Spellbound
By Emily Brontë
The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.
The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.
Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.
Cento Between the Ending and the End
By Cameron Awkward-Rich
Sometimes you don’t die
when you’re supposed to
& now I have a choice
repair a world or build
a new one inside my body
a white door opens
into a place queerly brimming
gold light so velvet-gold
it is like the world
hasn’t happened
when I call out
all my friends are there
everyone we love
is still alive gathered
at the lakeside
like constellations
my honeyed kin
honeyed light
beneath the sky
a garden blue stalks
white buds the moon’s
marble glow the fire
distant & flickering
the body whole bright-
winged brimming
with the hours
of the day beautiful
nameless planet. Oh
friends, my friends—
bloom how you must, wild
until we are free.
About This Poem
“‘Cento Between the Ending and the End’ is composed of language scavenged from the works of Justin Phillip Reed, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Fatimah Asghar, Kaveh Akbar, sam sax, Ari Banias, C. Bain, Oliver Bendorf, Hanif Abdurraqib, Safia Elhillo, Danez Smith, Ocean Vuong, Franny Choi, Lucille Clifton, and Nate Marshall. All of whom have made for me a world and for whom I wish the world.”—Cameron Awkward-Rich
Cameron Awkward-Rich is the author of Sympathetic Little Monster (Ricochet Editions, 2016), which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. He is a Cave Canem fellow, a poetry editor for Muzzle Magazine, and his second collection of poetry, Dispatch, was published by Persea Books in December 2019.
Also a critic, Cameron earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University’s program in Modern Thought & Literature, and he is an assistant professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Currently, he is working on a book about maladjustment in trans literature and theory.
Just a quick FYI: “Cento” is a piece of writing, especially a poem, composed wholly of quotations from the works of other authors. (I did not know this until I looked it up.)
Christmas Bells
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – 1807-1882
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”
In 1861, two years before writing this poem, Longfellow’s personal peace was shaken when his second wife of 18 years, to whom he was very devoted, was fatally burned in an accidental fire. Then in 1863, during the American Civil War, Longfellow’s oldest son, Charles Appleton Longfellow, joined the Union Army without his father’s blessing. Longfellow was informed by a letter dated March 14, 1863, after Charles had left. “I have tried hard to resist the temptation of going without your leave, but I cannot any longer,” he wrote. “I feel it to be my first duty to do what I can for my country, and I would willingly lay down my life for it if it would be of any good.” Charles was soon appointed as a lieutenant but, in November, he was severely wounded in the Battle of Mine Run. Charles eventually recovered, but his time as a soldier was finished.
Longfellow wrote the poem on Christmas Day in 1863. “Christmas Bells” was first published in February 1865, in Our Young Folks, a juvenile magazine published by Ticknor and Fields. References to the Civil War are prevalent in some of the verses that are not commonly sung. The refrain “peace on Earth, goodwill to men” is a reference to the King James Version of Luke 2:14.
The spirit of Christmas has a tendency to get lost in the hustle and bustle of the holidays. This year, as we speed towards a decidedly topsy-turvy Christmas amidst the worsening coronavirus pandemic, it’s more important than ever to reflect on the true meaning of the season. Like Longfellow in 1863, we are currently in our own war of sorts. We are in a war against COVID-19, but the vaccine is a powerful weapon against it. However, the main war we are fighting is that against Trumpism. Trump’s leadership of hatred has spawned a cultural war like nothing we have seen. Yes, there are comparisons in American history, but nothing come to the level at which Trump has politicized every aspect of American life. The divisiveness he has caused in this country has pitted families against one another, as the Civil War did 160 year ago. The 1860 election was another election that pitted half the country against one another. In 1860, though, the South did not see Abraham Lincoln as a candidate who won a fraudulent election, but as someone who stood for something they were against and feared it would destroy their way of life. Trump has pushed his claims of a fraudulent election and has played on those who fear Democrats will destroy their way of life. Trump supporters are complacent (at best) with their racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia. At worst, they are openly racist, classist, sexist, and homophobic. The combinations of complacency toward hatred and open support of hatred are mixed, but all Trump supporters follow the hatred espoused by Trump to some extent.
