Happy St. Patrick's Day from Poetry & Popular Culture

Here's a cool little postcard poem wishing you all the luck o' the Irish for St. Patty's Day 2011. Printed to look as if it were written out by hand, "Four-Leaf Clover" is signed by its author, poet and short story writer Ella Higginson (1861-1940) who was born in Kansas, grew up in Oregon, married in Portland, and later moved to Washington state where she became active in civic and political affairs. On the subject of divorce, she wrote, for example, the "real evil was not that divorce was too easy, but that marriage was too easy, and that there should be a law preventing marriage before the age of thirty." Higginson was named Poet Laureate of Washington State in 1931, a post that was apparently eliminated sometime thereafter but officially brought back to life in 2011 with the appointment of Samuel Green following passage of Washington Substitute House Bill 1279. Higginson's papers—18 boxes of them at least, all awaiting scholarly investigation—are now at the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies located at Western Washington University in Bellingham.

We here at P&PC like the look of this postcard for a number of reasons, starting with its appearance of having been personally handwritten by Higginson herself (pictured here), whose facsimile autograph stands in lieu of a commercially printed byline and copyright notice. This handwritten front, we think, encourages the postcard's user to view the writing of his or her own personal handwritten message on reverse as poetic in orientation as well—an invitation that this particular postcard's (unidentified) user seems to have accepted. "This is a beautiful thought," he or she writes in pen to an unnamed recipient, "and I want you to just try out this thought for yourself, and don't get nervous or to [sic] tired, 'for quietness and confidence shall be your strength.'"

Those of you who read your Bible don't need to be told that the phrase "for quietness and confidence shall be your strength" is from Isaiah 30:15; what's kind of cool, though, is how the sender is perhaps motivated to quote scripture by Higginson's own allusion to 1 Corinthians 13 in "Four-Leaf Clover" ("One leaf is for hope, and one for faith / And one is for love, you know"). As both writers sample and thus personalize Biblical passages, we have a really funky bit of communication in which the sender uses his or her own Biblical reference (Isaiah) in conjunction with Higginson's poem and its Biblical reference (Corinthians) to encourage the recipient to "try out this thought for yourself," which is pretty much an extension of the invitation we think the handwritten look of the postcard presented in the first place.

It is fair to say that "Four-Leaf Clover" got around. According to one source (1911's Studies in Reading by James William Searson and George Ellsworth Martin), "no other little gem of the language has been more widely appreciated and more warmly loved." Apparently, it was written in 1890 and published in Portland's West Shore magazine. Then it was published in McClure's (1896), The Outlook (1898), the Northwest Journal of Education (1898), Friends' Intelligencer and Journal (1898), American Cookery (1899), Oregon Teachers' Monthly (1902), the Journal of Education (1911), and Sunset (1918). Higginson included it in her book of poems When the Birds Go North Again (1899), and it was reprinted in Annie Russell Marble's Nature Pictures by American Poets (1899), Edmund Clarence Stedman's An American Anthology (1900), The Listening Child (1903), Robert Haven Schauffler's Arbor Day (1909), The Home Book of Verse (1912), and a range of school readers and publications for educators. It was also, Searson & Martin report, put to music "by at least fifty composers."

This is what happens when you don't copyright a poem: it goes viral. May you be so lucky this St. Patrick's Day.

Portland's Poetry Peddlers

A few weeks back, P&PC did a short profile on a personalized poetry business that had set itself up on the waterfront in downtown Portland. At that time, we somewhat rashly proclaimed that the age of the locally-sourced poem had dawned on Stumptown and that lovers of the local could now find appropriate reading material to go along with their farm-fresh eggs, all organic cracked wheat bread, and homemade Marionberry jam. Start your day off right, we implied, by drinking responsibly from your watershed, eating responsibly from your foodshed, and reading responsibly from your poemshed.

