Since encountering and voraciously reading Dennis Camp’s Keep and Share web site about Vachel Lindsay, I’ve come to know, almost intimately, a man I have hardly known at all. His name is Vachel Lindsay.
In recent months, beforel I received an email from Keep and Share, stating Dennis had invited me to sign up for his page (access is by invitation only), I had learned the former Sangamon State University professor was working on a new Vachel Lindsay bio. In the mid 70s (1970s for you pundits) I had taken a course he taught about Illinois poets - Masters, Sandberg & Lindsay — and to this day, that course is occasionally rembered — and always fondly - by a former classmate of mine and I. Though I knew he had been greeting visitors at what was then a very different version of what is now known as Vachel Lindsay Home State Historic Site at 603 S. Fifth Street, I was not aware of how deeply he was committed to the study of the poet/artist’s life and creations. Though I have since, often, mentally horsewhipped myself for not visiting the home when he was spending time there, I’ve since spent hours and effort I never would have dreamed in the 1970s I would spend, getting to know the Lindsays in my own way. Following his years of research, Dennis authored the three volume The Poetry of Vachel Lindsay complete with Lindsay’s drawing which iremains today, something of a Magna Carta of the native Springfieldian. Before this momemt in the literary epoch, others, particularly Eleanor Ruggles, have written the Vachel biography. Her The West-Going Heart: A Life of Vachel Lindsay should be required reading for every student who spends one senior-year semester in a Sangamon County high school. In his unique magnum opus, Dennis lay all of Vachel’s poems on a giant literary plate, explained when and how they were created, arranged them in first-to-last chronology, and invited readers to dig in with heart and soul and voice. The Vachel bio now being shared — for absolutely no charge — at his Keep and Share web site, for many poetry enthusiasts, repositions Ruggles’ excellent book from the position of “ultimate destination” to the only slightly less-laudable “must visiit on your way to the ultimate destination” which waits for you “at Camp.”
At present, Dennis tells me he has no intention to find a publisher for his e-book. He has no interest in engaging pulp media. We, the people, in order to engage a more perfect reading medium, may download and print all he posts at his site. His book MERITS print media action, but that is not my decision; it’s rightfullly his. I respect that. I reap of his decision, and so should YOU!
Every book written about Vachel Lindsay should be read if a person desires to know about him. Almost everything publsshed thus far speaks commendably to VL and his art. The one exception is Edgar Lee Masters’ convoluted clap-trap in ivy clothing.
- - - - -Don’t get me started about that one.
They are important because like early chapters in a good novel, they acqiuaint readers with names and scenes which will be encountered in greater detail along the way. By the time you arrive at Dennis Camp’s K&S presentation, you will be ready for it. As I discovered when I printed and read the first chapter of Dennis’ production I downloaded from his site, the man I thought knew — Nicholas Vachel Lindsay — was a man I hardly knew at all. Now that I have said all that, let me say all this . . . .
DON’T delay engaging Dennis Camp’s production until you read even one of the many books already waiting for you at Prairie Archives. Read Dennis Camp’s first. How?
The only way to get there is to be invited, and to do that you must email him
dcamp6504@insightbb.com
Tell him you read about his work at Honey & Quinine and want to join the roster..
Live long . . . . . and proper.