With 90 percent of Congressional Republicans refusing to acknowledge Trump’s defeat, they are actively destroying the fabrics of democracy and the Constitution they swore to uphold. Republicans who are not speaking out against Trump may think they are not supporting him, but their silence is support. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” Sadly, with those who supported Trump and especially those who have supported his anti-scientific views about the pandemic, it is our friends and family who supported him who hurt us the most. Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, probably said it best, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”
“Christmas Bells” tells of Longfellow’s despair, upon hearing Christmas bells during the American Civil War, that “hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men”. The carol concludes with the bells carrying renewed hope for peace among men. I live next door to an Episcopal church and a few doors down across the street is the Methodist church. Both churches ring their bells on Sunday mornings calling worshipers to service, and I assume they do the same on Christmas Day, though I have never been here to hear it. On Friday, I expect to hear their bells, and I will think of the four years of a national nightmare that has been the Trump presidency. I will think on the year of hardships suffered because a pandemic raged unchecked in our country. I will think of the fact that because of the mismanagement of the pandemic, I am not home with my family having Christmas breakfast that morning and watching my niece and nephew play with the toys Santa brought them. However, I hope that like Longfellow, I will remember:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”
In 1872, the poem was first set to music as “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” The English organist, John Baptiste Calkin, used the poem in a processional accompanied with a melody “Waltham” that he previously used as early as 1848. The Calkin version of the carol was long the standard. Less commonly, the poem has also been set to Joseph Mainzer’s 1845 composition “Mainzer.” In the 20th century, Paul Mickelson recorded the John Baptiste Calkin version as an instrumental on the album “Christmas Bells” in 1955, and The Mormon Tabernacle Choir recorded a version with lyrics in 1957. Since the middle of the 20th century, the poem has been set to other musical arrangements, most notably in 1956 by Johnny Marks. Bing Crosby recorded the song on October 3, 1956, using Marks’s melody and verses 1, 2, 6, 7. With Christmas just days away, I find more significance in Longfellow’s poem and the nearly 60-year-old song adaptation. Though decades have passed since the powerful poem was translated into song, the message remains one that we should all take to heart. It can give us hope. I prefer the Burl Ives version over the Bing Crosby one.
The Trump presidency will be over at noon on January 20, 2021. The Biden administration can then begin a recovery and reconstruction of the United States. Democracy and law and order will be restored. A vaccine is being distributed, and soon we can put this year of 2020 behind us. As Elizabeth II said in 1992, this “is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an annus horribilis.” There is a lot to look forward to in 2021, but it will take a lot of work and cooperation among Americans. I pray that the damage done by the Trump presidency is not too significant to repair. I also pray that Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock win the Senate runoff election in Georgia because it will make the recovery of American democracy go much smoother because we will be able to get rid of a Senate controlled by Mitch McConnell.
Let us remember on this Christmas Luke 2:10-11, when the angel said to the shepherds, “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you.” Then a multitude of the heavenly host proclaimed saying:
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
— Luke 2:14
Let the Glory of God be a sign to us that better days are ahead.
[little tree]
by e e cummings – 1894-1962
little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower
who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly
i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don’t be afraid
look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,
put up your little arms
and i’ll give them all to you to hold.
every finger shall have its ring
and there won’t be a single place dark or unhappy
then when you’re quite dressed
you’ll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they’ll stare!
oh but you’ll be very proud
and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we’ll dance and sing
“Noel Noel”
Edward Estlin Cummings (often styled e e cummings) was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894. He began writing poems as early as 1904 and studied Latin and Greek at the Cambridge Latin High School. He received his BA in 1915 and his MA in 1916, both from Harvard University. In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his work toward further evolution. Nevertheless, he attained great popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex.
The poet and critic Randall Jarrell once noted that Cummings is “one of the most individual poets who ever lived—and, though it sometimes seems so, it is not just his vices and exaggerations, the defects of his qualities, that make a writer popular. But, primarily, Mr. Cummings’s poems are loved because they are full of sentimentally, of sex, of more or less improper jokes, of elementary lyric insistence.”
War Within Myself
By Daniel K.
I’ve been fighting a War Within Myself all my life,
Tired of the hurt, the pain, the strife.
Anger consumes me from day to day,
Cellies now walking on eggshells, unsure of what to say.
I do pray each night for the peace that I need in my heart,
I need it before I tear what friendships I have apart.
Prison has a funny way of doing some things,
Leaves me wondering what tomorrow may bring.
I’m tired of the hate, anger and pain that I feel,
I just want my heart and soul to be healed.
I want to be able to simply laugh at a joke,
I need someone to help me before I lose all hope.
My heart is almost completely hardened with what I’ve been through,
I need someone, anyone, maybe that someone is you.
I’m fighting a War Within Myself, and I’m so tired,
So nervous, scared, like I’m on a high tight wire.
