Presidents’ Day poetry
[NOTE: Today is Presidents’ Day, and this is a repeat of a previous post.]
I’m not that old, but pedagogical practices in my youth seem absolutely archaic compared to whatever passes for education these days. For starters, we had Washington’s Birthday and Lincoln’s Birthday, and they were on their actual real birthdays: Lincoln on February 12, and Washington on February 22.
Two days off! But they didn’t necessarily fall on Mondays; they fell whenever they fell, and sometimes – alas – they fell on a Saturday or a Sunday.
We also had to memorize terrible patriotic poetry back then, and lots of it. When I say “terrible” I’m not referring to its patriotism, I mean that it just wasn’t very good poetry. I suppose kids weren’t supposed to care about that aspect of it. Also, in those days I was very quick at memorizing poetry and so those early poems have tended to stick. Therefore I have a relatively large load of memorized doggerel to draw on.
One of those poems was about George Washington. To give you an idea of the flavor of what I’m talking about, it started this way: “Only a baby, fair and small…” and then filled the reader in on all the stages of Washington’s life, verse by verse. I had never looked it up online and was skeptical that it could be found, but voila! Here it is; isn’t the internet great?
And I now present it to you as an example of what the New York City schoolchild used to have to memorize and recite. I seem to recall this was in fifth grade:
Only a baby, fair and small,
Like many another baby son,
Whose smiles and tears came swift at call,
Who ate and slept and grew – that’s all,
The infant Washington.
I’ll let you go to the site and see it for yourself. The next verse is for the schoolboy Washington, then we have the lad Washington, then finally man/patriot and a lot of generalities with the only specifics being “surveyor, general, president.” Why so much emphasis on Washington’s boyhood I don’t know; maybe to go with the cherry tree story. But still, at least we were taught to think highly of Washington.
And Lincoln had a poem for memorization, too. It was a better effort than the Washington one, I think, although still not very good and rather creepy at that. I see now that the poem was by Rosemary Benet, apparently the wife of Stephen Vincent Benet.
I have no idea why the poem they had us memorize about Lincoln was not about his accomplishments at all, but rather about the mother who died when he was nine years old. In the poem, she comes back as a ghost and inquires about him. But here it is:
If Nancy Hanks
Came back as a ghost,
Seeking news
Of what she loved most,
She’d ask first
“Where’s my son?
What’s happened to Abe?
What’s he done?”“Poor little Abe,
Left all alone.
Except for Tom,
Who’s a rolling stone;
He was only nine,
The year I died.
I remember still
How hard he cried.”“Scraping along
In a little shack,
With hardly a shirt
To cover his back,
And a prairie wind
To blow him down,
Or pinching times
If he went to town.”“You wouldn’t know
About my son?
Did he grow tall?
Did he have fun?
Did he learn to read?
Did he get to town?
Do you know his name?
Did he get on?”
The urge that rose in me was to shout, “Yes, YES, don’t you know?” into the void.
Instead of that one, we might have been asked to memorize this poem – or at least the very last part of it, which I’ve always liked:
And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down
As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs,
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.
Or what about this old chestnut by Walt Whitman? Schmaltzy, but it still gives me a little shiver when I read it:
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
I had to memorize “Oh, Captain! My Captain!” back fifty years ago. I still have the first stanza imprinted on my memory.
I’m sorry but now I have this hilarious but completely stupid rap cartoon going through my mind: (refrain, “WashingTON, WASHINGton…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbRom1Rz8OA&t=75s
Walt Whitman said that this was his least favorite poem and was embarrassed by it.
Our Republic is in grave danger. I wish we had a Washington or a Lincoln handy.
Re: Whitman / “O Captain!”
____________________________________________
I’m almost sorry I ever wrote [O Captain! My Captain!], though I don’t suppose I ought to be. It is, in one sense, so foreign to the rest of my work. I don’t know but I do almost wish it were wiped out of existence. It’s a poem, no doubt—a poem, I suppose. But I guess I’m not just in the right mood for it today. I have to be in a certain mood to appreciate it even a little.
–Traubel, Horace. “With Walt Whitman in Camden,” (Vol. 3, p. 317).
____________________________________________
If one went on to write “Song of Myself,” one of the most astonishing poems written in English, particularly American English, “O Captain!” might come off as no more than a cracking good schoolboy poem.
When I was a schoolboy, it was a favorite. Still is.
I had forgotten about the Nancy Hanks poem. I think we might have memorized that one. I do remember memorizing “O Captain, My Captain” and discussing it in English Class.
Now they want to take down their statutes.
