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How Popular Is Popular? The Case of Vachel Lindsay

In 1913, Springfield Illinois poet Vachel Lindsay published "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven" in Poetry magazine, and the poem quickly become a popular hit on the day's poetry-reading circuit. Audiences clamored for Lindsay's half-sung dramatic performance so much that Lindsay wrote to friend and Davenport, Iowa, lawyer Arthur Davison Ficke, "I have recited the General til my jaws ache—4444 times."

Here's the beginning of the poem (to be sung, Lindsay instructed, to the tune of "The Blood of the Lamb" with instrumental accompaniment):

Booth led boldly with his big bass drum—
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
The Saints smiled gravely and they said: “He’s come.”
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
Walking lepers followed, rank on rank,
Lurching bravoes from the ditches dank,
Drabs from the alleyways and drug fiends pale—
Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail:—
Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath,
Unwashed legions with the ways of Death—
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)

The publication of Lindsay's "The Congo" in Poetry a year later, however, earned Lindsay more fame than he'd ever bargained for. Response to "The Congo" was sensational among literary and popular audiences alike. Biographer Eleanor Ruggles reports that when Lindsay read "The Congo" at a Poetry event celebrating William Butler Yeats' visit to Chicago, "The audience burst into applause ... and there were bravos from Lindsay's fellow midwesterners, persuading him into reciting General Booth."

Around the same time, in the booming coal-mining metropolis of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1915, 1,500 people—nearly 5% of the population of what was then the 94th largest city in America—turned out to hear Lindsay read.

How popular is that, you might ask?

Well, for Lindsay to find a popular turnout nowadays, he would have to go to Chula Vista in San Diego County, California, now the nation's 94th largest city with a population of 210,000. To match, percentagewise, the size of the crowd that saw Lindsay perform in Wilkes-Barre in 1915, an audiences of about 10,000 people—10,000!—would have to turn out. Earlier this year, when Mary Oliver sold out a 2,500 seat venue in Seattle (consistently ranked as the most literate large city in the U.S. and much larger than Chula Vista), the event made national headlines. "Poet-mania," read one report headline, "Mary Oliver's sold-out appearance sparks a ticket frenzy on Craigslist."

Just imagine what the press would do if 10,000 people turned out in any city for a poetry reading today—or what the frenzy would have been like if Craigslist was around back in 1915.

"Poetry & Popular Culture" interviews son of poet Frank Marshall Davis

"My father's fondest dream"
Setting the record straight on Frank Marshall Davis

Reporting for the Iowa City Press-Citizen newspaper back in April 2008, I wrote about one of Barack Obama's early influences, the poet and journalist Frank Marshall Davis who appears as "Frank" in Obama's autobiography Dreams from My Father. In the late 1940s, the FBI harassed Davis (and everyone else, it seems) for being a suspected commie. This past February, right-wing writers, including Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media, or AIM, began resurrecting this paranoia in order to expose what they call Obama's "carefully concealed communist and foreign connections." These reports have called Davis (1905-1987) "a Communist pawn of Moscow" and "Obama's Communist Mentor."

I recently had a chance to catch up with Mark Davis, son of Frank Marshall Davis, who retired from a career in the U.S. Air Force in 1993. Mark has recently started a blog to counter what he calls the disinformation campaign being conducted by AIM. (See http://my. barackobama.com /page/community/blog/Kaleokualoha).

Here are some excerpts from our conversation.

MC: When did you first learn about Obama's relationship with your father?

MD: I believe it was only this past May, when my lovely significant other advised me that he was mentioned in Obama's book. She also mentioned that my father's background was becoming an issue. I went online and discovered thousands of hits connected to AIM's disinformation campaign.

MC: What did you think when you read "Dreams from My Father"?

MD: Obama's portrayal of my father corresponds quite closely with my own memories. I believe it actually reinforces the point that Obama did not consider him to be his mentor but merely a colorful character who provided some useful (and not-so-useful) advice. Obama recognized that despite (or due to) his wealth of experience, my father was "incurable" of his notion that the glass ceiling for African-Americans may be permanent. This is the central question of race relations. When writing "Dreams," Obama seems to have recognized that the glass ceiling was an anachronism.

It's unfortunate that my father didn't live long enough to see race lose so much value as a factor of success. While it may be true that African-Americans will always be perceived as black, or even as "niggers" to some, race is increasingly irrelevant to success in America. For an increasing share of America, racial prejudice is disappearing. Like MLK Jr., my father's fondest dream—that we could all be judged exclusively by the content of our character—may be at hand.