I hope that I don’t fall before someone catches me,
But then again… maybe it’s my destiny.
Rarely, have I come across a poem which so perfectly describes my current state of mind. Daniel K.’s poem “War Within Myself” was first published on February 20, 2019, in partnership with Free Minds Book Club & Writing Workshop, an organization based in Washington DC that elevates the voices of those directly impacted by the prison system through creative writing. (The poet’s last name was withheld on request in consideration of their privacy.)
While “War Within Myself” is about being in a literal prison, I think many of us have found ourselves more in a metaphorical prison at one time or another. Yesterday, my dominant emotion/feeling was, I am tired. Sometimes, we can’t pinpoint what we are tired of or if we are just tired of everything. When someone has depression, there is always a “war within ourselves.” We become a prisoner of our emotions. It causes an inability to function within our day-to-day tasks. We may find ourselves tired of the hurt, the pain, the strife, and the anger that consumes us at a given moment.
Depression can affect everyone around us. In the poem, Daniel K. writes, “Cellies now walking on eggshells, unsure of what to say,” It can be the same for our friends and family. They often do not know what to say or do to help us. We may see a doctor about our depression, and medication can sometimes help. But some people are too embarrassed to see a doctor. Hopefully, we seek help from somewhere or someone before a breaking point, before we lash out at those we love. Sadly, some people turn to more destructive means. What we most long for is for our “heart and soul to be healed.”
We want joy back in our lives. We need something to hope for in our lives. We must lean on friends and family who want to help us bring that joy and hope back into our lives. My depression is often fleeting at this stage in my life. There was a time when I found it hard to function from one day to the next. I am better now than in those darker days, but there are times like yesterday when I suddenly became so depressed that the sensation was overwhelming and all-consuming. Sometimes, it helps to concentrate on work or to reach out to a friend, anything to get the mind off my depressed state, but depression is a strange adversary. When you are in its grip, you only want to focus on your depression, and not the things that might get your mind off what is bothering you. Daniel K. ends the poem with the statement, “maybe it’s my destiny.” It doesn’t have to be our destiny. We have to allow someone to catch us and pull us back from the brink.
Lullaby
By W. H. Auden – 1907-1973
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit’s carnal ecstasy.
Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.
Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.
W. H. Auden’s “Lullaby” is an example of a love poem, but there are several things worth noting about it. A lullaby is, of course, a song sung to soothe someone to sleep, especially a baby or young child. Immediately, in that famous opening line (“Lay your sleeping head, my love …”), Auden challenges our expectations of the lullaby: the person he addresses is a lover rather than a child, and he is addressing him while he is already asleep. Auden was a gay man when being gay was still criminalized in Britain, and the person Auden is addressing is another man. When Auden wrote “Lullaby,” he was trying to seduce the composer Benjamin Britten (who was also gay). Auden and Britten collaborated on several projects together, although it seems probable that Auden never managed to effect a partnership with Britten on a romantic plane.
Whether or not Britten was the intended recipient, Auden challenges some of the conventions of a love poem in “Lullaby.” In that second line, He describes himself as “faithless,” suggesting he is someone who has lost faith in “love” as an idea but is nevertheless committed to living in this moment with his beloved. “Faithless” summons its opposite, “faithful,” which is confirmed when the poet says that both certainty and “fidelity” disappear at “the stroke of midnight.” This line suggests this might only be a casual fling between two lovers, but a fling whose passions are being intensely felt at the moment in time that the poem relates to us.
In the first stanza, Auden addresses his lover as he sleeps with his head on Auden’s arm. Auden knows that beauty is fleeting: time and illness destroy the beauty of youth, and death soon arrives to prove that the young are not young (“the child”) for long. Our life span is soon over. But what matters is the here and now. Auden then addresses someone else, a higher power, and asks that this “living creature” be allowed to remain in his arms until morning. Auden is aware that the “creature” he loves is but a mere mortal. His lover is not perfect but is “guilty’ of man’s sins and moral flaws. However, to him, his lover is beautiful.
In the second stanza, Auden turns to more supernatural and divine ideas of love. The syntax and punctuation are more complex here, but Auden is saying that lovers who lie upon the “slope” or hill of Venus are sent a “grave” vision by the goddess, who is a vision of “universal” love. Auden uses the word “grave” because it is deeply felt and deeply serious. For the poet, love is one of the most essential things in our lives. Even the “hermit,” living alone and cut off from society, is affected by love: the “glaciers” and “rocks” of his stone-cold heart can also be thawed and warmed by love’s power.
