 |
A young Vachel Lindsay |
Oh, sure, I know Vachel Lindsay, the American poet, really I do.
Not.
I mean, I do "know" who Vachel Lindsay is in the American poetry spectrum. But I never really knew the scope of his works and his life and how that was reflected in his works, and little about his personal life other than the fact that he committed suicide by drinking a bottle of lye at the age of 52.
And I knew a very little bit about some of his larger works, which involved a lot of shouting and singing, but I only read them in poetry collections and never heard them read (or, more accurately, performed) out loud. And as I think back, I do not remember ever, ever reading him in high school classes, not even the one on modern (read "late 1800s to maybe mid-1900s") poetry.
So why Vachel Lindsay now?
The Academy of American Poets has a poem-a-day feature; you give them your email, and every day you get a poem in your inbox. Every. Day. On weekdays, the month's Guest Editor selects the themes, the poets, and so on. On weekends, the poems tend to be "oldies but goodies," reaching back into past centuries. On Saturday, August 2, Lindsay's poem, "Meeting Ourselves," was the selection.
I'd never read that poem before. I read it that day, then saw in the bio note that Lindsay was considered a "founder of modern singing poetry."
Modern singing poetry?
Well, that phrase sent me down the Vachel Lindsay rabbit hole. I learned that as a young man he had made three long distance "tramps" across America (Florida to Kentucky, New York City to Ohio, and Illinois to New Mexico). He would trade his poems for food, for a place to sleep, for a drink from a well. And all along the way, he took in the sights and sounds and songs and stories of America, with two of his most noted larger works, "Congo" and "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven" being written and published to acclaim after that third trip.
Who knew? I certainly didn't.
Vachel Lindsay had an international reputation and was in high demand on stage. His appearances were not staid poetry readings, but rousing performances that apparently bordered on a mixture of a revival meeting and stage production. Storyteller Studios made a superb video about Lindsay: his life, his accomplishments, his beliefs in community and progressive goals. The video is worth watching on many levels, but especially to see writer/actor Kevin Purcell speak/sing/shout Lindsay's poetry in a style very much like written accounts of Lindsay captured.
As I continued tapping into nuggets of Vachel Lindsay, I discovered that he was from Springfield, Illinois and is buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery, which also contains Lincoln's tomb. I mentioned Lindsay to Warren and he said, after thinking a moment, that he remembered we'd stopped at "some writer's grave" when we were there in 2021 and that I had taken photos. I had forgotten but Warren was absolutely right, which is pretty good for a guy who is poetry-adverse.
Indeed we had stopped:
And, as I have seen at other burial sites that people make pilgrimages to, a number of coins were laid on top of his stone to let him know he was not forgotten:
The greatest discovery for me on my Lindsay tramp was finding recordings of him reading his own works at Columbia in 1931. Be still, my heart! The recordings are available through Penn Sound, part of the University of Pennsylvania. I have not listened to most of these recordings yet, but I did immediately listen to him recite "The Moon is the North Wind's Cookie," which I read many times in my childhood.
And no, I had no idea it was a Lindsay poem until I saw it listed at Penn Sound.
In 1962, Theodore Roethke wrote a stunning poem, "Supper With Lindsay," which I have read countless times. In it, Lindsay steps into Roethke's room on a brilliant moonlit night and begins talking about the power of poetry. He refers to William Blake: "Why, Blake, he's dead,—/But come to think of it, they say the same of me." The two men share a meal and then, as the kerosene lamp burns down, Lindsay acknowledges he needs to go. But not without a few final observations:
‘Who called me poet of the college yell?
We need a breed that mixes Blake and me,
Heroes and bears, and old philosophers—
John Ransom should be here, and Rene’ Char;
Paul Bunyan is part Russian. did you know?—
We're getting closer to it all the time.'
In 2014, I wrote a post about my very belated realization that the 1939 movie version of The Wizard of Oz was a pilgrimage tale. Discovering Vachel Lindsay in a new expansive way is not quite the same, but there is definitely a feeling of "how did I not know this?"
But now I do.
 |
And an older Lindsay |