Peck's 'Rings and Love-Knots: so unpretentious

The Critic called Samuel Minturn Peck's second book of poems, Rings and Love-Knots, a book of "seventy-five dainty love-lyrics and vers-de-société in a prettily bound volume." This review, published in the November 26, 1892 issue, continued Peck's reputation as a good but simple poet. In fact, the review recommended the collection for those who like "light verse" and observed that the Alabama poet had not tried to make his poems more serious than his previous work.

The critic goes on with faint praise: "He also has a command of rhymes and metres, and his work exhibits much technical skill; it is accurate, finished and perfectly straightforward." Without irony, the critic finds Peck likable precisely because "all the songs he has here collected... are so unpretentious, so musical and so finished." Of the 75 poems in the book, the critic highlighted "An Alabama Garden" as one of his favorites:

Along a pine-clad hill it lies,
O'erlooked by limpid Southern skies,
A spot to feast a fairy's eyes,
       A nook for happy fancies.
The wild bee's mellow monotone
Here blends with bird-notes zephyr-blown,
And many an insect voice unknown
       The harmony enhances.

The rose's shattered splendor flees
With lavish grace on every breeze,
And lilies sway with flexile ease
       Like dryads snowy-breasted;
And where gardenias drowse between
Rich curving leaves of glossy green,
The cricket strikes his tambourine,
       Amid the mosses nested.

Here dawn-flushed myrtles interlace,
And sifted sunbeams shyly trace
Frail arabesques whose shifting grace
       Is wrought of shade and shimmer;
At eventide scents quaint and rare
Go straying through my garden fair,
As if they sought with wildered air
       The fireflies' fitful glimmer.

Oh, could some painter's facile brush,
On canvas limn my garden's blush,
The fevered world its din would hush
       To crown the high endeavor;
Or could a poet snare in rhyme
The breathings of this balmy clime,
His fame might dare the dart of Time
       And soar undimmed forever!

In the 20th century, Peck was named the first Poet Laureate of Alabama, a position he earned in part because of his accessibility as a poet and in part because of how frequently his poetry celebrated his native state, as in the poem above. Similarly, many of his poems were set to music because of their song-like quality and their generally positive themes. Peck also apparently appreciated the praise he received for what the above critic called "vers-de-société" as a later book had an entire section with that label.

Birth of Kinney: That subdued, subduing strain

The moment that Coates Kinney was born in Yates County, New York on November 24, 1826, there were high expectations. On his father's side, he was descended from two families (the Coates family and the Kinney family, hence his name) who were connected to families that came to the New World on the Mayflower. Much of his life was spent trying to figure out how to belong along such noble ancestry.

His parents moved the family to Springboro, Ohio when he was in his early teens. In between going to school, he worked at a saw-mill, as a cooper's apprentice, in a factory and, after graduating, as a teacher. He studied the law for a time and, somewhere in between all this, began contributing to newspapers and magazines in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and elsewhere. Still, he struggled financially and his three children died in infancy but, in 1854, he purchased a half-interest in a printing office, where he set the type and self-published his first poetry collection. He eventually became an editor but his financial troubles did not end until he received a government appointment during the Civil War as paymaster general for the United States Army.

Kinney was admired by such critics as Julian Hawthorne and William Dean Howells in his later years. The latter said he had mastered the art of poetry and was "a truly great poet, subtle and profound." His most famous poem, if such a term can be used on this forgotten poet, was "Rain on the Roof" (circa 1849):

When the humid shadows hover
   Over all the starry spheres
And the melancholy darkness
   Gently weeps in rainy tears,
What a bliss to press the pillow
   Of a cottage-chamber bed
And lie listening to the patter
   Of the soft rain overhead!

Every tinkle on the shingles
   Has an echo in the heart;
And a thousand dreamy fancies
   Into busy being start,
And a thousand recollections
   Weave their air-threads into woof,
As I listen to the patter
   Of the rain upon the roof.