In the third stanza, Auden continues to elevate “this night” as significant and filled with meaning for him. Certainty and fidelity are both fleeting and pass like the tolling of a bell. Auden knows that everything that has to be paid will be paid. But what matters is this night, and he wants to set to memory every moment of it. The reference to the “pedantic boring cry” of “fashionable madmen” is not fully understood but is probably, given the poem’s 1930s context, an allusion to Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and other political leaders. In ‘The poem, “September 1, 1939,” Auden refers to Hitler as a “psychopathic god.” There’s also possibly a recollection of John Donne’s poem “The Sun Rising,” which begins with Donne lying in bed with his lover at the “break of day” and reprimanding the sun as a “saucy pedantic wretch” for shining through the curtains and telling him and his lover they have to get up.
In the final stanza of “Lullaby,” Auden continues the sentiment seen in the previous stanza in which all things must pass. He picks up on three things already explicitly mentioned: the “beauty” of his lover, the “stroke of midnight,” and the “vision” that Venus sends to lovers lying in post-coital bliss on her ancient hill. If morning must come—as he knows it must—Auden asks that it at least be the dawn of a day which offers hope and blessing to the two lovers. The poem is hopeful, but throughout, Auden remains aware of the fragility and impermanence of all human relationships. A person we care for deeply can be taken from us at any moment.
from Nature Poem
By Tommy Pico
Let’s say I want to get a nose piercing.
Let’s say I’m 30 years old.
Let’s say nothing big and bull-like, nothing too attractive, nothing chandeliering
from septum to lobe. Just a simple, little stud nothing more.
Is it normal to get a nose ring at 30?
Normal is defined not by what it is, but what surrounds it. Meaning it could literally be
anything, and is nothing.
Is it normal to get a nose ring at 30?
No, it’s not.
Am I just afraid of death?
Yes, probably.
Is there nothing more normal than fearing death?
It is very natural to fear death.
Should I get a nose ring?
It would look very cute on you
November is National Native American Heritage Month. It’s a time to recognize the many sacrifices, contributions, and achievements of Native American people, as well as celebrate their rich and vibrant cultures. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush approved a joint resolution designating November as “National American Indian Heritage Month.” Although the name eventually changed, it started an annual tradition upheld in communities across the United States.
The US holds in trust 56.2 million acres of land for various Native American tribes and individuals, according to the US Department of Indian Affairs. There are approximately 326 reservations. These reservations are not tourist attractions. Many are the remnants of native tribes’ lands, while others were created by the federal government for Native Americans who were forcibly removed from their lands. They are homes for tribes and communities; it’s where many live, work, and raise their families.
The Thanksgiving story of pilgrims and Native Americans sharing a friendly meal will be reenacted and celebrated across the country on November 26, and Friday, November 27 is Native American Heritage Day. However, many Native Americans actually consider Thanksgiving a “Day of Mourning,” pointing out the story overlooks how the introduction of European settlers spelled tragedy for indigenous communities. For this reason, some Native American groups and their allies are calling on Americans to “decolonize” their Thanksgiving celebrations. Some ways of doing this include putting away Native American decorations and tropes, introducing native dishes to the dinner table, and engaging in conversations about Native American history with dinner guests.
I usually post a poem about Thanksgiving, but this year, I thought I would honor Native Americans by posting a poem by a gay Native American. The poem above is by Tommy “Teebs” Pico. Many of Pico’s poems are centered on a character called Teebs, a queer Native American poet born on a reservation who left his home for school, much like the author himself. “I wasn’t raised in a world that necessarily uplifts queer indigenous perspectives,” Pico said. “So in order to get people to pay attention, I knew that I was going to have to be very loud and very funny or sharp or something.”
He is the author of many books published in the last few years, all of which are sort of a mix between poetry, novel-in-verse, and very slutty Tumblr posts. He is an indigenous American poet from the Kumeyaay Nation. The Kumeyaay, also known as Tipai-Ipai, are a tribe of Indigenous peoples of the Americas who live at the northern border of Baja California in Mexico and the southern border of California. Pico grew up on the Viejas reservation located in San Diego County, California, where he got his start writing comics at age 5, and as a teenager created zines and wrote poetry. Pico originally left the Viejas Indian reservation to study pre-med at Sarah Lawrence, hoping to return to the reservation to address some of the health problems he grew up surrounded by. Instead, he spent his twenties pioneering the artist collective Birdsong, making zines, publishing his poetry on Tumblr, and honing his performance skills through “exposure therapy.”
