Ihave been reading poetry during the recent spate of cold days. The Poets Roundtable of Arkansas has published a new 206-page anthology of poems written by Roundtable members during the 80-year history of that organization. Poems by Poets of the Roundtable (Mockingbird Lane Press, 2013, $12) reminds us that our ancestors loved poetry.
Granted, educational opportunities were limited in Arkansas until recent history, but from the beginning a small but defiant cadre of parents and educators insisted on the traditions of a classical education for their children-including poetry. Indeed, the first issue of the Arkansas Gazette, published in 1819 when Arkansas became a territory, included a “poetry corner.”
The first Arkansas poet to gain recognition beyond the borders of Arkansas was probably Albert Pike. Not long after his arrival in Arkansas in December 1832, Pike published his first volume of poetry, Prose Sketches and Poems Written in the Western Country. In 1834, he raised his sights and published several poems in the prestigious Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. In his later years Pike published many of his poems under the title Hymns to the Gods and Other Poems.
Much of Pike’s poetry dealt with the political scene in frontier Arkansas. Pike was an ardent Whig, and he never missed an opportunity to lash out at the ascendant Democrats. In one poem, Pike created a conversation between Democrats William E. Woodruff and Ambrose Sevier, concluding: “In short tell the truth when it answers our ends/ But what is the Truth when compared with your Friends?”
Other 19th-Century Arkansas poets never reached a particularly wide audience, but in his position as poet laureate of the Grand Lodge of Arkansas Freemasons, Fay Hempstead’s poems were read far and wide. Hempstead, who was a Little Rock attorney, wrote on a variety of state and national topics. Ethel C. Simpson of Fayetteville, an authority on Arkansas literature, has written that “Hempstead’s poetry, like that of many other late Victorians, has not aged well,” and “his poems are prone to the archaic language that was despised by the modernists such as John Gould Fletcher . . .” Fletcher, a Little Rock native who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1939, had firm opinions about writing poetry.
Perhaps the most widely read early female poet was Josie Frazee Cappleman, the author of innumerable pamphlets of poetry as well as the now-rare compilation published as Heart Songs in 1899. Cappleman’s main contribution, however, was helping create the Poets Roundtable of Arkansas.
On Feb. 5, 1931, Cappleman and six other Arkansas women founded the Roundtable, with the intent “to learn the fundamental, technical rules of regular good, readable poetry.” The Roundtable brought together an impressive group of poets throughout the state. And there is no better person to start with than Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni of Fayetteville.
Marinoni was born 125 years ago in Bologna, Italy. Her family immigrated to the U.S. in 1898 when Rosa was 10. She came to Arkansas when her husband joined the foreign languages department at the University of Arkansas. Mrs. Marinoni quickly became a leading promoter and advocate for poetry in Arkansas. She was especially crucial in getting public awareness and participation in National Poetry Day in the state. With her dramatic good looks and flamboyant attire, Mrs. Marinoni attracted a following,and she was widely known for mentoring a host of young Arkansas poets, including Edsel Ford.
Rosa Marinoni was one of six people to hold the title of Poet Laureate of Arkansas. The first laureate was Charles T. Davis, the literary editor at the Arkansas Gazette. He was followed by Marinoni in 1953. Ercil Brown was appointed by Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller upon Marinoni’s death in 1970. Miss Lily Peter, a farmer and philanthropist from rural Phillips County, served two decades as poet laureate beginning in 1971. She was succeeded in 1991 by Verna Lee Hinegardner of Hot Springs, a prolific poet and promoter. Gov. Mike Huckabee named Peggy Vining of Little Rock as poet laureate in 2003, and she still serves in this post.
Reading the new Poets Roundtable 80thanniversary anthology quickly establishes that these Arkansas poets are not grandmothers churning out cute rhymes about the grandkids.Here, for example, is how Johnye E. Strickland described heaven in a 1996 poem titled “Recurring Dream”: “Heaven was a square wooden structure/with a porch across the front/ like the open tailgate on a pickup./Newcomers had to lie on this porch/covered with blue blankets/until they had been properly processed./Some of the other waiting children/told me I wouldn’t be allowed to enter/because I hadn’t been vaccinated.” -
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Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living in Pulaski County. Email him at Arktopia. td@gmail.com.
Editorial, Pages 78 on 02/16/2014