The P&PC office isn't about to retract any of those statements just yet, but we will offer a tiny qualifi- cation that perhaps the locally-sourced poetry movement has been in Portland longer than we first thought and has emerged more, uh, organically than we might have indicated. Take the man in the white hat pictured above, for example, whom we encountered peddling his wares—serious, funny, sad and glad poems—at the Saturday Farmer's Market where all the foodie boys and girls go to get their fennel on.* He was busy and we were too uncaffeinated to deal with his customer's pink jacket, striped tote bag and silver flip-flops, so we didn't stop to chat him up. We simply assumed the green newspaper dispenser in the background would serve as caption enough: he and others like him are the Vanguard of the new localism.**

Notes

*Many people associate the act of peddling with small wares and commodity items, not with poems. However, the earliest descriptions of peddling relate to books and verse not to knick knacks and doodads. The Oxford English Dictionary traces "peddling" back to references in Sir Thomas More's The confutacyon of Tyndales answere (1532) ("The pedelyng knaues that here bring ouer theire bookes, grispe aboute an halfepeny") and Thomas Nashe's Pierce Penilesse his supplication to the diuell (1592) ("Who can abide a scuruie pedling Poet to plucke a man by the sleeue at euerie third step"). So maybe More and Nashe didn't exactly hold poetry peddling in the highest esteem, but that doesn't change the fact that Portland's perigrinating poets don't come from a long tradition.

**While the term "new localism" has gained currency of late, it too has poetic origins, as Vachel Lindsay—a poetry peddler in his own right who traded poems for food and lodging as he crossed the U.S. on foot—used the term in the first couple decades of the 20th century to describe his vision for the arts in America.

Small Business Profile: Personalized Poem Service in Downtown Portland

Nearly two years ago, P&PC remembered the entrepreneurial efforts of minister and poet Carl Wilson—a.k.a. Tramp Star and Curly Shingles—who advertised "Poetry for Sale" on a sign outside his Indiana home in the first half of the twentieth century.

Who would've thought that Wilson's spirit is still alive? And not in southern Indiana, where some folks still like to spell potato with an "e," but at the Saturday Market in Portland, Oregon, where the potatoes are organic and the more "e's" you can fit in the locals' favorite color "greeeen" the better?

It's not just the potatoes—or berries, or fruit, or salmon—that are locally sourced in Stumptown, however. As the fetching, retro-style "Personalized Poems" outfit pictured to the left suggests, even the poems are made locally. Complete with a menu ranging from a $1.00 haiku to a $5.00 slam poem and performance, this mobile, briefcase- sized start-up may not be making any IPO's soon, but it's got our vote for best new business in town.

Remembering The New Northwest, Part II: Don't Quarrel About the Farm

In this Part Two of "Remem- bering The New Northwest," the Poetry & Popular Culture office presents another poem from the weekly, Portland-based, suffragist newspaper edited by mother, wife, teacher, dressmaker, and writer Abigail Scott Duniway between 1871 and 1887. If "The Perplexed Housekeeper" (presented last week) catalogs the uncompensated daily work activities of a 19th-century housewife and thus provides support for her critique of the institution of marriage, then today's poem, "Don't Quarrel about the Farm," takes on another aspect of women's economic vulnearability—the subject of women's property rights (or lack thereof).

"Don't Quarrel about the Farm" struck the P&PC office as notable for a couple of reasons: 1) it uses a story with a happy ending to lobby for reforms in the area of women's property rights (other such poems rely on tragedy or worst-case scenarios to make their arguments, as many family disputes weren't resolved as amicably as this one); and 2) the speaker is a persuasive, articulate daughter/sister who wins her brothers' assent, in the process demonstrating that emotion and intellect are not incompatible in the 19th-century woman and prospective voter. It's precisely this mixture, in fact—an emotional, charitable, and rational calm in the face of people driven primarily by their own personal economic interests—that The New Northwest and other suffragist papers claimed that women would bring to the polls and public discourse if granted their right to vote. Today, of course, we recognize the limitations of that essentialist claim. Nevertheless, the rhetorical clinic that Sis puts on for her brothers in "Don't Quarrel about the Farm" is a pretty stunning one. Enjoy.

Don't Quarrel about the Farm
—Anonymous

"No, brothers, don't fall out 'bout it, or quarrel here today,
Be civil toward each other, and listen to what I say:
You know as well as I do that it's wrong this way to speak,
And if you have disputes to make—why, make them in a week.

"Just wait at least, till father's cold, just put it off—pray do,
And what is yours no doubt you'll get; but wait a day or two.
Have more respect for mother, for she's old and weak and ill,
And don't take foul advantage, just because there is no will.

"Now Freddie, you're the oldest! You should good example show;
For what's the good of quarreling, I'd really like to know?
The money's in the bank—there is no reason to complain
Or the paltry share that's in the home from mother try to gain?

"I'm poorer than the poorest one, yet she shall have my part;
I'll work and toil 'mong strangers with a merry, cheerful heart,
If I only live to know that she can call this place her own;
I'd gladly give her all my share that she may have a home.