His poems are irreverent queer anthems, and in 2018, he received the $50,000 Whiting Award prize (just one of many things his work has won) for a book-length poem that contained content about Grindr, rimjobs, and Beyoncé. As you can tell from the excerpt from his second book of poems, Nature Poem, he has an interesting style. Nature Poem was the winner of a 2018 American Book Award and a finalist for the 2018 Lambda Literary Award. As you might have guessed, as an Indigenous American, his relationship with Thanksgiving is not too sweet. In 2015, Pico wrote an essay/poem for Literary Hub titled, “How to Pass the Time on a Holiday Commemorating the Destruction of Your Ancestors,” which is definitely worth reading.
November
By Edward Thomas
November’s days are thirty:
November’s earth is dirty,
Those thirty days, from first to last;
And the prettiest thing on ground are the paths
With morning and evening hobnails dinted,
With foot and wing-tip overprinted
Or separately charactered,
Of little beast and little bird.
The fields are mashed by sheep, the roads
Make the worst going, the best the woods
Where dead leaves upward and downward scatter.
Few care for the mixture of earth and water,
Twig, leaf, flint, thorn,
Straw, feather, all that men scorn,
Pounded up and sodden by flood,
Condemned as mud.
But of all the months when earth is greener
Not one has clean skies that are cleaner.
Clean and clear and sweet and cold,
They shine above the earth so old,
While the after-tempest cloud
Sails over in silence though winds are loud,
Till the full moon in the east
Looks at the planet in the west
And earth is silent as it is black,
Yet not unhappy for its lack.
Up from the dirty earth men stare:
One imagines a refuge there
Above the mud, in the pure bright
Of the cloudless heavenly light:
Another loves earth and November more dearly
Because without them, he sees clearly,
The sky would be nothing more to his eye
Than he, in any case, is to the sky;
He loves even the mud whose dyes
Renounce all brightness to the skies.
About the Poet:
If the war goes on I believe I shall find myself a sort of Englishman, though neither poet or soldier’
– Letter to Walter de la Mare, 30th August 1914
Philip Edward Thomas (3 March 1878 – 9 April 1917) was a British poet, essayist, and novelist. Scholars consider him a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences. His career in poetry only came after he had already been a successful writer and literary critic. In 1915, he enlisted in the British Army to fight in the First World War and was killed in action shortly after arriving in France.
Thomas thought that poetry was the highest form of literature and regularly reviewed it, but he only became a poet himself at the end of 1914 when living at Steep, East Hampshire. He initially published his poetry under the name Edward Eastaway to disguise his identity due to his fame as a critic. Robert Frost, who was living in England at the time, encouraged Thomas (then more famous as a critic) to write poetry, and their friendship was so close that the two planned to reside side by side in the United States. Frost’s most famous poem, “The Road Not Taken,” was inspired by walks with Thomas and Thomas’s indecisiveness about which route to take.
Thomas enlisted in the Artists Rifles in July 1915, despite being a 37-year-old married man who could have avoided enlisting. He was unintentionally influenced in this decision by his friend Frost, who had returned to the U.S. but sent Thomas an advance copy of “The Road Not Taken.” Frost intended the poem as a gentle mocking of Thomas’ indecision, particularly the indecision that Thomas had shown on their many walks together; however, most audiences took the poem more seriously than Frost intended. Thomas similarly took it seriously and personally. The poem allowed Thomas to be decisive and enlist.
Thomas was promoted to corporal, and in November 1916 was commissioned into the Royal Garrison Artillery as a second lieutenant. He was killed in action soon after arriving in France at Arras on Easter Monday, 9 April 1917. To spare the feelings of his widow, Helen, she was told the fiction of a “bloodless death,” i.e., that Thomas was killed by the concussive blast wave of one of the last shells fired as he stood to light his pipe and that there was no mark on his body. However, a letter from his commanding officer Franklin Lushington written in 1936 (and discovered many years later in an American archive), states that in reality, the cause of Thomas’s death was being “shot clean through the chest.” W. H. Davies, the Welsh poet and Thomas’s close friend, was devastated by his death and immortalized him in a poem, “Killed in Action (Edward Thomas).”
Killed in Action (Edward Thomas)
By W. H. Davies
Happy the man whose home is still
In Nature’s green and peaceful ways;
To wake and hear the birds so loud,
That scream for joy to see the sun
Is shouldering past a sullen cloud.
And we have known those days, when we
Would wait to hear the cuckoo first;
When you and I, with thoughtful mind,
Would help a bird to hide her nest,
For fear of other hands less kind.
