' .
in 2007 she pledged half a million dollars to `` light quarterly '' , then the us 's only literary magazine devoted to light verse , to ensure its continued publication .
the terms of the gift resulted in the establishment of a non-profit organization , the foundation for light verse , which now publishes the magazine .
la mers , a great-grandmother and 40-year resident of oxnard , california , continued to publish and give public readings of her poetry up until her death in 2013 .
in 2013 she was honoured as a `` literary treasure '' by the government of ventura county .
