VIIIMR. VACHEL LINDSAY

Mr. Lindsay objects to being called a “jazz poet”; and, if the name implied that he did nothing in verse but make a loud, facetious, and hysterical noise, his objection would be reasonable. It is possible to call him a “jazz poet,” however, for the purpose not of belittling him, but of defining one of his leading qualities. He is essentially the poet of a worked-up audience. He relies on the company for the success of his effects, like a Negro evangelist. The poet, as a rule, is a solitary in his inspiration. He is more likely to address a star than a crowded room. Mr. Lindsay is too sociable to write like that. He invites his readers to a party, and the world for him is a round game. To read “The Skylark” or the “Ode to a Nightingale” in the hunt-the-slipper mood in which one enjoys “The Daniel Jazz” would be disastrous. Shelley and Keatsgive us the ecstasy of a communion, not the excitement of a party. The noise of the world, the glare, and the jostling crowds fade as we read. The audience of Shelley or Keats is as still as the audience in a cathedral. Mr. Lindsay, on the other hand, calls for a chorus, like a singer at a smoking-concert. That is the spirit in which he has written his best work. He is part entertainer and part evangelist, but in either capacity he seems to demand not an appreciative hush, but an appreciative noise.

It is clear that he is unusually susceptible to crowd excitement. His two best poems, “Bryan, Bryan” and “The Congo,” are born of it. “Bryan, Bryan” is an amazing attempt to recapture and communicate a boy’s emotions as he mingled in the scrimmage of the Presidential election of 1896. Mr. Lindsay becomes all but inarticulate as he recalls the thrill and tumult of the marching West when Bryan called on it to advance against the Plutocrats. He seems to be shouting like a student when students hire a bus and go forth in masks and fancy dress to make a noise in the streets. Luckily, he makes an original noise. He knows that his excitement is more than he can express in intelligible speech, and so he wisely and humorously calls in the aid of nonsense, which he uses with such skill andvehemence that everybody is forced to turn round and stare at him:

Oh, the long-horns from Texas,The jay hawks from Kansas,The plop-eyed bungaroo and giant giassicus,The varmint, chipmunk, bugaboo,The horned toad, prairie-dog, and ballyhoo,From all the new-born states arow,Bidding the eagles of the West fly on,Bidding the eagles of the West fly on.The fawn, prodactyl, and thing-a-ma-jig,The rakeboor, the hellangone,The whangdoodle, batfowl and pig,The coyote, wild-cat, and grizzly in a glow,In a miracle of health and speed, the whole breed abreast,They leaped the Mississippi, blue border of the West.From the Gulf to Canada, two thousand miles long—Against the towns of Tubal Cain,Ah—sharp was their song.Against the ways of Tubal Cain, too cunning for the young,The long-horn calf, the buffalo, and wampus gave tongue.

Oh, the long-horns from Texas,

The jay hawks from Kansas,

The plop-eyed bungaroo and giant giassicus,

The varmint, chipmunk, bugaboo,

The horned toad, prairie-dog, and ballyhoo,

From all the new-born states arow,

Bidding the eagles of the West fly on,

Bidding the eagles of the West fly on.

The fawn, prodactyl, and thing-a-ma-jig,

The rakeboor, the hellangone,

The whangdoodle, batfowl and pig,

The coyote, wild-cat, and grizzly in a glow,

In a miracle of health and speed, the whole breed abreast,

They leaped the Mississippi, blue border of the West.

From the Gulf to Canada, two thousand miles long—

Against the towns of Tubal Cain,

Ah—sharp was their song.

Against the ways of Tubal Cain, too cunning for the young,

The long-horn calf, the buffalo, and wampus gave tongue.

In such a passage as this Mr. Lindsay pours decorative nonsense out of a horn of plenty. But his aim is not to talk nonsense: it is to use nonsense as the language of reality. As paragraph follows paragraph, we see with what sureness he is piling colour on colour and crash on crash in order that we may respond almost physically to the sensations of those magnificent and tumultuousdays. He has discovered a new sort of rhetoric which enables him to hurry us through mood after mood of comic, pugnacious and sentimental excitement. Addressed to a religious meeting, rhetoric of this kind would be interrupted by cries of “Glory, Hallelujah!” and “Praise de Lord!” Unless you are rhetoric-proof, you cannot escape its spell. Isolated from its context, the passage I have quoted may be subjected to cold criticism. It is only when it keeps its place in the living body of the poem and becomes part of the general attack on our nerves that it is irresistibly effective.