Now in memory comes my mother,
   As she used in years agone,
To regard the darling dreamers
   Ere she left them till the dawn:
O! I feel her fond look on me
   As I list to this refrain
Which is played upon the shingles
   By the patter of the rain.

Then my little seraph-sister,
   With the wings and waving hair,
And her star-eyed cherub-brother—
   A serene angelic pair—
Glide around my wakeful pillow,
   With their praise or mild reproof,
As I listen to the murmur
   Of the soft rain on the roof.

And another comes, to thrill me
   With her eyes' delicious blue;
And I mind not, musing on her,
   That her heart was all untrue:
I remember but to love her
   With a passion kin to pain,
And my heart's quick pulses quiver
   To the patter of the rain.

Art hath naught of tone or cadence
   That can work with such a spell
In the soul's mysterious fountains,
   Whence the tears of rapture well,
As that melody of Nature,
   That subdued, subduing strain
Which is played upon the shingles
   By the patter of the rain.

Evils oppressing themselves or others

Elizabeth Oakes Smith was angry. Women had recently been gathering at public conventions to demand their rights. They were met with ridicule, hecklers, and laughter, "as if it were the funniest thing in the world for human beings to feel the evils oppressing themselves or others, and to look round for redress." With those words, she opened the first of her series "Woman and Her Needs," published November 21, 1850 in the New York Tribune.

She was further annoyed that some who ridiculed these women's rights conventions who were themselves women, so "well cared for" that they remained unaware of the suffering of others. Oakes Smith argues part of their problem is that they lack "comprehensiveness of thought." Others, who themselves suffer from their subjugation, simply know no better. She writes, "These are the kind over whom infinite Pity would weep as it were drops of blood. These may scoff at reform, but it is the scoffing of a lost spirit, or that of despair." Still, she says, there are women who have become aware of their problematic role in society:

They are not content to be the creatures of luxury, the toys of the drawing room, however well they grace it — they are too true, too earnest in life to trifle with its realities. They are capable of thinking, it may be far more capable of it, than those of their own household who help to sway the destinies of the country through the ballot box. They are capable of feeling, and analyzing too, the evils that surround themselves and others — they have individuality, resources, and that antagonism which weak men ridicule, because it shames their own imbecility; which makes them obnoxious to those of less earnestness of character, and helps them to an eclectic power, at once their crown of glory.

Prior to these movements, Oakes Smith writes, there were individual women who spoke up. Now, however, they are gathering in larger groups and calling with a unified voice. Certainly, they will make missteps, but the movement is new and the people are learning. She argues in particular that women simply must have a voice in the world because they are already part of it, that they must be a part of lawmaking because they are impacted by law.

They are the mothers and wives and sisters of the Republic, and their interests cannot be separated from the fathers and husbands and brothers of the Republic. It is folly to meet them with contempt and ridicule, for the period for such weapons is passing away.

Ultimately, Elizabeth Oakes Smith contributed 10 articles in this series on "Woman and Her Needs." The final installment was published nearly seven months after the first.

Harper: among earth's humblest graves

In the 1850s, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (born free in Maryland in 1825) became an active voice in the anti-slavery movement. She was successful as a public speaker, her book of poems was popular, including its several anti-slavery poems. She was also involved with the Underground Railroad. It was in this period that Harper published her most famous poem. Published in the Ohio-based Anti-Slavery Bugle on November 20, 1858, "Bury Me in a Free Land" was a powerful call for the end of enslavement:

Make me a grave where'er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Make it among earth's humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.

I could not rest, if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.

I could not sleep if I heard the tread
Of a coffle-gang to the shambles led,
And the mother's shriek of wild despair
Rise, like a curse, on the trembling air.

I could not rest, if I saw the lash
Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast,
Like trembling doves from their parent nest.

I'd shudder and start, if I heard the bay
Of bloodhounds seizing their human prey;
And I heard the captive plead in vain,
As they bound, afresh, his galling chain.

