"Collected Poems"
Vachel Lindsay's Are Weapons of a Spiritual War
The Contents. In An Autobiographical Foreword* the poet (whose personality is probably better known to a larger number of more diverse audiences than that of any other living American bard) devotes 28 pages to reminiscences of his youth, answering with kindly humor the thousand-and-one foolish questions any writer of prominence is always asked about himself and his work, and attacking the popular newspaper legend that pictures him as a noisy apostle of poetical jazz. He explains his love for Egypt; his admiration for Poe; his forbears; his reason for going on the road, a new beggar-troubadour, trading his rhymes for bread: "I was told by the Babbits on every hand I must quit being an artist or beg. So I said: 'I will beg!' ... It was an act of spiritual war.'
The weapons of that spiritual war fill the rest of the volume—nine armories of selections—the collected best of his work. A collected edition is often apt to prove either an unfortunately top-heavy monument or a comfortable wheel-chair for a dying reputation. This is neither. Doubtless the work is uneven — some of the branches on the tree are dead and others stunted — of what collected works could that not be said ? But, on the whole, the volume displays a force and beauty truly of our own blood and earth, no longer merely in promise, but in achievement.
Here is General Booth, The Congo, The Booker T. Washington Trilogy, Daniel—that inspires even professional audiences to give vent to as leonine roars of approbation as possible. Here Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, ("The Campaign of Eighteen Ninety-Six as Viewed at the Time by a Sixteen Year Old") with the most magnificent compliment ever paid to a Presidential candidate, " The one American poet who could sing outdoors." Here is The Chinese Nightingale (Mr. Lindsay's own favorite among his longer poems), and The Litany of the Heroes which he describes as a " rhymed Outline of History, still in process of development," and John L. Sullivan, the Strong Boy of Boston, with its gorgeous analysis of "simple sheltered 1889" and its sledgehammer refrain concerning how
"John L. Sullivan,
The Strong Boy
Of Boston,
Broke every single rib of Jake Kilrain."
Then there are the Moon Poems —all of them—and some of the Verses of an Especially Inscriptional Character, where Mr. Lindsay's very much unappreciated lyric gift is seen at its best. And My Fathers Came from Kentucky—and others—many others—kettledrum, piccolo, flute and birchbark moose-call—in fact, almost every instrument. Really, the only thing to do with a book like this is to read it.
The Significance. Though a sincere admirer of the classics and the beauty and strength of the past, Mr. Lindsay has endeavored through his career to get away from the conventional pseudo-Victorian style of poetry that devotes itself entirely to imitating Gems of English Literature and to write about American subjects in an American way. He is neither a hyperintellectual nor a blood-and-Kiplingite, nor a mere experimenter with unusual rhythms. He is a poet, and a true poet, and a great deal of his work will probably last much longer than some of our elaborately sophisticated cognoscenti believe.