But thou, my friend, art lying dead:
War, with its hell-born childishness,
Has claimed thy life, with many more:
The man that loved this England well,
And never left it once before.
Thomas is buried in Agny military cemetery on the outskirts of Arras. He did not live to see Poems (1917), a collection of his poetry published under his pseudonym, Edward Eastaway. In just under two years, he had written over 140 poems. On 11 November 1985, Thomas was among 16 Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner. The inscription, written by fellow poet Wilfred Owen, reads: “My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.”
The Unknown Soldier
By Melvin B. Tolson
I was a minuteman at Concord Bridge,
I was a frigate-gunner on Lake Erie,
I was a mortarman at Stony Ridge,
I fought at San Juan Hill and Château Thierry,
I braved Corregidor and the Arctic Sea:
The index finger brings democracy.
These States bred freedom in and in my bone—
Old as the new testament of Plymouth Bay.
When the Founding Fathers laid the Cornerstone
And rued the thirteen clocks that would not say
The hour on the hour, I nerved myself with them
Under the noose in the hand of the tyrant’s whim.
I’ve seen the alien ships of destiny
Plow the sea mountains between the hemispheres.
I’ve seen the Gulf Stream of our history
Littered with derelicts of corsair careers.
I’ve heard the watchman cry, “The bars! The bars!”
When midnight held the funeral of stars.
I saw horizontal States grow vertical,
From Plymouth Harbor to the Golden Gate,
Till wedged against skyscapes empyreal
Their glories elbowed the decrees of fate.
These States bred freedom in and in my bone:
I hymn their virtues and their sins atone.
The tares and wheat grow in the self-same field,
The rose and thorn companion on the bush,
The gold and gravel cuddle in the yield,
The oil and grit and dirt together gush.
The Gordian knot to be or not to be
Snares not the free.
My faith props the tomorrows, for I know
The roots of liberty, tough-fibered, feed
On the blood of tyrants and martyrs; the judas blow
Tortures the branches till they twist and bleed;
And yet no Caesar, vitamined on loot,
Can liberty uproot!
I am the Unknown Soldier: I open doors
To the Rights of Man, letters incarnadine.
These shrines of freedom are mine as well as yours;
These ashes of freemen yours as well as mine.
My troubled ghost shall haunt These States, nor cease
Till the global war becomes a global peace.
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World War I—known at the time as “The Great War”—officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, in the Palace of Versailles outside the town of Versailles, France. However, fighting ceased seven months earlier when an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, between the Allied nations and Germany went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. For that reason, November 11, 1918, is generally regarded as the end of “the war to end all wars.”
Veterans Day, which is tomorrow, originated as “Armistice Day” on Nov. 11, 1919, the first anniversary of the end of World War I. Congress passed a resolution in 1926 for an annual observance, and Nov. 11 became a national holiday beginning in 1938. Veterans Day pays tribute to all American veterans—living or dead—but especially gives thanks to living veterans who served their country honorably during war or peacetime.
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The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is a monument dedicated to deceased U.S. service members whose remains have not been identified. It is located in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, United States. The World War I “Unknown” is a recipient of the Medal of Honor, the Victoria Cross, and several other foreign nations’ highest service awards. The U.S. Unknowns who were interred are also recipients of the Medal of Honor, presented by U.S. presidents who presided over their funerals. The monument has no officially designated name.
Dozens of countries have a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. These tombs are a monument dedicated to the services of unknown soldiers interred at the monument and to the common memories of all soldiers killed in war. These tombs can be found in many nations and are usually high-profile national monuments. Throughout history, many soldiers have died in war with their remains being unidentified. Following World War I, a movement arose to commemorate these soldiers with a single tomb, containing the body of one such unidentified soldier.
Many of these Tombs of the Unknown are usually guarded by honorary sentinels at all times. At the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery, the tomb guards are soldiers of the United States Army. It is considered one of the highest honors to serve as a Sentinel at the Tomb of the Unknowns. Fewer than 20 percent of all volunteers are accepted for training and of those only a fraction pass training to become full-fledged Tomb Guards. The soldier “walking the mat” does not wear rank insignia, so as not to outrank the Unknowns, whatever their ranks may have been. Non-commissioned officers (usually the Relief Commander and Assistant Relief Commanders), do wear insignia of their rank when changing the guard only. They have a separate uniform (without rank) that is worn when they actually guard the Unknowns or are “posted.” The duties of the sentinels are not purely ceremonial. The sentinels will confront people who cross the barriers at the tomb or whom they perceive to be disrespectful or excessively loud.