If I saw young girls from their mother's arms
Bartered and sold for their youthful charms,
My eye would flash with a mournful flame,
My death-pale cheek grow red with shame.

I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated Might
Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave
Where none can call his brother a slave.

I ask no monument, proud and high,
To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;
All that my yearning spirit craves,
Is — Bury me not in a land of slaves!

"Bury Me in a Free Land" was republished two months later in a January issue of The Liberator. Harper also sent a copy of the poem to one of John Brown's men awaiting execution after the raid Harper's Ferry.

James reviews Whitman: a melancholy task

"It has been a melancholy task to read this book; and it is a still more melancholy one to write about it." Thus opens the review of Walt Whitman's book Drum-Taps written by critic Henry James. The review, published in the November 16, 1865 issue of the Nation, lamented how difficult it was to read Whitman's poetry and James blames it on the poet being too much of "a prosaic mind." In fact, he writes, if not for the capital letters at the beginning of each line, one might not know it was poetry. "But if Mr. Whitman does not write verse," James says, "he does not write ordinary prose" as even prosaically the book is not impressive.

Worse, says the critically-minded James, Whitman, like too many others, assumes that the patriotic sympathy with the recent Civil War is enough to justify poetic inspiration in anyone. No, says James, though we as Americans feel the need to express our strong feelings ("Of course the tumult of a battle is grand, the results of a battle tragic, and the untimely deaths of young men a theme for elegies"), but such a sweeping overview as Whitman offers can only be made after the dust has settled. James also can't help but note that the book seems equally about Whitman's own pretentious grandstanding ("Mr. Whitman is very fond of blowing his own trumpet").

The form of the poetry is a particular concern to the then 22-year old James as it does not rhyme or follow any conceivable pattern. Various simplistic verses on the war have become popular and memorable, even when artless. In the case of Whitman, James concludes his writing is "an offense against art," lacking common sense, and insult to intelligence. Nevertheless, James notes, there are positive aspects to Drum-Taps. The sentiment expressed, even if expressed oddly, is sincere:

Mr. Whitman prides himself especially on the substance—the life—of his poetry. It may be rough, it may be grim, it may be clumsy—such we take to be the author's argument—but it is sincere, it is sublime, it appeals to the soul of man, it is the voice of a people.

But, James warns, this is not enough. "To become adopted as a national poet, it is not enough... to discharge the undigested contents of your blotting-book into the lap of the public," he writes. "You must respect the public which you address; for it has taste, if you have not." Whitman had made note in the book, however, that the life of the poem was more important than the form. As James himself quoted, Whitman had written:

Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries,
For that which was lacking among you all, yet needed most, I bring;
A book I have made for your dear sake, O soldiers,
And for you, O soul of man, and you, love of comrades;
The words of my book nothing, the life of it everything;
A book separate, not link'd with the rest, nor felt by the intellect;
But you will feel every word, O Libertad! arm'd Libertad!
It shall pass by the intellect to swim the sea, the air,
With joy with you, O soul of man.

Child: true economy of housekeeping

Lydia Maria Child had only been a wife for about a year and a month when, on November 12, 1829, she published The Frugal Housewife (later renamed The American Frugal Housewife). The book was a huge success and was republished in dozens of editions over the next few years. It was dedicated "to those who are not ashamed of Economy." That purpose begins in the first sentence of the introduction:

The true economy of housekeeping is simply the art of gathering up all the fragments, so that nothing be lost. I mean fragments, of time, as well as materials. Nothing should be thrown away so long as it is possible to make any use of it, however trifling that use may be; and whatever be the size of a family, every member should be employed either in earning, or saving money.

