Tramping With a Poet in the Rockies

Tramping With a Poet in the Rockies

Vachel Lindsay is the poet. He is best known as the author of General William Booth Enters Heaven, The Congo and Johnny Appleseed. He also wrote a highly comical piece called The Daniel Jazz. He is a wonderful reciter, and is aided by a sonorous, heaven-reaching voice. All his poems are written to be read aloud, chanted, or declaimed; in some cases they are written to be danced also, and played as games. In many of his recitations the audience is called upon to take part in choruses and refrains. Thus, in one poem, when Lindsay says, Ive been to Palestine, the audience as one man has to cry back to him, What did you see in Palestine? This is rapturously enjoyed by the audience. When you have heard the poet you can well understand that he did not starve when he used to tramp in America and recite to the farmers for a meal and a nights lodging. He has gained a great popularity. He is, however, something more than an entertainer. He has a spiritual message to the world, and is deeply in earnest. In a large experience of men and women in many countries, I have rarely met such a rebel against vulgarity, materialism,[vi] and the modern artificial way of life. At the same time, despite his poetry, he is almost inarticulate. He has helped me, and here in a way I help him by giving in a new form part of the richness of his thoughts and his opinions. Vachel Lindsay visited England in 1920, and recited his poems at Oxford and Cambridge and to several groups of friends in London. His mother, Catharine Frazee Lindsay, who accompanied him, was a notable woman in Springfield, Illinois, in religious and progressive activities. She succumbed to an attack of pneumonia this year. But those who met her in this country recognised in her a remarkable figure. At Vachels invitation I visited Springfield last summer, and we went to the Rockies, and tramped together to Canada, and this volume is a record of our holiday. A mutual friend of ours is Christopher Morley, who brought us together in 1919. When he heard of our projected expedition he interposed to get some letters for the New York Evening Post. Some thirty-two of these were written, mostly by the camp fire or sitting on the rocks in the sun, and were printed in the Post, where they attracted considerable attention. Centurion in the Century Magazine for August wrote: Mr. Lindsay and Mr. Graham are having a glorious time. As for those of us who must spend the dog-days in stuffy cities and stuffier offices, the picture of the[vii] two of them by a camp fire in the Rockies waking to the freshness and glory of a mountain dawn iswell, if there are no future issues of the Century Magazine, you may be sure that the entire staff, inspired by this example, has started vagabonding. Another, a facetious scribe, wrote: It is conceded by every one that Stephen Grahams Tramping with a Poet will some day stand on the shelf of open-air literature beside Travels with a Donkey. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 67960
Author: Graham, Stephen
Release Date: May 1, 2022
Format: eBook
Language: English
Publisher: D. Appleton-Century Company
Publication Date: 1922
Publisher Country: United States

Contributors

Contributor (Author): Lindsay, Vachel, 1879-1931

Illustrator: Hill, Vernon, 1887-1972