Longfellow

Geographic connections to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, featuring poems by Betty Ajemian, Marsh Muirhead and Alice Weiss.
9 minutes

TRANSCRIPT

The great American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born February 27, 1807. He wrote a heck of a lot of poems, many of which were narratives. We still remember lines from many of his poems—“under the spreading chestnut tree, the village smithy stands,” for example. On this episode of Burning Bright, we’ll acknowledge three of his most famous poems.

In 1860, Longfellow wrote a poem that began “Listen my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.” The next stanza goes like this:

He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,—
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.”

Betty Ajemian lives just on the other side of the Boston Commons from the North End where the Old North Church is located. Here’s her poem “Graffiti.”

It has reckless, insouciant gaiety.
It lies on undersides, backsides, waysides,
out-of-the-waysides.
They must leap high to do it,
hoisting each other – furtive,
lightning-fast, swathing by
flashlight, moonlight.

Growing boys, Gutty boys,
Brown boys, White boys,
Jeaned boys, Rubber-soled boys,
Deprived boys, High boys.
Who carries the color?
Who buys, who leads?

They’ll show us; make us see
as we pass in fast cars, fast trains,
fast limousines, bound for town,
country, airport, home –
upscale sights in sweet surrounds.
Efflorescent, this downside art –
like early man’s –
frescoes blooming in the dark.

Betty Ajemian’s poem “Graffiti” from Passager’s 2020 Poetry Contest issue.

I’m sure you know these lines from Longfellow: “By the shores of Gitchee Gumee, by the shining Big-Sea water, stood the wigwam of Nokomis, daughter of the moon Nokomis.” They’re from “Song of Hiawatha.” I always assumed they were the first lines of the poem, but it’s a really long poem, and he didn’t get to this part until about 700 lines in. Anyway, Gitche Gumee: it was the name the Ojibwe people gave to what we call Lake Superior.

When Marsh Muirhead sent Passager this next poem, he lived in Bemidji Minnesota, relatively close to Lake Superior. From the 2007 Poetry Contest issue, here’s Marsh’s poem “Obituary.”

My father believed that real men
had hair on their knuckles,
ate thick well-marbled steaks
medium rare with mushrooms
and lots of butter; believed in pork hocks
and good whiskey, the blend of frying pan haze and
cigarette smoke, the slap of cards and tinkle of ice,
good cheese on a sourdough roll.
He disdained pizza, casseroles, margarine—
fads for those not bold enough
to enjoy the better things in life.
His only request:
open-faced sandwiches for the funeral,
folded ham and turkey on triangular
cuts of rye or pumpernickel with a little mayo, a thin
slice of olive; some subtlety and grace at last.
In the last year he took to making pies in the
long afternoons within the shrinking borders of
his life—lemon meringue, apple, blueberry—
something sweet for company, before bed, for sleeping.
He rose from a morphine coma on
the day before his last, sat up, eyes wide open,
staring off at some distant cottage or
languid Sunday morning; asked for pancakes, buttermilk pancakes—
as much for the sound of the word—buttermilk as for their taste, slathered in butter,
floating in syrup, washed down with black
coffee. At the funeral, days later,
the pastor spoke of breaking camp,
putting away worldly things for the sweet
hereafter. And in the fellowship hall—sweet bars
and weak Lutheran coffee, white buns with
deli beef and margarine, several hot casseroles;
nothing cut fancy or folded,
nothing he might have asked for.

“Obituary,” Marsh Muirhead.

“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld . . .”

That’s how the poem “Evangeline” opens. In the poem, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow tells the story of an Acadian woman named Evangeline who was separated from her fella when the Acadians were expelled from Nova Scotia. The Acadians eventually wound up in Louisiana, where the word “Acadian” morphed to “Cadian” and then “Cajun.” Here’s a poem by Louisianan Alice Weiss: “Civil War, Japan, 1331: Fleeing Woman.”

The road at night’s a river in full melt,
crashing against boulders and swirling
apart, shoulders, legs, children, bones,
carts tipping, tilting. Rice and hemp spill out.
I tuck in, small, bulbous, scooting,
bundles on my back bound across my chest
by damp willow straps I soak in a stream
by day when I hide among the cedars
from the armored riders, iron-footed horses,
growling shouts of Riho, Riho,
and the weeping mewls of the fallen
too tired to get out of the way.

With me, of the fields I fled:
a cut of leather my man tied his topknot with,
I use to twist the rice apart from the hemp
I will weave or plant if there is free earth
where I come to land;
a hand, its fingers curved around a hoe,
sliced from his arm by the same sword that took his head,
that I carry in one eye as if it were a bit of drought,
dirt lodged and hurting every time I blink;
a belly swelling low and hard against my hips,
a prayer of thanks the rice and hemp rebundled
on my back are still now,
not kicking and squirming against my body
while I try and get some rest.

Alice Weiss’s poem “Civil War, Japan, 1331: Fleeing Woman” from Passager’s 2017 Poetry Contest issue.

The lines I quoted from Longfellow, by the way, came from my great Aunt Eva’s book of Longfellow poems, dated 1904, that she used in school.

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For Kendra, Mary, Christine, Rosanne, and the rest of the Passager staff, I’m Jon Shorr.