(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. This text refers to the Bibliobazaar edition.
("The Congo and Other Poems " from Vachel Lindsay. America...)
"The Congo and Other Poems " from Vachel Lindsay. American poet (1879-1931). He is considered a founder of modern singing poetry, as he referred to it, in which verses are meant to be sung or chanted.
(Here is Vachel Lindsay, the visionary beggar poet of Spri...)
Here is Vachel Lindsay, the visionary beggar poet of Springfield, Illinois, at his most accessible. Compiled from letters and journals he wrote on his "tramps" across America, ADVENTURES WHILE PREACHING THE GOSPEL OF BEAUTY and A HANDY GUIDE FOR BEGGARS are published here in a single volume that reveals Lindsay's reverence for nature, his abiding faith in humanity, his sparkling wit, and his still very timely ideas about the artist's relationship to community. Here is Springfield's errant, wandering poet before the world claimed him.
Vachel Lindsay is an American original, a self-described "peddler of dreams" with a mystical sense of engagement with the soul of America. He takes the reader in quest of a spiritual harvest, proclaiming his "Gospel of Beauty." Dan Guillory's splendid introduction opens up these memorable and highly readable volumes and places Lindsay's tramps within the context of other literary road narratives.
- John E. Hallwas, editor of ILLINOIS LITERATURE: THE NINETEENTH CENTURY and author of THE BOOTLEGGER
TRAMPING ACROSS AMERICA features a foreword by the poet's son Nicholas Cave Lindsay, a visionary, a poet, and a seeker in his own right; and an introduction by poet and author Dan Guillory, Hardy Distinguished Professor of English at Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois, and the author of THE ALLIGATOR INVENTIONS, WHEN THE WATERS RECEDE: RESCUE AND. RECOVERY DURING THE GREAT FLOOD, and LIVING WITH. LINCOLN: LIFE AND ART IN THE HEARTLAND.
My life is not an attempt to recite but an attempt to re-apply in various ways till I find the right way, the sharpest sentences of the proclamations in ADVENTURES WHILE PREACHING THE GOSPEL OF BEAUTY.
- Vachel Lindsay
The Art of the Moving Picture (Modern Library Movies)
("In the field of film aesthetics, it is the first importa...)
"In the field of film aesthetics, it is the first important American work, still important--The Art of the Moving Picture is astonishing."
--Stanley Kauffmann
Written in 1915, The Art of the Moving Picture by poet Vachel Lindsay is the first book to treat movies as art. Lindsay writes a brilliant analysis of the early silent films (including several now lost films). He is extraordinarily prescient about the future of moviemaking--particularly about the business, the prominence of technology, and the emergence of the director as the author of the film.
(4 works of Vachel Lindsay
American poet (1879-1931)
This...)
4 works of Vachel Lindsay
American poet (1879-1931)
This ebook presents a collection of 4 works of Vachel Lindsay. A dynamic table of contents allows you to jump directly to the work selected.
Table of Contents:
General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems
The Art Of The Moving Picture
The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems
The Congo and Other Poems
(Excerpt from The Golden Book of Springfield
Ultra modern...)
Excerpt from The Golden Book of Springfield
Ultra modern followers of Campbell hang in their libraries with unlimited pride a cer tain Rembrandtesque lithograph of the great man, an heirloom that is now quite rare, and to be classed in its southern way, as the spin ning wheels and old Bibles of the Mayflower are classed in a northern way. This lithograph is the enlargement of the engraving in the front of the Richardson biography, but much color and magic have been added. Out of the darkness emerges a smooth-shaven, high bred, masterful physiognomy more like that of the statesmen who were the fathers of the repub lic, than of a member of any priesthood. Campbell's cheeks and eyes are still fired with youth and authority militant. He has a head bowed with thought, crowned with grey hair, and beneath his chin is the, most states manlike of cravats, with a peculiarly old fashioned roll. Thus he must have looked.
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Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, known as Vachel Lindsay, was born on November 10, 1879 in Springfield, Illinois, United States. His paternal ancestry was Kentuckian, his maternal Virginian, and on both sides it was Scotch. His father, Vachel Thomas Lindsay, one of the pioneer settlers in the Springfield region, was a physician; his mother, Catharine (Frazee) Lindsay, possessed some literary talent and was an ardent member of the Christian Church. Their son early developed the combined interest in religion, poetry, and art, which was to dominate his entire life.
