Posts Tagged ‘World War One’
“That’s my middle-west”: Nick Carraway’s Christmas Memories
One of my all time favorite passages from The Great Gatsby concerns Christmas and the Midwest. The passage comes towards the end of the novel as Nick Carraway is describing the aftermath of Gatsby’s murder and preparing to leave New York. There’s something about this passage that captures that exhilaration of returning home for the…
Read MorePublished A Century Ago: Vachel Lindsay’s “The Congo and Other Poems.”
It was 100 years ago that Midwestern poet Vachel Lindsay achieved prominence with his collection The Congo and Other Poems. Lindsay, born in Springfield, Illinois in 1879, had published a volume in 1913 called General William Booth Enters Into Heaven and Other Poems that garnered attention along with his dramatic public recitations. The Congo and…
Read More“The Prairie-Lawyer, Master of Us All”: Vachel Lindsay’s “When Abraham Lincoln Walks At Midnight”
One of the better known poems from Vachel Lindsay’s The Congo and Other Poems is his poem about the legacy of President Abraham Lincoln amidst the onset of World War One in Europe. The poem is entitled “Abraham Lincoln Walks At Midnight.” Lindsay, born in Springfield, Illinois in 1879 and a popular poet of the…
Read MoreLouis Bromfield: The Land and The Man Were One
December 27 marks the birthday of Louis Bromfield, renowned Ohio author and conservationist. Louis Bromfield was born near Mansfield, Ohio on December 27, 1896. In his life he was not only a successful novelist, but also an agrarian spokesman who owned Malabar Farm, an experimental farm in Richland County now part of the Ohio park…
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