In the pages that follow, Child offers tips on removing stains, on cooking, common injuries or illnesses, and "how to endure poverty," all in a world without running water. Her writing is almost stream of conscious, quickly shifting from one scrap of advice to another without particular attention to theme or organization. This lack of organization drew the attention of critics, including Sarah Josepha Hale, but what really bothered Hale was the book's obsession with money — or, more accurately, with its implication that women should be obsessed with saving money. As she wrote:

Now we do not think that either in earning or saving money consists the chief importance of life... Our men are sufficiently money-making. Let us keep our women and children from the contagion as long as possible.

Hale went so far as to suggest that Child was underqualified to write such a book as she did not yet have children. Nevertheless, the book went into at least 35 editions and was later reissued in a modern version which remains in print in the 21st century. Perhaps Child would have answered her critics with this quote from page 6:

The writer has no apology to offer for this cheap little book of economical hints, except her deep conviction that such a book is needed. In this case, renown is out of the question, and ridicule is a matter of indifference.

For some of the information in this post, I am indebted to Carolyn L. Karcher's work The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child (1998).

Garland and Whitman: endlessly rocking

Hamlin Garland had disobeyed doctor's orders — not his doctor, but that of Walt Whitman. When Garland visited the aging poet at his home in New Jersey, his health was so poor that Garland was asked to stay no more than two minutes. But the Wisconsin-born author and educator, who was then living in Massachusetts, stayed for a half an hour.

Garland was enamored with Whitman and his work. Back in Waltham, Massachusetts, he started a series of classes on Whitman attended by 40 ladies. On November 9, 1888, he wrote of that class to the poet:

I talked last night to my Waltham class (of forty ladies) about your work and read to them. I wish you could have seen how deeply attentive they were and how moved by "Out of the Cradle" "To Think of Time" "Sparkles from the Wheel" and others. Many of them will now read your works carefully and understandingly.

Garland, a poet himself, particularly recommended that readers start with Specimen Days because reading his prose, he said, would prepare them to "sympathize" with his poetic views. Garland also noted he intended to write a review of November Boughs. True to his word, Garland's review was published in the Boston Evening Transcript only a week after his letter. Of course, Garland remembered Whitman's poor health and, as such, he concluded his letter with concern:  "It rejoices me to hear you are gaining [e.g. recovering]. I hope the winter will not be too severe for you — though I believe you stand the cold better than the heat." From the first poem Garland mentioned his students loved:

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the shower'd halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,
From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous'd words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such as now they start the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing.

Victorian poets: sing more sweetly there

I am very glad to have a copy of your " Victorian Anthology." It is another monument to your learning, judgment, and taste. You certainly have done great service to the Victorian Age and to its bards. I had no idea there were so many singers—but the woods of England are full of birds and the birds sing more sweetly there than anywhere else.

Above is the letter from poet William Winter to editor Edmund Clarence Stedman, November 6, 1895. The book in question, Victorian Poets, was one of several editions of compilations; originally published in 1875, it had a companion in Stedman's popular anthology of American poets. The book was more than just a compilation, however, as it included lengthy discussions of the poets, their verses, and the period. These sorts of critical anthologies, and a few others, helped Stedman earn a place as the preeminent scholar of poetry by the turn of the century. His books regularly went into 30th editions and beyond. Fellow anthologist and poet Richard Henry Stoddard called his work "the most important contribution ever made by an American writer to the critical literature of the English poets."

But Stedman also took an odd step backward in the development and understanding of American poetry. Some 50 years earlier, Rufus Wilmot Griswold had established himself in the similar role of the arbiter of poetic taste and he clearly emphasized a need to improve American poetry, to celebrate distinctly American topics, and to overtake the assumption that English writers were inherently superior. Stedman reversed that, as Winter's letter shows.

To his credit, Stedman was open-minded and broad in his assessment. He considered somewhat controversial poets like Algernon Charles Swinburne, newer poets like Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and several women poets like the politically charged Augusta Webster. Perhaps most importantly, Stedman was able to establish the term for the period, the Victorian period, as the accepted term.