Make no mistake Whitman loved Lincoln and was not so embarrassed as to read the elegy aloud nor sell autographed copies when he faced financial difficulties towards the end of his life:
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In the 1870s and 1880s, Whitman gave several lectures over eleven years on Lincoln’s death. He usually began or ended the lectures by reciting “My Captain”, despite his growing prominence meaning he could have read a different poem. In the late 1880s, Whitman earned money by selling autographed copies of “My Captain”…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Captain!_My_Captain!
My sister recited “O Captain, My Captain!” at our town’s commemoration of Memorial Day one year. I recalled her reciting it. She informed me of the circumstances of her reciting it.
I’ve forgotten when I learned “O Captain!” but it was the first poem in which I discovered the possibility that there could be a whole ‘nother layer of meaning to the text.
Imagine!
“O Captain, My Captain!” is schmaltzy, but catchy. It was repeated often when Robin Williams’ death was announced: see “Dead Poets’ Society”.
Whitman was prouder of his other elergy on Lincoln’s death: “When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloom’d”, though that one is seldom studied in high school these days. Probably because no teenager could read “breast of spring” without giggling.
I had the feeling they decided to combine into one President’s day when MLK day was becoming a national holiday. I wish they’d reduce Gay Pride month into just one Day.
Kids learning poems or stories about the childhood of famous adults is because it’s so much more relatable. As my grandson was Just Now making FaceTime funny faces at me and with me & wife, our daughter mentioned a childish acting man who said “kids like me because they think I’m one of them”. The power of being thought to be like, the movie Being There.
Memorable poems were far more important before the Printing Press, in about 1440. Now there’s a news aggregation site called 1440 that was ok looking, tho still Dem friendly.
I’m wondering if the commercial popularity of Oh, Captain didn’t make Whitman uncomfortable, thinking if so many people like it, it can’t really be special good, it’s too accessible to the (inferior?) normal folk. I’m sure many post WW I artists & writers have that snobbery, with F. Scott Fitzgerald even mocking it, but Walt has more of a reputation for being a man, and a poet, of the working folk.
Today most poets you hear of are because their poems, and doggerel, have been made into songs, popular or not. I’m enjoying karaoke, singing songs I like, partly because it has and does push me to practice the poetry recital aspect of the song. Quite a few include some indication of rhyming difficulty, with a lot of good hip-hop rap having interesting rhymes.
“There’s vomit on his sweater already, mom’s spaghetti…” very real but not pretty. Very very anti-schmaltzy. Which is partly what makes it cool.
There Goes Rhymin’ Simon was the third solo album of Paul Simon, who is perhaps the best pop music poet. Better, tho less edgy, than also great Dylan.
Old joke:
“I told my son, “When Lincoln was your age, he walked two miles to school every day. And he said “Yeah, and when Lincoln was YOUR age, he was President of the United States!”
A sort of visual poetry: The Better Angels
I grew up on schoolhouse rock perhaps the last generation to do so
Huh. Interesting.
INTRODUCTION
You know the old saying: “If you cannot say something good about someone …” . And, ” Don’t speal ill of the dead. ”
But Whitman’s been food for the worms for a mighty long time and it’s probably doing him no injustice to mention that encountering his name or an image of his face, instantly brings to mind his enthusiastic letters to his “gossips” recounting his adventures cruising the wards of the military hospitals as part of his volunteer work. A little side benefit as he may have viewed it. That is how he is weighed in the moral balance from my perspective with the poetry counting for nothing and stirring no reaction.
THE MAIN POINT
But that may be unfair according to the norms of the prevailing order, or perhaps any to other where afficionados are bound to exist in fair numbers.
For in witnessing to the grandeur of the emotive warbles emitted by the sensitive male, they celebrate something that, while faintly visible if hardly noticeable to me as an artifact or phenomenon, is fundamentally incomprehensible in rationale. The question in exaggerated form is not “how good is it as an example of its type”, but “how can you bring yourself to tolerate any of it?”
Which may be related to why dance – for the most part unless it is an attractive and shapely woman flinging herself around or some guy knocking out a clever quick step – is like watching a pot of water slowly boil. “Yeah, ok, now what”
THE REAL AND GENERAL SIGNIFICANCE
Which is part of what makes this blog interesting. How can people who perceive much in roughly the same way, be so utterly alien in other sensibilities to one another in what we call an aesthetic sense.
My studies in psychology never touched on such matters and are so many decades out of date that they would be useless to revisit anyway.
THE IMPLICATION
Three things that are incomprehensible to me except in vague outline or minimal aspect and provoke reactions other than appreciation, stir genuine enthusiasm in others:
Liberalism or collective sensibility
Poetry
and Dance.
