My weekend with internationally famous Springfield, Illinois poet Vachel (rhymes with Rachel) involved two visits to the Vachel Lindsay Home State Historic Site on Saturday, and a visit to the Illini Country Club Sunday afternoon.
I began preparing for Saturday last August when site director Jennie Battles asked me to be a featured presenter for about the 10th year in a row, and I was delighted as always to accept. Poets who recite poems are not like folk singers or rock’n'roll musicians. We don’t attract the groupies who throw their panties at us, for one thing. For another, I, for one, don’t have regular performance opportunities (DANG IT!), but even so, I have built, over the years, a “performance repertory” of poems ready to be taken out of the steamer trunk, dusted off, rehearsed to re-imprint words and intonations practiced to semi-perfection long ago and again shared with attentive people. Some Vachel poems I carry in my mind’s “back pocket:” The Broncho That Would Not be Broken, On the Building of Springfield, The Proud Farmer, How a Little Girl Sang, The Little Turtle, A Curse for the Saxophone, Simon Legree, What the Sexton Said, The Flute of the Lonely, and The Sun Says His Prayers. Others — all listed at my Vachel Pages website — require time in serious rehearsal with the confidence I KNOW them already. I don’t have to “rebuild” them; I just have to brush on a new coat of paint of second-nature familiarization and restore my previously-attained comfort level. The Vachel house presentation demanded more. I discovered in rehearsal, phrases that work better when recited differently; make more sense, add dimension, delight to the ear, that kind of thing.
Serious rehearsal began part time about two weeks ago when I determined what I wanted to recite and in what order. That was easy. I knew I wanted variety leaning to the serious with a dash of humor here and there. I also wanted to share two poem/songs I have written about Vachel. (I have written more than two.) During the week leading to the 30 minute presentation I concentrated on chronic rough edges and subtle revisions in intonation, the kind of thing known to most destined to hear me as “the yada yada yada concerns.”
My first visit to the Vachel house Saturday morning was to determine when Jennie wanted me to recite. I knew from early conversation Jennie wanted me after lunch, and we both knew I’d likely arrive in late morning anyway so I could be in the audience for the other presenters. “Two o’clock, Job. It made the front page of the paper today.” She was right. BRAVO State Journal-Register, even though it said the occasion was the 128th birthday observance and it was really the 129th.
BOOM! Home to clean up and don my performance attire. I believe featured reciters, readers, presenters should be dressed distinctively. I didn’t want to arrive to perform and have folks mistake me for the father of Sarah Palin’s unmarried daughter’s child (though I’m told the resemblance is striking).
Saturday afternoon was a breeze of conviviality. Walter Lipe shared mostly his own poems, starting at noon. Starting at 1, Bud Bartlett gave an excellent narration of Vachel’s connection to the cinema industry of early Hollywood, All of us who took it in learned something of this often-neglected part of Vachel’s life. Bud kindly agreed to introduce me since according to my way of thinking my 30 minute clock wouldn’t run until I stood up. Typically, if I had had to introduce myself, folks would have heard about 10 minutes of my intro (yada yada yada yada) and 20 minutes of recitation. I also asked Bud to urge folks to buy my Arcadia book about Springfield aviation and my two books of poetry, and he did so very nicely. Sullivan couldn’t have done better.
The four-page program I prepared included notes about the poems I would recite, a list of the poems, and information about my Vachel Pages web site and one man show Vachel Lindsay: The Poet Speaks. I didn’t say 20 words during my presentation that weren’t part of poems. That’s a record for me.
Things went okay during the performance. I began confidently, working with no notes in hand or on the backs of my wrists, and I ended smiling. Equally importantly, the audience, which packed the library and parlor, a record Lindsay home audience for me, felt the same. It was the zenith of my experience at the Vachel house.
Today, Sunday, I attended the annual Vachel Lindsay Association (VLA) meeting held this year at Illini Country Club, a favorite social venue for Vachel when he was in town during the early days of the august establishment. I was privileged to share a table with featured speaker Dennis (and Barbara) Camp, Vachel portrait artist Ted Keylon, Larry Stevens and Mary Ann Levin, a theatrical icon in this town with whom I have shared the stage in an earlier phase of my life to my great delight.
The VLA has turned a corner, so to speak, after some challenging years. Their newly-incarnated newsletter is very well done, a four page color production, and the vitality of the organization seems newly infused with great plans and high hopes. I’m glad to be a member, as anyone whose dues check didn’t bounce has a right to be glad to be a member. Look for more about VLA to be posted here at Honey & Quinine. The meeting was a romp of excellent conversation with a breakfast brunch to match. I wish we could to this every month.
So now the election, a recital and annual meeting are behind me. WHEEEW. Now I can concentrate on freelance writing and AeroKnow and going back to building model airplanes . . . . . . . almost.
Almost forgot, my “weekend” with Vachel concludes at the November meeting of Vinegar Hill Neighborhood Association Monday night, where I will lead those in attendance in a brief commemoration of his birthday which was November 10, 1879. Everyone will be given a flyer I prepared for the occasion along with the text to his poem On the Building of Springfield which I will also recite to those attending.
Wotta weekend. Wish you were here.
Love long . . . . . . and proper.