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About the Poet
Melvin B. Tolson (February 6, 1898 – August 29, 1966) was an American poet, educator, columnist, and politician. As a poet, he was influenced both by Modernism and the language and experiences of African Americans, and he was deeply influenced by his study of the Harlem Renaissance. Known for his complex, visionary poetry, Melvin B. Tolson was one of America’s leading Black poets.
Tolson was born in 1898 in Moberly, Missouri. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania in 1924 and a master’s degree in English and comparative literature from Columbia University in 1940. In 1947, Liberia appointed him as poet laureate. He is the author of numerous works, including the poetry collections Harlem Gallery: Book One, The Curator (1965), Libretto for the Republic of Liberia(1953), and Rendezvous with America (1944), and the plays Black Boy (1963) and Black No More (1952).
Tolson had a vibrant teaching career. In Marshall, Texas, he taught English and speech at Wiley College, where he led an award-winning debate team. From 1947 to 1965, he was a professor of English, speech, and drama at Langston University, a historically black college in Langston, Oklahoma.
Let America Be America Again
By Langston Hughes – 1902-1967
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!
“Let America Be America Again” is a poem written in 1935 by American poet Langston Hughes. It was originally published in the July 1936 issue of Esquire Magazine. The poem was republished in the 1937 issue of Kansas Magazine. It was revised and included in a small collection of Langston Hughes poems entitled A New Song, published by the International Workers Order in 1938.
The poem speaks of the American dream that never existed for lower-class Americans and the freedom and equality that every immigrant hoped for but never received. In his poem, Hughes represents not only African Americans but also other economically disadvantaged and minority groups. Besides criticizing America’s inequalities, the poem conveys a sense of hope that the American Dream is soon to come. While Hughes does not address the LGBTQ+ as one of the minority groups, sexuality was likely on his mind when he wrote the poem. Some academics and biographers believe that Hughes was homosexual and included homosexual codes in many of his poems, as did Walt Whitman, who, Hughes said, influenced his poetry. Hughes’s story “Blessed Assurance” deals with a father’s anger over his son’s effeminacy and “queerness.” The biographer Robert Aldrich argues that to retain the respect and support of black churches and organizations and avoid exacerbating his precarious financial situation, Hughes remained closeted. There has been some controversy, but most of it centers on whether Hughes was homosexual or asexual. Few believe that he was heterosexual or had any interest in women.
Hughes wrote “Let America Be America Again” while riding a train from New York to his mother’s home in Ohio. He was depressed because of recent reviews of his first Broadway play and his mother’s breast cancer diagnosis. Despite being a leader of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, he struggled for acceptance as a poet, battling persistent racism, and barely making a living. Selling a poem or a story every few months, he referred to himself as a “literary sharecropper.” Fate, he said, “never intended for me to have a full pocket of anything but manuscripts.”
Hughes finished the poem in a night but did not regard it as one of his best. The poem would be revised numerous times. It did not appear in his early anthologies and was only revived in the 1990s, first in a public reading by Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, later as a title for museum shows. Following Donald Trump’s election, the poem started trending on social media. In the aftermath of the death of George Floyd and others in police custody, the poem has found new urgency. Perhaps it was the word again that first drew people’s attention. Decades before Trump used the slogan “Make America Great Again” in his 2016 campaign, Hughes published this poem titled “Let America Be America Again.” Hughes’s first poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” published in 1921, addressed the Black experience in America: “My soul has grown deep like the rivers.” In 1926, he published his first book of poems, The Weary Blues. Influenced by poets such as Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, and Paul Laurence Dunbar, Hughes embraced free verse. His collection included the poem “I, Too,” which opens “I, too, sing America,” and closes “I, too, am America.” The poems are a coda for Whitman’s poem “I hear America singing.”
“Let America Be America Again” begins “Let America be America again / Let it be the dream it used to be,” then continues, “Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed.” It’s a dream of freedom, equality, opportunity, and liberty—the ideals that form the bedrock of the nation. Yet a parenthetic voice adds, “(America never was America to me).” If you’ve read much of Hughes’s work, it is clear that the parenthetic voice is the victim of the long history of racial segregation and oppression. The poem anticipates this assumption, and a new voice asks, “Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? ” What follows is a list of everyday Americans: “the poor white,” “the Negro,” “the red man,” “the immigrant,” “the farmer,” “the worker.” All are carrying hope for a better future, and all have fallen victim to “the same old stupid plan / Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.” America is not America to any of them.
