Do you know anyone who doesn’t like poetry? Our poet this month might just convert them into poetry lovers!
Enter Vachel Lindsay.
Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) was an American traveling bard known for his dramatic performances of poetry and music. His love of story and rhythm kept the spoken word alive during a literary revival in the early 20th Century. Children all over the midwest found inspiration for poem-dancing with his words. Vachel, who studied at an art school in New York, delighted many of his followers when he personally illustrated many of his poems.
Here is a quote from the publisher of his book entitled Johnny Appleseed:
“Lindsay the hero-worshipper, the preacher, the dreamer, the glorifier of Springfield, Illinois, the banner-waver and drum-beater for all true Springfields and a great American highway connecting them – that one is Lindsay. He knows how to put the essence of an American’s ideas about the pioneer, the sower, the circus, into booming, singing rhythms for the human voice to speak again. The virtue of his strange, emotional story-poems is in their simplicity, in their use of general ideas in mind pictures that young people can understand, and in the primitive climaxes of rhythm…
Many thousands of young people who know Lindsay personally are reading and writing poetry because he stirred them first to a feeling of the possibility of words in rhythmic patterns. These boys and girls are in high schools all over America, or in isolated villages where he tramped, “preaching the gospel of beauty,” exchanging a reading or a new poem for his food and lodging.”
It seemed fitting to delve into Lindsay’s poetry this month as we’ve spent time this fall with another famous person from Springfield, IL – Abraham Lincoln! Take time to enter into and revel in these five simple story-poems by Vachel Lindsay, or read through his other fabulous poems.
You may enjoy reading the complete Litany of Heroes. One of my favorite stanzas is written about Shakespeare:
“Would that in body and spirit Shakespeare came
Vachel Lindsay, Litany of Heroes
Visible emperor of the deeds of Time,
With Justice still the genius of his rhyme,
Giving each man his due, each passion grace,
Impartial as the rain from Heaven’s face
Or sunshine from the Heaven-enthroned sun.
Sweet Swan of Avon, come to us again.
Teach us to write, and writing, to be men.“
Dispersed throughout Force and Beauty this month, you’ll find three songs to sing. The Fox, our folk song, was finalized days before we watched from our front window as our neighborhood fox ate a squirrel. It was gross, but foxes need to eat and feed their families too! November also provides us with opportunities to sing and to speak our thankfulness, so our hymn, Now Thank We All Our God, seemed quite fitting. Finally, you’ll get to sing along with one of Abraham Lincoln’s campaign songs called Lincoln and Liberty.
November finds itself as the final month in our first term, but this issue still contains the same longer passages we contemplate from the Bible, Shakespeare, and other historical speeches. We will start a whole new set next month.
Enjoy November!!
Euclid
Crickets on a Strike
The Dandelion
The Broncho That Would Not Be Broken
Litany of Heroes (on Bravery)