MC: What made you decide to personally fight back against Kincaid and AIM?

MD: When Kincaid claimed that Obama "developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis," I said "Whoa!" Kincaid also absurdly claimed that my father's "values, passed on to Obama, were those of a communist agent who pledged allegiance to Stalin." I knew I needed to immerse myself in this fight to defend my family honor. From my background as an Intelligence Officer, I could see him mimicking a full-blown Soviet KGB "active measures" disinformation campaign.

For Kincaid, my father seems to be just "collateral damage" in a war against Obama. Although I may not have been as supportive of my family as I could have been while on active duty, I'll be damned if I allow the Kincaid Brigade to demonize my father in this dishonest campaign against Barack Obama—or anyone else.

MC: Your blog is run through barackobama.com. Why did you locate it there, and is it an endorsement of Obama as well as a defense of your father?

MD: An Obama blog seemed most appropriate because not only was Obama a friend of my father but also the enemy of my father's self-declared enemy. AIM deliberately is misrepresenting their relationship as a scandal when there was no wrongdoing, and deliberately misrepresenting Obama's reference to him as just "Frank" (without further identification in Dreams) as a "cover-up" of their imagined scandal.

I abhor such injustice, especially when committed in the name of "fairness, balance, and accuracy in news reporting." Although such defamation can no longer directly hurt my father (may he R.I.P.), it is intended to injure Obama.

I feel it's my responsibility, as an officer and a gentleman, to protect both of their reputations against this disinformation campaign. I want to protect Obama not only to repay the trust and regard he displayed for my father but also to help ensure that these lies don't hurt the campaign of the best candidate for President of the U.S. My.barackobama.com provided a ready-made media vehicle to neutralize those lies.

MC: Were you aware, growing up, that the F.B.I. was assigned to investigate your father in the late 1940s?

MD: I was vaguely aware that he was investigated because of his past activism, but I don't recall him ever providing much detail. The vast majority of his activism was in the civil rights struggle. As a teenager, I recall his delight with King's "I Have A Dream" speech and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We had little discussion of international events other than the Vietnam War, where he encouraged me, for school projects, to research the underlying reasons beyond its media portrayal.

The fact that he did not try to indoctrinate me in any Marxist ideology, although I lived with him until the age of 18, makes me absolutely positive that he did not do so with Obama.

MC: What do you think of your father's poetry now?

MD: I have never been much of a poetry buff (perhaps due to a recessive gene?), but reading his work since the controversy reinforces my determination to disprove Kincaid's misrepresentation of his character.

A slightly different version of this interview appeared in the Press-Citizen on 31 August 2008.

Biden's Bard

Breaking News: "Poetry & Popular Culture" has just learned, from sources sorta close to the Biden campaign, that the vice-presidential nominee's favorite poem may well be Seamus Heaney's "The Cure at Troy" (Heaney's translation of "The Philoctetes" by Sophocles) and especially the lines in the third stanza below which Biden has repeatedly quoted:

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.

What's the appeal for Biden? While "Poetry & Popular Culture" has been unable to reach Barack Obama's running mate himself, our source sorta close to Biden comments: "I think Heaney's poem taps into the growing sense of frustration that this country feels, knowing our past flirtations with rebelling against inept power. And I think this poem is appropriate for Joe and Barack because together they represent hope and history."

Go team.

It's interesting to note that while Biden attaches himself to Nobel Prize-winning Heaney, and while Obama was once friends with politcal poet and civil rights activist Frank Marshall Davis, John McCain's choice verse might well be William Ernest Henley's 1875 poem "Invictus." Indeed, writing for The New York Times on January 21, 2008, William Kristol reported that McCain had to memorize Henley's verse in school and still has it by heart. For Kristol, McCain's affinity for Victorian-era poetry suggests that McCain himself is "not thoroughly modern"—as if the Original Maverick's inability to use email and the internet weren't evidence enough. "John McCain," Kristol writes, "Is a not so modern man. One might call him a neo-Victorian—rigid, self-righteous and moralizing, but (or rather and) manly, courageous and principled." "Invictus" ends:

It matters not how straight the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

"Poetry & Popular Culture" now eagerly awaits McCain's choice of running mates. What shall his or her poetic preferences be?

Guest Posting: Canoedling

Poetry & Popular Culture correspondent Jeff Swenson writes in reporting (hubba hubba) on the racy poetry of canoedling from a time when modern love was reaching, er, something of a tipping point.