Education
Lindsay graduated from the local high school in 1897. Then he attended Hiram College in Ohio for three years with the thought of entering the ministry. This aim was then abandoned for the study of art at the Chicago Art Institute night school, 1900-1903, and later continued at the New York School of Art, 1904-1905, where he worked under William M. Chase and Robert Henri.
Career
Lindsay worked in Marshall Field's wholesale department. In 1905-1906 he lectured on art at the West Side Y. M. C. A. At the age of eighteen, he wrote a few intermittent poems, and, in the spring of 1906, being without funds and unable to obtain work, he started on his famous walking trip through the South, distributing a poem, "The Tree of Laughing Bells, " in exchange for bed and board. After further Y. M. C. A. lecturing in New York City, he drifted back to Illinois in 1908, where in the course of the winter he appeared on Y. M. C. A. programs at Springfield and during the next two years stumped the state on behalf of the Anti-Saloon League.
In the spring of 1912 he attempted to repeat his Southern adventure on a walking trip to the Pacific Coast, but he found the Western ranchmen less hospitable to the claims of poetry and his journey came to a sudden end in New Mexico. His first volume of poetry, General William Booth Enters into Heaven and Other Poems (1913), attracted little attention, but its successor, The Congo and Other Poems (1914), met with wide popular acclaim. The title-poem started a whole school of literature devoted to the negro; its striking originality of conception, its imaginative reach, and its infectious, insistent rhythms ensure its literary immortality. In it Lindsay created a new poetic music of ragtime and echolalia, a blend of speech and song, clattering but impassioned, that well expressed the hurtling energy of America.
His new technique was exercised with almost equal felicity in "A Negro Sermon: Simon Legree" and "John Brown, " while in the more conventional verse of "The Eagle that is Forgotten" (in honor of Altgeld) and of "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight" he achieved high dignity and prophetic power. His unusual temperament, that of a revivalist preacher poetically inspired, and devoted to the political liberalism of the West, enabled him for a time to realize in his poetry a Messianic quality that responded to the hopes of the hour. The lyrical impact of his style, united with its whimsicality and colloquial phrasing, seemed to infuse a new note of aspiration into everyday existence. His remarkable chanting of his own verses was in these first years an unforgettable experience for his auditors, and he became in the popular mind a romantic modern analogue of the medieval troubadour. (Thirty phonograph records of his chantings, not made, unfortunately, until late in his career, are in the possession of the library of Barnard College. )
Unquestionably, Lindsay's influence counted greatly in the contemporary revival of American poetry. But his genius early began to show signs of exhaustion. The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems (1917) was notably uneven, and The Golden Whales of California and Other Rhymes (1920) was, for the most part, labored and artificial. When he was invited in 1920 to recite his poems at Oxford University--the first American poet to be so honored--Lindsay's creative work was already definitely over; the season of British lionizing that followed marked the high point of his public recognition which hence-forth steadily declined. Essentially intuitive, and almost totally devoid of critical ability--his prose works, The Art of the Moving Picture (1915) and The Golden Book of Springfield (1920) show the extravagance of his generous enthusiasms--he became in his later years a formalized echo of himself. As his creative power lessened, his manner grew steadily more pompous and hieratic. Of his later volumes, Going-to-the-Sun (1923) is chiefly interesting because of its bizarre illustrations by the author; Going-to-the-Stars (1926) and The Candle in the Cabin (1926) are both quite negligible; while The Litany of Washington Street (1929), a prose collection of orations on an imaginary highway stretching from California to India, though better than the later poetry, expresses little more than a vague emotional idealism.
His last days were spent in his native town of Springfield. They were ended, suddenly and unexpectedly, by heart failure on December 5, 1931.
Achievements
Lindsay had a reputation of a serious literary artist and he was considered a founder of modern singing poetry. His poems such as "The Santa Fe Trail, " "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight, " and "The Congo" became a part of the nation's literary heritage.
Lindsay attracted local attention by his personal eccentricities, such as his habit of dining publicly with a number of huge dolls set up at his table.
Connections
Lindsay was married on May 19, 1925, to Elizabeth Conner of Spokane, Washington, where he resided for a time. There were two children, a son and a daughter.