The poem laments the conditions of the Depression, with millions unemployed and on relief, and asks what happened to America, the purported “homeland of the free,” where so many have nothing left now “except the dream that’s almost dead today.” Almost dead, yet unvanquished.
For Hughes, the United States was an unrealized, perhaps unrealizable ideal. It was a land that “never has been yet— / And yet must be,” a dreamland unlike any other country. But the nation’s failure time and again to live up to its aspirations is a profound part of the story. Whatever its struggles, the United States has always identified itself by its dreams. Dreams inspired by abstractions like democracy, justice, and rights. Dreams animated by those seeking freedom and equality. Dreams stirred by those making a new home in America and pursuing a better life. Hughes believed in those dreams, and his poem ends not with despair but with an urgent plea:
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!
Hughes would continue to think about America, asking, “What happens to a dream deferred?” in a 1951 poem titled “Harlem.” Martin Luther King Jr. had also been contemplating dreams, long before his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial. King and Hughes were friends: in 1956, King recited a Hughes poem, “Mother to Son,” from the pulpit. King publicly kept his distance because of the poet’s suspected Communist, just as King eventually distanced himself from his advisor and friend Bayard Rustin because of Rustin’s homosexuality. Even though publicly distanced from Hughes, King must have appreciated the closing of “Let America Be America Again,” where the people are summoned to redeem the land. In a sermon first delivered in 1954, he declared that “instead of making history, we are made by history.” The line is easily misunderstood. King was not offering an argument for why history matters; instead, he was decrying passivity and insisting on empowerment. It was a call to action. King was telling his congregation that the time for waiting on dreams was over—the time for making dreams come true had begun.
Today, we have the chance to put the United States back on track to letting “America be America again,” at least the dream of what America could become but has yet never been. We can elect Joe Biden and other Democrats to help heal the soul of this nation and try to fulfill the true American dream of democracy, justice, and rights. For too long, conservatives in the United States have held back the ideals of democracy that are found in the words of our Founding Fathers as laid out in the Preamble of the Constitution:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Under Donald Trump, the idea of a perfect Union has been weakened as he has worked to divide this country along the lines of race, sexuality, health, age, and economic status. He has destroyed the domestic tranquility of the United States as his rhetoric and lack of action have led to protests over racial inequalities, women’s rights, and the health and safety of all Americans. He has worked with our enemies to weaken our status on the world stage and has distanced this country from our allies. He has failed to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in a way that promotes the general welfare of this country. He has mocked science and medical professionals, those who wear masks, and those who promote social distancing to curb the spread of the virus, and he has hocked quack endorsed and crackpot cures for his own financial gain. He is destroying our posterity by allowing a failing economy, civil unrest, and a raging pandemic to fester. His ineptitude and inexperience with leadership will doom this country if he is reelected.
“These are the times that try men’s souls.” The opening line of Thomas Paine’s Revolutionary War pamphlet series, “The American Crisis,” resonates with Americans as much today as it did during the bleak winter of 1776. We, like our patriot ancestors, are locked in a struggle each side believes it must win to preserve the freedom and human dignity that are the natural rights of every American. Our souls are bowed under the pressure of the conflict, but each side remains resolute, even as we feel our nation’s bonds weaken under the strain. Everyone eagerly desires victory on Tuesday, and fear what might befall them if they are defeated. In his appendix to “Common Sense,” Thomas Paine wrote something that became one of Ronald Reagan’s favorite quotes: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” Taken literally, the sentiment would end in bloodshed and revolution. But that’s not how Reagan read it; he viewed Paine’s idea as an expression of optimism about the American spirit. So long as Americans remained true to their political heritage (at least in rhetoric), the natural equality of each and every human being, Reagan believed every generation of Americans would always rise to meet their “rendezvous with destiny.” Sadly, Reagan did not rise to meet America’s destiny (he set us on this path to Trumpism), but I believe Joe Biden can and will.
We must elect Joe Biden and Democrats down the ticket to salvage the dreams of the United States. The Supreme Court has often been the force of social change and equality but is now in danger with a majority of conservative justices who care more about what their interpretation of the original intent of the Constitution is over the idea of a living Constitution that can better the American dream. Biden can help reverse that with reforms to the judiciary and possibly the addition of more justices to the Supreme Court. We need Democrats to take control and right the wrongs of the Republicans and the Trump administration. We need to bring dignity and legitimacy back to the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. If you have not already voted, please vote today and vote for Democrats. Let this be a BLUE WAVE the likes of which this country has never before seen.
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The Closet Professor 