I started to open tonight's essay with the statement that I feel sorry for anyone who hasn't sat alone late at night and read Vachel Lindsay's poetry aloud, loudly. But this seemed like kind of a corny, gratuitous thing to say, so I will begin with a different line, as follows:

Don't die without at least once sitting alone late at night reading Vachel Lindsay's poetry aloud, loudly, If you do, you will have missed a brief but delightful interlude of poetic fun, for Lindsay's poetry is great fun, especially if you can, while reading it, project yourself back into the early days of the 20^th century and envision this eccentric, bizarre man standing before a large, country crowd chanting his rhymes, and exhorting his listeners to join him in his own special mixture of evangelical fervor, Vaudevillian showmanship, and jazz syncopation.

For Lindsay was a showman as well as a poet. In 1904, after having studied for several years at the Art Institute of Chicago and the New York School of Art, he abandoned his plans to become an artist and hit the road, tramping through the South, the Mid-West, and the West lecturing for the Anti-Saloon League, but more importantly preaching his "Gospel of Beauty," and offering his pamphlet of poems, entitled Rhymes to be Traded for Bread, in exchange for food and lodging. He was, Louis Untermeyer said, a "'a new thing in American poetry, semi-barbaric but deeply emotional, brilliantly colored, rich musical, and tremendously effective . . . Saint Francis and Johnny Appleseed in one."

One theme for which Lindsay is especially noted was his empathy for black Americans. He wrote several moving tributes to Lincoln, including what is perhaps his most famous poem, "Abraham Lincoln Walks At Midnight." He wrote numerous poems in praise of the pre-Civil War antislavery movement. One is a wonderful selection entitled "A Negro Sermon - Simon Legree," in which he demonizes the evil slave owner from Harriet Beecher Stowe's classic novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Another is tonight's poem honoring John Brown. Together they make up two parts of what Lindsay called his "Booker Washington Trilogy."

This effort, along with a three part poem entitled "The Congo, A Study of the Negro Race," were clearly meant as a tribute to African American culture as he knew it. But they earned him considerable criticism from the black leaders of the day, who uniformly recognized his good intentions but were critical of his understanding of the black condition. But that's a story for another time. Tonight, I invite you to enjoy Lindsay's poetry, for poetry's sake alone. He was, without question, an America classic.