Two old crows sat on a fence rail.
Two old crows sat on a fence rail,
Thinking of effect and cause,
Of weeds and flowers,
And nature’s laws.
One of them muttered, one of them stuttered,
One of them stuttered, one of them muttered.
Each of them thought far more than he uttered.
One crow asked the other crow a riddle.
One crow asked the other crow a riddle:
The muttering crow
Asked the stuttering crow,
“Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle?
Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle?”
“Bee-cause,” said the other crow,
“Bee-cause,
B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause.”
Just then a bee flew close to their rail:—
“Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ZZZZZZZZ.”
And those two black crows
Turned pale,
And away those crows did sail.
Why?
B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause.
B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause.
“Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ZZZZZZZZ.”
(See our Video for a live performance.)
This column has not previously published a poem quite like the stanzas above. But then this column has not previously presented a poet as singularly strange and different as Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931). Once the most popular American poet, he is now almost totally obscure except perhaps in Springfield, Illinois, his home town.
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Lindsay is primarily known for three poems: “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight,” “General William Booth Enters into Heaven” and especially a still-controversial piece called “The Congo: A Study of the Negro Race.”
Lindsay was a performance poet. He fashioned his work for maximum effectiveness when read aloud, and he became famous for his highly theatrical presentations, often singing or chanting the lines while accompanied by bass drum, cymbals and tambourines. He
perceived himself as the founder of modern singing poetry or “Higher Vaudeville” as he sometimes put it.
In today’s world, a touring poet will fly into a city, give his readings and fly on to the next engagement. In Lindsay’s case, he would sometimes take to the road literally and would walk from town to town, often exchanging poetry performances for food and shelter. He handed out pamphlets called ”Rhymes to be Traded for Bread.” If someone would do his laundry, Lindsay would respond with a gift of a new poem. Just consider these astonishing walk-a-thons:
1906 From Florida to Kentucky
1908 New York to Ohio
1912 Illinois to New Mexico
Because his poems were designed for live performance, they were frequently preceded by descriptions such as: “A chant to which it is intended a group of children shall dance and improvise pantomime led by their dancing teacher.”
And within the poems themselves instructions would be interspersed as in this passage from “The Congo.”
A troupe of skull-faced witch-men came
With pomposity
Through the agate doorway in suits of flame,
Yea, long-tailed coats with a gold-leaf crust
And hats that were covered with diamond-dust.
And the crowd in the court gave a whoop and a call
And danced the juba from wall to wall.
But the witch-men suddenly stilled the throng
With a great deliberation & ghostliness
With a stern cold glare, and a stern old song: –
“Mumbo-jumbo will hoo-doo you.” . . .
Just then from the doorway, as fat as shotes,
With overwhelming assurance, good cheer, and pomp
Came the cake-walk princes in their long red coats,
Canes with a brilliant laquer shine,
And tall silk hats that were red as wine.
And they pranced with their butterfly partners there,
With growing speed and sharply marked dance-rhythm
Coal-black maidens with pearls in their hair,
Knee-skirts trimmed with the jessamine sweet,
And bells on their ankles and little black feet.
And the couples railed at the chant and the frown
Of the witch-men lean, and laughed them down.
(O rare was the revel and well worth while
That made those glowering witch-men smile.)
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Note: a shote or shoat is a piglet newly weaned. New to me. I should spend more time on the farm.
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Lindsay was a poet of the Midwest, at a time when Carl Sandburg and Edgar Lee Masters were in their prime. And not surprisingly he worshiped another Midwesterner, Mark Twain.
Behold a Republic
Where a river speaks to men
And cries to those that love its ways,
Answering again
When in the heart’s extravagance
The rascals bend to say
“O singing Mississippi
Shine, sing for us today.”
But who is this in sweeping Oxford gown
Who steers the raft, or ambles up and down,
Or throws his gown aside, and there in white
Stands gleaming like a pillar of the night?
The lion of high courts, with hoary mane,
Fierce jester that this boyish court will gain —
Mark Twain!
The bad world’s idol:
Old Mark Twain!
All praise to Emerson and Whitman, yet
The best they have to say, their sons forget.
But who can dodge this genius of the stream,
The Mississippi Valley’s laughing dream?
He is the artery that finds the sea
In this the land of slaves, and boys still free.
He is the river, and they one and all
Sail on his breast, and to each other call.
