Vachel Lindsay facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Vachel Lindsay
Lindsay in 1913
Born	November 10, 1879 Springfield, Illinois, United States
Died	December 5, 1931(1931-12-05) (aged 52) Springfield, Illinois, United States
Occupation	Poet

Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (born November 10, 1879 – died December 5, 1931) was an American poet. He is known for creating a style he called singing poetry. This meant his poems were written to be sung or chanted out loud.

Who Was Vachel Lindsay?

Vachel Lindsay was born in Springfield, Illinois. His father, Vachel Thomas Lindsay, was a doctor who had earned a lot of money. The Lindsay family lived right across from the Illinois Executive Mansion. This was the home of the Governor of Illinois.

How Did Springfield Influence Lindsay's Poetry?

Growing up in Springfield greatly shaped Lindsay's writing. For example, his poem "The Eagle Forgotten" honors Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld. Lindsay admired Altgeld for being brave enough to pardon some people involved in the Haymarket Affair. This was a difficult decision, even with protests from US President Grover Cleveland.

Springfield also inspired poems like "On the Building of Springfield." Lindsay also wrote poems praising Springfield's most famous resident, Abraham Lincoln. In his poem "Lincoln", Lindsay wrote, "Would I might rouse the Lincoln in you all!" This line later became the official motto for the Association of Lincoln Presenters. In his 1914 poem "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight (In Springfield, Illinois)", Lindsay imagined Lincoln walking in Springfield.

Lindsay's Education and Art Interests

From 1897 to 1900, Lindsay studied medicine at Ohio's Hiram College. However, he did not want to be a doctor. His parents wanted him to follow that path. He once wrote to them that he was meant to be a painter, not a doctor. They replied that doctors could draw in their free time!

Lindsay left Hiram anyway. He went to Chicago to study at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1900 to 1903. In 1904, he went to the New York School of Art (now The New School). He studied pen and ink there. Lindsay loved art his whole life. He even drew pictures for some of his poems. His art studies also helped him appreciate silent film. His 1915 book The Art of the Moving Picture is thought to be the first book of film criticism.

Becoming a Poet

Vachel Lindsay in 1912

In 1905, while in New York, Lindsay seriously started writing poetry. He tried to sell his poems on the streets. He even printed his own poems in a pamphlet called Rhymes To Be Traded For Bread. He would trade these poems for food. He saw himself as a modern-day troubadour, like the traveling singers of the Middle Ages.

Lindsay's Walking Journeys

Lindsay went on several long walking trips. From March to May 1906, he walked about 600 miles from Jacksonville, Florida, to Kentucky. He traded his poetry for food and a place to stay. From April to May 1908, he walked again, this time from New York City to Hiram, Ohio.

His most famous journey was from May to September 1912. He walked from Illinois to New Mexico. Again, he traded his poems for food and lodging. During this trip, Lindsay wrote his most famous poem, "The Congo." People said he was so successful in Kansas that he had to send money home to keep his pockets empty!

When he returned, Harriet Monroe published his poem "General William Booth Enters into Heaven" in Poetry magazine in 1913. Then, "The Congo" was published in 1914. After this, Lindsay became very well known.

Poetry as a Performance

Unlike other poets who just read their work, Lindsay performed his poems. He used big gestures like a carnival announcer or an old-time preacher. He called his style 'Higher Vaudeville'.

Lindsay's success came from how he presented his poetry. It was "fundamentally as a performance." His poems were meant to be chanted, whispered, shouted, sung, and acted out with movements and yells.

His most famous poem, "The Congo," showed his new idea of using sound for its own sake. It copied the sound of drums with rhythms and words that sounded like what they described (called onomatopoeia). In some parts, the poem used sounds instead of regular words to show the chants of people from Congo.

Lindsay wrote many letters to the poet W. B. Yeats. In these letters, he explained his goal to bring back the musical side of poetry, like the ancient Greeks did. Because he was a performance artist and used themes from the American Midwest, Lindsay became known as the "Prairie Troubadour" in the 1910s.

For the last twenty years of his life, Lindsay was one of the most famous poets in the U.S. He became friends with and helped other poets, like Langston Hughes and Sara Teasdale. However, after his death, his poetry became less known in schools and universities.

Lindsay's Views on Race

Many people at the time believed Lindsay wanted to support African-Americans. This was clear in his 1918 poem "The Jazz Birds." This poem praised the efforts of African-American soldiers during World War I. Most white Americans seemed to ignore this topic. Also, W.E.B. Du Bois praised Lindsay's story "The Golden-Faced People" for its ideas about racism.

Lindsay saw himself as someone against racism. He showed this in his own writing and by encouraging writers like Langston Hughes. Hughes, who was working as a busboy, gave Lindsay copies of his poems when Lindsay ate at the restaurant.

Discussions About "The Congo"

However, some people then and now have debated whether some of Lindsay's poems were truly respectful. They questioned if they honored African and African-American music or if they used harmful stereotypes. DuBois, before praising "The Golden-Faced People," reviewed Lindsay's "Booker T. Washington Trilogy." He wrote that "Lindsay knows two things, and two things only, about Negroes: The beautiful rhythm of their music and the ugly side of their drunkards and outcasts." DuBois added, "Mr. Lindsay knows little of the Negro, and that little is dangerous."

DuBois also criticized "The Congo." This poem has been the main focus of criticism about racial stereotypes in Lindsay's work. "The Congo" was subtitled "A Study of the Negro Race." Its first section was called "Their Basic Savagery." The poem was inspired by a sermon in 1913 about a missionary who drowned in the Congo River. This event, along with the unfair treatment of Congo under Leopold II of Belgium, caused worldwide concern.