"I don't know much about the law, for I never went to school.
And you know more about the ways that's followed as a rule;
I think they'll sell the place right out, and and share it so I’m told.
And that would throw out mother, boys, and leave her in the cold.

"Now I can't see how this is right; she earned as much as he;
She paid, I'm sure, those last three notes endorsed by Squire Lee,
And father often told us so. Besides, he always said
He hoped that she would suffer naught when he was with the dead.

"And that's one reason why, I think, he left no will behind—
Because his boys were rich and therefore would be kind:
He did not wish to give offence by willing all to her,
But thought we here, with one accord, would give and not demur.

"Now I know I'm not a scholar, boys; few things I understand;
I don't know much about real estate, or the price of farming land;
Yet this I know, ten acres with a house and barn and ware,
Will not bring much to nine of us, not counting mother's share.

"I'd like any little part of it—a great deal with it too
For I never had the chance to earn that father gave to you;
No! I always had to stay at home and work the livelong day.
And for it got but board and clothes—that's more than you can say!

"And if I am the youngest one with not a cent ahead,
I’ll give my share to mother now! and go and earn my bread;
And you needn't think because I plead that I just want a home;
No! No! I’ll leave—though hard 'twill be for her to live alone.

"This living 'round with the married sons ain't what it's thought to be!
And mother's old, near sixty years, and not as strong as we;
Besides, she ought to have a home—her own—to live in no one's way,
And be protected from harsh words you all might some times say.

"Then let us give the home to her—come, who will follow me?
I give my share to mother, now! My hand is up, you see!
You're losing but a paltry—a little mite of land—
Whoever's willing, as I am, can raise his own right hand!"

And not a hand remained in place, but up they went as one,
And brothers looked and marveled, and wondered how 'twas done!
All quarrel ceased, the brothers knelt, and found themselves in prayer
For Sis with mother, and the home; and peace came to them there!

Remembering The New Northwest: The Perplexed Housekeeper

May 5 of this year will be the 139th Anniversary of the first edition of The New Northwest—the weekly suffragist and reform-oriented newspaper edited out of Portland, Oregon, for 16 years (1871-1887) by former teacher and dressmaker Abigail Scott Duniway. Over that time and under the motto "Free Speech, Free Press, Free People," The New Northwest published all sorts of news, editorials, advertisements, and entertainment, most of which was related in one way or another to the fight for national and international women's suffrage. Via that four-page weekly, Duniway (pictured here) became the region's most prominent voice advocating for women's rights, and so, when Susan B. Anthony came to the area in 1871, it was Duniway who played host and travel companion. And in 1912, when Oregon became the 7th state in the U.S. to pass a women's suffrage amendment, she was the first woman to register to vote in Multnomah County.

While it's not surprising to learn that The New Northwest published poetry, it is surprising to see just how prominent a place poetry occupied in the paper, as nearly every single issue had a poem or two prominently displayed on the front or back pages. In fact, it is the growing opinion of the Poetry & Popular Culture Office that Duniway's paper should occupy a significant place in the literary, as well as the political, history of the Pacific Northwest, as it provided a regular venue for home-grown or locally-sourced poetic talents—some overtly political, some made political by virtue of their situation in the paper—and published them alongside nationally-known writers like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Quaker poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier, and Bret Harte, thus making early Portland into a crossroads of poetic activity and establishing the Rose City as the region's poetic, if not legislative, center. Long before Woody Guthrie came to the Columbia River basin to write songs promoting the Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams, and long before folks like Theodore Roethke, William Stafford, David Wagoner, and Richard Hugo moved here to teach in university-based creative writing M.F.A. programs, Duniway and The New Northwest provided a vehicle for the region's poets to connect and make their work public.

As of this posting, though—despite the paper's importance to the history and culture of the region, and despite the financial backing that's got to be there in the locally-head- quartered pockets of Nike, Adidas, and Columbia Sportswear (employees, corporations, and foundations alike)—The New Northwest does not yet exist in an easily accessible, searchable, digitalized form. Instead, it's on these wacky, poor-quality, old-school strips of plastic that the librarian calls "microfilm," and so it's difficult and frustrating to access and at times very difficult to read. The filmic reproductions are sooooooooo bad that they won't even print out with much legibility.