In “The Congo,” it is the excitement of Negroes—in their dances and their religion—that Mr. Lindsay has set to words. As he watches their revels, the picture suggests a companion-picture of Negroes orgiastic in Africa, in the true Kingdom of Mumbo-Jumbo—a Negro’s fairy-tale of a magic land:

Just then from the doorway, as fat as shotes,Came the cake-walk princes in their long red coats,Canes with a brilliant lacquer shine,And tall silk hats that were red as wine.And they pranced with their butterfly partners there,Coal-black maidens with pearls in their hair,Knee-skirts trimmed with the jessamine sweet,And bells on their ankles and little black feet.

Just then from the doorway, as fat as shotes,

Came the cake-walk princes in their long red coats,

Canes with a brilliant lacquer shine,

And tall silk hats that were red as wine.

And they pranced with their butterfly partners there,

Coal-black maidens with pearls in their hair,

Knee-skirts trimmed with the jessamine sweet,

And bells on their ankles and little black feet.

But it is the grotesque comedy of the American Negro, not the fantasia on Africa, that makes “The Congo” so entertaining a poem. The description of the “fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room” has often been quoted. There is the same feeling of “racket” in the picture of a religious camp meeting:

A good old negro in the slums of the townPreached at a sister for her velvet gown;Howled at a brother for his low-down ways,His prowling, guzzling, sneak-thief days;Beat on the Bible till he wore it outStarting the jubilee revival shout.And some had visions as they stood on chairs,And sang of Jacob, and the golden stairs.And they all repented, a thousand strong,From their stupor and savagery and sin and wrong,And slammed on their hymn books till they shook the roomWith “glory, glory, glory,”And “Boom, boom,Boom.”

A good old negro in the slums of the town

Preached at a sister for her velvet gown;

Howled at a brother for his low-down ways,

His prowling, guzzling, sneak-thief days;

Beat on the Bible till he wore it out

Starting the jubilee revival shout.

And some had visions as they stood on chairs,

And sang of Jacob, and the golden stairs.

And they all repented, a thousand strong,

From their stupor and savagery and sin and wrong,

And slammed on their hymn books till they shook the room

With “glory, glory, glory,”

And “Boom, boom,Boom.”

Whatever qualities Mr. Lindsay lacks, he has humour, colour and gusto. When he writes in the tradition of the serious poets, as in “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight” and “Epilogue,” he is negligible: he is only one of a thousand capable verse-writers. He is dependent on his own idiom to a greater extent even than was Robert Burns. Not that his work in rag-time English is comparablein other respects to Burns’s in Scots. Burns’s themes were, apart from his comic verse, the traditional themes of the poets—the aristocrats of the spirit. Mr. Lindsay is a humorist and sentimentalist who is essentially a democrat of the spirit—one of the crowd.

And, just as he is the humorist of the crowd, so is he the humorist of things immense and exaggerated. His imagination is the playground of whales and elephants and sea-serpents. He is happy amid the clangour and confusion of a railway-junction. He rejoices in the exuberant and titanic life of California, where:

Thunder-clouds of grapes grow on the mountains.

and he boasts that:

There are ten gold suns in California,When all other lands have one,For the Golden Gate must have due lightAnd persimmons be well done.And the hot whales slosh and cool in the washAnd the fume of the hollow sea,Rally and roam in the loblolly foamAnd whoop that their souls are free.

There are ten gold suns in California,

When all other lands have one,

For the Golden Gate must have due light

And persimmons be well done.

And the hot whales slosh and cool in the wash

And the fume of the hollow sea,

Rally and roam in the loblolly foam

And whoop that their souls are free.

Mr. Lindsay himself can whoop like a whale. He is a poet in search of superlatives beyond the superlatives. He cannot find them, but he atleast articulates new sounds. As one reads him, one is reminded at times of a child in a railway-train singing and shouting against the noise of the engine and the wheels. The world affects Mr. Lindsay as the railway-train affects some children. He is intoxicated by the rhythm of the machinery. As a result, though he is often an ethical poet, he is seldom a spiritual poet. That helps to explain why his verse does not achieve any but a sentimental effect in his andante movements. As his voice falls, his inspiration falls. In “The Santa Fé Trail” he breaks in on the frenzy of a thousand motors with the still, small voice of the bird called the Rachel Jane. He undoubtedly moves us by the way in which he does this; but he moves us much as a sentimental singer at a ballad concert can do. It is not for passages of this kind that one reads him. His words at their best do not minister at the altar: they dance to the music of the syncopated orchestra. That is Mr. Lindsay’s peculiar gift. It would hardly be using too strong a word to say that it is his genius.

Back to Index Next