Lindsay defended the poem. He wrote to Joel Elias Spingarn, who led the NAACP. Lindsay said, "My 'Congo' and 'Booker T. Washington Trilogy' have both been criticized by the Colored people for reasons that I cannot understand." He added that the third part of "The Congo" was "as hopeful as any human being dare to be in regard to any race." Spingarn replied that he understood Lindsay's good intentions. But he also said that Lindsay sometimes made differences between people of African descent and others seem too exciting. Many African-Americans wanted to show the "feelings and desires" they shared with everyone else.

Some critics today see Lindsay as well-meaning but mistaken in how he showed Africans and African Americans. For example, Rachel DuPlessis argues that "The Congo," even if meant to be "hopeful," actually makes Africans seem like an inherently violent race. This suggests that white society was "infected" by African violence. Lindsay, in a way, "blames blacks for white violence directed against them." On the other hand, Susan Gubar notes that "the poem contains lines blaming black violence on white imperialism." She also says that Lindsay was "much more liberal than many of his poetic contemporaries." She believes he meant to speak out against the racist violence that happened under Leopold in the Congo.

Later Life and Legacy

Growing Fame

Lindsay's fame as a poet grew in the 1910s. Harriet Monroe featured him with two other Illinois poets, Carl Sandburg and Edgar Lee Masters. Their names became linked. The success of one poet seemed to help the others.

In 1932, Edgar Lee Masters wrote an article praising Lindsay. In 1935, four years after Lindsay's death, Masters wrote a biography called Vachel Lindsay: A Poet in America.

Lindsay himself wrote in 1915 that even William Butler Yeats respected his work. Yeats felt they both cared about capturing the sound of early, natural poetry and singing in poems. In 1915, Lindsay even gave a poetry reading to President Woodrow Wilson and his entire Cabinet.

Family Life and Challenges

Lindsay's personal life had its difficulties. For example, he tried to marry fellow poet Sara Teasdale in 1914, but she married a rich businessman instead. This might have made Lindsay worry more about money. His financial problems grew even bigger later on.

In 1924, he moved to Spokane, Washington. He lived in the Davenport Hotel until 1929. On May 19, 1925, at age 45, he married 23-year-old Elizabeth Connor. The need to support his much younger wife increased when they had a daughter, Susan Doniphan Lindsay, in May 1926. Their son, Nicholas Cave Lindsay, was born in September 1927.

Lindsay was desperate for money. He went on a tiring series of readings across the East and Midwest. This lasted from October 1928 to March 1929. During this time, Poetry magazine gave him a $500 award for his lifetime achievements. In April 1929, Lindsay and his family moved back to his childhood home in Springfield, Illinois. This was an expensive move. In the same year, around the time of the Stock Market Crash of 1929, Lindsay published two more poetry books. He earned money by doing odd jobs, but generally made very little during his travels.

Lindsay's Lasting Impact

Literary Legacy

Lindsay was a very creative and productive writer and poet. He helped "keep alive the appreciation of poetry as a spoken art." His poetry was known for its "meter and rhymes" and was not like "shredded prose." A person who knew him in 1924 described his work as having "pungent phrases, clinging cadences, dramatic energy, comic thrust, lyric seriousness and tragic intensity." Dennis Camp, Lindsay's biographer, says that Lindsay's ideas about "civic beauty and civic tolerance" were published in 1912. Later, in 1915, Lindsay published the first American study of film as an art form. Camp notes that Lindsay's tombstone has only one word: "Poet."

Vachel Lindsay House

The Illinois Historic Preservation Agency helps take care of the Vachel Lindsay House. It is located at 603 South Fifth Street in Springfield. This was the house where Lindsay was born and where he died. The agency gave the house to the state. It was then closed for restoration, which cost $1.5 million. Since October 8, 2014, the house has been open to the public. Guided tours are available Thursday to Sunday from 1 to 5 pm. Lindsay's grave is in Oak Ridge Cemetery. The bridge crossing the middle of Lake Springfield, built in 1934, is named after Lindsay.

Archives

The Vachel Lindsay Archive is kept at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia. It includes his personal papers, handwritten copies of his works, letters, photos, artworks, and books from his own library. The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College also has a small collection of items Lindsay sent to Eugenia Graham.

Selected Works by Vachel Lindsay

• Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight
• An Indian Summer Day on the Prairie
• A Rhyme About an Electrical Advertising Sign
• A Sense of Humor
• Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan
• The Dandelion
• Drying Their Wings
• Euclid
• Factory Windows are Always Broken
• The Flower-Fed Buffaloes
• General William Booth Enters Into Heaven – the American composer Charles Ives wrote music for this poem
• In Praise of Johnny Appleseed
• The Kallyope Yell
• The Leaden-Eyed
• Love and Law
• The Mouse That Gnawed the Oak Tree Down
• The North Star Whispers to the Blacksmith's Son
• On the Garden Wall
• The Prairie Battlements
• The Golden Book of Springfield
• Prologue to 'Rhymes to be Traded for Bread
• The Congo: A Study of the Negro Race
• The Eagle That is Forgotten
• The Firemen's Ball
• The Rose of Midnight
• This Section is a Christmas Tree
• To Gloriana
• What Semiramis Said
• What the Ghost of the Gambler Said
• Why I Voted the Socialist Ticket
• Written for a Musician

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See also

In Spanish: Vachel Lindsay para niños