These challenges have not prevented six intrepid undergraduate students in a Poetry of the Pacific Northwest course being offered at Willamette University this semester from braving the archive, however. (This is the same group of students who, earlier in the semester, attended the Fisher Poets Gathering in Astoria, Oregon.) Kali Boehle-Silva, Isabella Guida, John McKenzie, Gunnar Paulsen, Jonathan Shivers, and Sarah Spring have been unearthing this poetry, some of which will be showcased here over the next couple of weeks. We begin with this tasty treat from week five (June 2, 1871) of The New Northwest (note the pun on "rights" in line two and the break in meter in the poem's penultimate line):

The Perplexed Housekeeper
by Mrs. F. D. Gage

I wish I had a dozen pair
Of hands this very minute;
I’d soon put all these things to rights—
The very deuce is in it.

Here’s a big washing to be done,
One pair of hands to do it—
Sheets, shirts and stockings, coats and pants—
How will I e'er get through it?

Dinner to get for six or more,
No loaf left o’er from Sunday,
And baby cross as he can live—
He’s always so on Monday.

And there’s the cream, ‘tis getting sour,
And must forthwith be churning,
And here’s Bob wants a button on—
Which way shall I be turning?

“Tis time the meat was in the pot,
The bread was worked for baking,
The clothes were taken from the boil—
Oh dear! the baby’s waking!

Oh dear! if P—— comes home,
And finds things in this bother,
He’ll just begin and tell me all
About his tidy mother.

How nice her kitchen used to be,
Her dinner always ready
Exactly when the dinner bell rung—
Hush, hush, dear little Freddy,

And then will come some hasty word,
Right out before I’m thinking—
They say that hasty words from wives
Set sober men to drinking.

Now isn’t that a great idea,
That men should take to sinning,
Because a weary, half-sick wife
Can’t always smile so winning?

When I was young I used to earn
My living without trouble;
Had clothes and pocket money too,
And hours of leisure double.

I never dreamed of such a fate,
When I, a lass! was courted—
Wife, mother, nurse, seamstress, cook, housekeeper, chambermaid, laundress, dairywoman and scrub generally doing the work of six.
For the sake of being supported.

From the Poetry & Popular Culture Mailbag: Gumball Poetry

This week, Rachel Dacus writes in from the Bay Area, giving Poetry & Popular Culture a little bit of history to, uh, chew on for a while: poetry gumball machines once distributed across eight states by the innovative Portland-based publishing operation Gumball Poetry.

For a while, somewhere between 2004 and 2006, it seems, you could get your hands on a poetry gumball machine stuffed with the work of ten or so poets for as little as $300 each (plus extra for the stand). Here, Dacus takes a moment to reflect on what was—and what could have been.

Dear Poetry & Popular Culture,

Poetry in unlikely places is one of my favorite things (which makes P&PC one of my favorite blogs, of course), and I'm writing to share an example. On my bookshelf sits a row of plastic capsules that were part of a really original poetry-publishing experiment—the poetry gumball. Instead of finding a Bazooka Joe bubble gum comic inside each capsule, you get chewable gum and a short poem. A real poem.

But Bazooka didn't launch or even adopt this project. I mean, pick the two most incompatible cultural artifacts you can think of, and poetry and chewing gum might be there at the top of the list. But Gumball Poetry didn't see it that way, and neither did I. When I first heard of the gumball poetry-delivery mechanism, I thought, I just have to have my poem combined with my favorite childhood chew-toy: my very own Bazooka Joe Brodsky.

That was the grand plan, at least, and I could hardly stand the excitement. But then I discovered that the culturally chic Bay Area didn't boast a single Gumball Poetry machine. To buy poems and gum, I'd have to take my fifty cents—my two quartets?—all the way to Portland where Gumball poetry was making its grand offer: "Would you like a Gumball Poetry Machine in your cafe, bar, dance hall, office, hospital, library, school, bathroom, art gallery, clothing store, car, community center, life, church?" The one that really intrigued me was the church—it really rang my bell. All the quarters go into the coffers. The pearly whites meet the pearly gates. Saint Peter meets David St. John.

But, alas, Gumball Poetry is no more. The website remains open—now an artifact of a really cool cultural concept—and if you go there you find this note: "This is all just here for historical purposes. In case any of our memories go. Gumball Poetry is on hiatus (likely permanent). We miss you too. It was the best fun we ever had."

Looks like even popular poetry's bubble can burst.

Yours,

Rachel Dacus

Rachel Dacus' poetry books are Another Circle of Delight, Femme au chapeau, and Earth Lessons. She blogs at Rocket Kids.