Come let us disgrace ourselves,
Knock the stuffed gods from their shelves,
And cinders at the schoolhouse fling.
Come let us disgrace ourselves,
And live on a raft with gray Mark Twain
And Huck and Jim
And the Duke and the King.
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There was another side to Vachel Lindsay that might surprise many of us. In 1915 he wrote “The Art of the Moving Picture,” the first major book on film criticism. Still in print, the latest edition has an introduction by Martin Scorsese. The word Lindsey often applied to cinema was “Transfiguration,” and he viewed motion pictures as high art, predicting that the director would become recognized as the real author of a film.
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He was D.W. Griffith’s guest at the legendary premiere of “Intolerance.” And upon hearing that film star Mary Pickford was leaving motion-pictures for the stage, he wrote this charming piece.
Mary Pickford, doll divine,
Year by year, and every day
At the moving-picture play,
You have been my valentine.
Once a free-limbed page in hose,
Baby-Rosalind in flower,
Cloakless, shrinking, in that hour
How our reverent passion rose,
How our fine desire you won.
Kitchen-wench another day,
Shapeless, wooden every way.
Next, a fairy from the sun.
Once you walked a grown-up strand
Fish-wife siren, full of lure,
Snaring with devices sure
Lads who murdered on the sand.
But on most days just a child
Dimpled as no grown-folk are,
Cold of kiss as some north star,
Violet from the valleys wild.
Snared as innocence must be,
Fleeing, prisoned, chained, half-dead—
At the end of tortures dread
Roaring Cowboys set you free.
Fly, O song, to her to-day,
Like a cowboy cross the land.
Snatch her from Belasco’s hand
And that prison called Broadway.
All the village swains await
One dear lily-girl demure,
Saucy, dancing, cold and pure,
Elf who must return in state.
Sidebar: I think it’s fair to say that Wordsworth and Coleridge don’t have a broad following among three- and four-year-olds, but that’s not true of Vachel Lindsay whose little turtle poem is so very popular with that age audience throughout the English-speaking world.
There was a little turtle.
He lived in a box.
He swam in a puddle.
He climbed on the rocks.
He snapped at a mosquito.
He snapped at a flea.
He snapped at a minnow.
And he snapped at me.
He caught the mosquito.
He caught the flea.
He caught the minnow.
But he didn’t catch me.
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In the spirit of that little nursery rhyme, I would like to report that Vachel Lindsay led a long and fulfilling life, but that was not to be.
Lindsay continued to tour into the 1920’s, but his audiences grew thinner and his income almost non-existent as oratorical poetry fell out of fashion. The love affair of his life with poet Sara Teasdale came apart when she married another. His health deteriorated with a steep mental decline, and in 1931 he took his own life by drinking an early version of Lysol. A strange ending to an extraordinary life.
But perhaps this poem, written fairly late in his career, best captures the days that formed his character and characterized his art.
Even the shrewd and bitter,
Gnarled by the old world’s greed,
Cherished the stranger softly
Seeing his utter need.
Shelter and patient hearing,
These were their gifts to him,
To the minstrel, grimly begging
As the sunset-fire grew dim.
The rich said “You are welcome.”
Yea, even the rich were good.
How strange that in their feasting
His songs were understood!
The doors of the poor were open,
The poor who had wandered too,
Who had slept with ne’er a roof-tree
Under the wind and dew.
The minds of the poor were open,
Their dark mistrust was dead.
They loved his wizard stories,
They bought his rhymes with bread.
Those were his days of glory,
Of faith in his fellow-men.
Therefore, to-day the singer
Turns beggar once again.
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And now to our video.
VIDEO. There are four selections. Lindsay scholar Kevin Purcell and his young friends perform “Two Old Crows,” printed at the start of this column.
There is a brief discussion about Lindsay’s poem saluting the Panama Canal. The painting is by Lindsay, who studied art in New York and Chicago.
Lindsay’s verse was typically extroverted, but James Daniels offers Lindsay’s warm remembrance of prairie days gone by called “The Flower-Fed Buffaloes.”
Lastly we hear authentic portions of Lindsay’s most famous poem, “The Congo” in a unique recording made in January 1931, eleven months before Lindsay died. Hear how
“Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.”
CLICK ON THIS LINK FOR VIDEO: VACHEL LINDSAY