Bryant on Scott: brilliant luminary

William Cullen Bryant was busy in the fall of 1872. His day job as editor-in-chief of the New-York Evening Post was hectic amidst a presidential election, he was steadily working on a translation of Homer, and was editing a book on the unique scenery of the United States called Picturesque America. Still, when he was invited to give a speech on the dedication of a statue of Walter Scott at New York City's Central Park, he accepted.

His address, given on November 4, 1872, as the statue by Scottish artist John Steell was unveiled, honored the Americans of Scottish descent who had led the efforts to honor their countryman author. Bryant, after all, was old enough to remember Scott before his death in 1832. He remembered that "this brilliant luminary of modern literature" first drew attention for his ballad "Lay of the Last Minstrel." His work, the poet said, was infused with the traditions of Scotland: "In it we had all their fire, their rapid narrative, their unlabored graces, their pathos, animating a story to which he had given a certain epic breadth and unity." He goes on:

No other metrical narratives in our language seem to me to possess an equal power of enchaining the attention of the reader, and carrying him on from incident to incident with such entire freedom from weariness.

Bryant offered specific praise on several of Scott's works, and even the author's choice to print inexpensive editions which allowed his work to circulate more widely. His "Waverley" novels too, Bryant claimed, began a new era in literature. Those works were written in such rapid succession, he recalled, that they were similar to the fireworks shot off on the Fourth of July in the United States. He continued the metaphor, describing how each volume rose from the horizon and burst with a brilliant hue. Bryant was especially pleased that his statue should grace Central Park, which had only recently become a designed public space. He pictured the spirit of Scott's wandering about the park, a veritable army protecting the statue. Bryant concludes:

And now, as the statue of Scott is set up in this beautiful park, which a few years since possessed no human associations historical or poetic connected with its shades, its lawns, its rocks, and its waters, these grounds become peopled with new memories. Henceforth the silent earth at this spot will be eloquent of old traditions, the airs that stir the branches of the trees will whisper of feats of chivalry to the visitor. All that vast crowd of ideal personages created by the imagination of Scott will enter with his sculptured effigy and remain... They will pass in endless procession around the statue of him in whose prolific brain they had their birth, until the language which we speak shall perish, and the spot on which we stand shall be again a woodland wilderness.

Birth of Stephen Crane: Here I stay and wait

Born in Newark, New Jersey, on November 1, 1871, Stephen Crane went on to live a life where he seldom kept in one place for long. His parents were active in the church community and local religious-inspired causes; his father was a Methodist minister (the family moved a few times as he took jobs at different churches) and his mother worked with a local Christian Temperance Union. The Cranes had 14 children; Stephen was the last.

Young Stephen Crane was a sickly child and his parents questioned his weakness. He became interested in poetry early and wrote one asking for a dog when he was 8 years old. It was at that age that he began his schooling with the death of his father. He was left in the care of various relatives amid various deaths of family members and his mother possibly suffering from mental illness. He enrolled at boarding schools and, as a teenager, started writing for a news bureau with his brother.

Crane considered a military career but was persuaded to try college instead. He briefly attended Lafayette College in Pennsylvania then Syracuse University in New York but declared college "a waste of time." Instead, he turned to writing (and wandering). He met Hamlin Garland, who was traveling for a lecture, and the two discussed William Dean Howells and literary realism. Garland's was named on the dedication page on Crane's first book of poetry. By the end of his life when he died in Germany at age 28, Crane would have traveled the globe, become embroiled with various scandals and controversies, and struggled to move past his early fame from his book The Red Badge of Courage.

Poem titled "XXIII" from The Black Riders and Other Lines (1895), which was originally published solely with capital letters:

Places among the stars,
Soft gardens near the sun,
Keep your distant beauty;
Shed no beams upon my weak heart.
Since she is here
In a place of blackness,
Not your golden days
Nor your silver nights
Can call me to you.
Since she is here
In a place of blackness,
Here I stay and wait