At least as early as the 1880s, “canoedling”—the canoe-based variant of “canoodleing”— was becoming tableau in American culture. The still-popular image of a man in the stern, paddling, and the woman reclining on cushions in the bow, often covered by a parasol, was commonly reproduced in magazines, calendars, advertisements and postcards. The mass production of wood-canvas canoes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries helped to make canoeing popular recreation, and young folk soon found the canoe was a remote—and sexually liberating—place for courtship.

Popular songs of the era particularly celebrated this courtship on water. Tin Pan Alley songwriters penned tunes such as "A Little Birch Canoe and You" (1918) and "Beautiful Ohio" (1918). Both songs are relatively chaste, the singer in “Birch Canoe” reflecting on the time when his “one and only dream comes true / The world is fair and fine, and all I want is mine / A little birch canoe and you.” “Ohio” is similarly nostalgic, the singer thinking back on a past love cultivated in the canoe:

Long, long ago, someone I know
Had a little red canoe
In it room for only two,
Love found its start, then in my heart
And like a flower grew

Harry Woods’ "Paddlin’ Madelin’ Home" (1925)—originally performed by ukulele legend Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards—is much spicier. In a typical canoedling scene, the singer and his gal Madeline paddle at midnight, ignoring her father’s calls. They find “a spot where we’re alone / Oh! She never says ‘No’ / So I kiss her.” Of course, the irony of the song’s title is that the singer never does get Madeline paddled home, for after the couple canoedles, he paddles “for one mile” just to “drift back for two,” hoping for the time when she will say, “‘Throw your paddles away.’" Here's "Paddlin' Madelin' Home" in its entirety:

I love a girl named Madeline
I know she loves me, too
For ev'ry night the moon is bright
She rides in my canoe

At midnight on the river
I heard her father call,
But she don't care and I don't care
If we get back at all

'Cause when I'm paddlin' Madeline home
Gee! When I'm paddlin' Madeline home
First I drift with the tide,
Then pull for the shore
I hug her and kiss her
And paddle some more

Then I keep paddlin' Madeline home
Until I find a spot where we're alone
Oh! She never says "No"
So I kiss her and go
Paddlin' Madeline
Sweet sweet Madeline
Paddlin' Madeline home

'Cause when I'm paddlin' Madeline home
Gee! When I'm paddlin' Madeline home
First I kiss her a while
And when I get through
I paddle for one mile
And drift back for two

Then I keep paddlin' Madeline home
Until I find a spot where we're alone
Oh! If she'd only say "Throw your paddles away"
Paddlin' Madeline
Sweet sweet Madeline
Paddlin' Madeline home

You can listen to a recording of “Paddlin’ Madelin’ Home’” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qtb4crdahg. Better yet, grab your uke and hit the river with your favorite gal before the summer is up.

Jeff Swenson writes from Garrettsville, Ohio, where he is Assistant Professor of English and Director of the Writing Center at Hiram College.

TRIVIA QUESTION: What famous cartoon character did Ukulele Ike voice?

Dinosaur Descendant to be Dad at 111

Appeared in the Press-Citizen on August 19, 2008.

And the paparazzi jump to search their files
for other famous moms and dads,
and to the Angelinas and the Brads
add Henry, paramour of reptiles,
and septuagenarian Mildred, his trophy mate,
who’s still got her looks and a great set of leathery legs.
They stand proudly by their dozen eggs
as millions of tabloid readers salivate
wanting to know about their care and feeding,
Henry’s mysterious past in the New Zealand wild,
whether lizards’ love is doggy-styled,
and whether adoption was an option before their breeding.
But can he be a father? Can he meet their needs?
Children are a blessing, he says. And feeds.

Corny Verse?

Given my recent focus on the Fireside Poets Longfellow and Holmes—and given the time of year here in Iowa, when the corn is rolling in and the huskers are hard at work (at the farmers markets and the ethanol plants)—how could I not post this little gem? It's a stereoview card with an excerpt from fellow Fireside Poet John Greenleaf Whittier's "Song of the Huskers" printed on back, beginning with:

Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard!
Heap high the golden corn!
No richer gift has Autumn poured
From out her lavish horn!

Note the torn paper on the back of the card: no doubt an indication that someone pasted it inside a scrapbook somewhere along the way. Read in connection with the magic lantern slide with Holmes's "Lord of all being, throned afar" on it (see "Projected Verse" below), the Whittier stereoview card is further evidence of a 19th century multi-media poetry that anticipates the radio and digital poetries of the 20th century. Thoughts on this early 3-D poetry?