THE CONCLUDING POSITS
[Do ] these activity/interests all share some characteristic or motivating force [?]
[I wonder then, if ] they form an attribute category of some kind.
THE QUESTION
What is the defining essence of that nameless category?
Not so long ago, many people knew “O Captain! My Captain!” or at least its first line. “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” was much lusher and more “poetic.” This part reminds me of the assassinations of the 1960s:
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,
With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black,
With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d women standing,
With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,
With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads,
With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn,
With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the coffin,
The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs—where amid these you journey,
With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang,
Here, coffin that slowly passes,
I give you my sprig of lilac.
It’s a much longer poem, and the stanzas to death at the end probably weren’t judged fitting for classroom study and memorization:
Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate death.
_________
Edgar Lee Masters and Vachel Lindsay both came from Lincoln country in Illinois. Masters despised Lincoln. Lindsay idolized him. Lindsay’s once well-known poem “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight” has more to do with the First World War than with Lincoln or his times.
DNW:
I don’t know the answer to your question, but I suspect brain structure is somehow part of it. However, dance and poetry are very different from each other and I wouldn’t lump them together at all except that both are in the realm of the arts. Poetry is verbal and dance is non-verbal.
Short answer: it would be an awfully boring Earth if everybody liked the same things, or believed in the same ideals. Different minds provoke the most conflict, as well as spark the most joy.
I’m wondering if the commercial popularity of Oh, Captain didn’t make Whitman uncomfortable, thinking if so many people like it, it can’t really be special good, it’s too accessible to the (inferior?) normal folk. I’m sure many post WW I artists & writers have that snobbery, with F. Scott Fitzgerald even mocking it, but Walt has more of a reputation for being a man, and a poet, of the working folk
Tom+Grey:
Whtiman was a man of the people and he paid his dues big time as a nurse to the wounded in the Civil War. Or here’s his quote on the relationship of poet to society:
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Whitman wrote in the preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass: “The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.” He believed there was a vital, symbiotic relationship between the poet and society. He emphasized this connection especially in “Song of Myself” by using an all-powerful first-person narration.[ An American epic, it deviated from the historic use of an elevated hero and instead assumed the identity of the common people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Whitman
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I read his reluctance about “O Captain!” as somewhat as if the Beatles kept being asked to play “I Want to Hold Your Hand” after they had created “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper’s.”
I Hear America Singing
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
–Walt Whitman, “I Hear America Singing”
Thanks, huxley, for excellent point illustration with I Want To Hold Your Hand. Which I recall winning, in 1970, some LA radio stations’ top 500 songs ranking, over the Stones’ Satisfaction, and the Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations.
Maybe the Beatles stopped touring partly to avoid having to play their early hits.
For some 70s years, Brian Wilson would not let the Boys sing their early hits until the encores—but unlike the Beatles, that new stuff was mediocre.
To DNW’s Q, the Eminem song gives the answer:
“You better lose yourself in the music
The moment, you own it, you better never it go.”
Lose yourself, stop thinking of you, just enjoy.
Enjoy the moment.
Certainly dance and music for enjoyment, tho also those emotive warbles for those whose emotions are touched. Music touches me, my emotions, poetry doesn’t. Dancing very much does, watching dance mostly not, and nowadays watching sports mostly not.
Watching dance, or sport, evokes emotions and memories in the watchers. For sport, it’s only really fun to watch if you know the rules and care who wins.
Most folk feel emotion only when they care.
Progressives, Conservatives, Libertarians all care, but focus on a certain axis.
Oppression, Civilization, Freedom.
Progressives are practicing caring only about the oppressed victims.
And most everyone wants to be good, with being in a crowd making one feel better than being alone, usually.
Now do William Howard Taft.
There is no such Federal holiday as “Presidents’ Day”. There is a Federal holiday called “Washington’s Birthday”, though. Lincoln’s birthday was never a Federal holiday.
“Presidents’ Day” seems to have grown up organically around the elimination of the observance of both Lincoln’s birthday and Washington’s birthday in some states, though both are still observed in some states. Only 21 states call Washington’s birthday “Presidents’ Day”.
I can see why some people think the two holidays were somehow combined in “Presidents’ Day”, but that’s not actually what happened. Some governments never observed both (Delaware and California don’t observe either), and some still observe both, and most don’t even use the name “Presidents’ Day”.
The move of the Federal observance of Washington’s birthday to the third Monday of February was made in 1968, before Martin Luther King was even assassinated, and was done only to create long weekends (Columbus Day and Memorial Day were also moved).
https://twitter.com/erikphoel/status/1760338273153568956
Dancing best to reduce depression. Maybe synchronization with other people.
Thanks for facts!