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Vachel Lindsay: Dead Poets, Dead Generals, and a 50-year-old Dissertation

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2018-03-06-02-19-39-edited.jpgFifty years ago today, my grandmother, Elizabeth Thomas Fowler, completed her dissertation.  She examined the letters from the American poet Vachel Lindsay during the time when he was wooing Nellie Vieira.  My grandmother was looking for a topic to explore in grad school (while also raising four kids), and she was neighbors with “Mrs. Nell”, as the family used to call her.  Mrs. Nell offered her an ordered collection of letters that she had received from Lindsay, mainly over the course of a few years but with a few stretching over the course of a decade, and those letters formed the basis for my grandmother’s Master’s thesis and Ph.D. dissertation.

Vachel Lindsay was a well-known poet in the early part of the 20th century, authoring several books that are still in print today. On several occasions, Vachel Lindsay conducted what my grandmother described as a “begging tour”, where he would walk from town to town on a “sing for your supper” journey across huge swaths of America, reciting “his noisy, booming poems”.  Indeed, Lindsay intended his poems to be chanted or sung, with presentation a big part of their appeal.

Four Generations (edited)

Elizabeth Fowler with her father, daughter, and grandson (me!) in 1971

My grandmother completed her Ph.D. rather late in life, at the age of 51, at a time when she had four kids and when my grandfather was in failing health.  Indeed, she made it a point in her dissertation of acknowledging her family “for uncomplainingly sharing our home for a long period with the ‘Letters of Vachel Lindsay'”.  She went on to take a faculty position at Maryville College for a dozen years after completing her dissertation—after having served as a minister’s wife and taught in public schools and colleges for many years beforehand. She enjoyed leading groups of students, friends, colleagues, and family (including me, as a teenager) on study tours to England, often with themes like the search for King Arthur or tracing John Wesley’s travels. No wonder she was known as the GBOF (Great Ball of Fire) to her children!

Lindsay’s work hasn’t held up as well as some of the poets of his generation, though you occasionally see references to his work.  One of his most famous poems, “General William Booth Enters Into Heaven”, was set to music by Charles Ives (and others) and is still performed today.  Another famous poem, “The Congo”, was featured in the cave scene in the Robin Williams movie Dead Poet’s Society.  But I’ll leave you with a recitation by my grandmother of one of my favorite Vachel Lindsay poems, one that seems to capture the American spirit that Lindsay so desperately wanted to represent, “The Broncho That Would Not Be Broken”.

 


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