VACHEL LINDSAY'S 126th BIRTHDAY PARTY NOVEMBER 5 IN SPRINGFIELD

SPRINGFIELD, IL - The 126^th birthday of poet, author and artist Vachel Lindsay will be celebrated Saturday, November 5 with a special event at his Springfield home that is free and open to the public.

 

            The Vachel Lindsay Birthday observance will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, November 5 at the Vachel Lindsay Home State Historic Site, 603 S. Fifth Street.  Puppet artist Joan Meisner will be in the library of the home throughout the afternoon with her puppets to chat with children of all ages.  Students from Deborah Huffman's Senior Honors English Class at Springfield's Lanphier High School will perform Lindsay poetry at 2:30 p.m. while dressed in period attire and using musical instruments for some selections.

            Staff and volunteers will be in the rooms to share the history of the home.  Birthday cake, warm spiced cider and coffee will be served inside a heated tent in the back garden of the home.  The Vachel Lindsay Association, co-sponsor of the event, will have items for sale, including a beautiful poster of the Lindsay art piece "The Wedding of the Rose & the Lotus."

 

The Vachel Lindsay Home State Historic Site, administered by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency (www.Illinois-History.gov), is the birthplace and longtime residence of poet, author and artist Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, 1879 - 1931.  It is open Tuesday through Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. for free public tours.

 

 

Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, a major American poet, was born November 10, 1879 at 603 S. Fifth Street in Springfield to Dr. Vachel Thomas Lindsay and Catharine Frazee Lindsay.  He graduated from Springfield High School and studied at Hiram College in

Ohio, the Chicago Art Institute and the New York School of Art. 

 

Lindsay made three famous walking tours of the United States in 1906, 1908 and 1912, covering more than 2,800 miles.  On these journeys, Lindsay traded poems for food and shelter, earning him the title of "The Prairie Troubadour."  Lindsay was catapulted to fame with the 1913 publication of his poem, "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven."  Two years later his poem, "The Wedding of the Rose and the Lotus," calling for tolerance between Western and Eastern cultures, was printed by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and sent to both houses of Congress in connection with the opening of the Panama Canal.  His "Congo" and "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight" are well-known by generations of readers.

 

Lindsay lectured at many universities, including Oxford, Cambridge and the University of Illinois.  He performed his poetry in every state in the nation at the time.

 

Lindsay was named Poet-in-Residence of Gulf Park College in Gulf Port, Mississippi in 1923, and of the City of Spokane, Washington in 1924.  In 1925 he married Elizabeth Conner of Spokane.  Lindsay, his wife and two children returned to his Springfield home in 1929, where he died on December 5, 1931 in the bedroom directly above the room where he was born.

 

Lindsay called himself a "Rhymer-Designer," and created drawings to accompany his poems.  He was a leading voice in the American "New Poetry" movement, with a total published work of some 20 volumes of poetry and prose.

 

Lindsay and other major poets and artists of his day championed a new language to express new subjects, such as civil liberties, civic excellence, and humanitarian and aesthetic values.  He wrote poems of vehement protest against spiritual and environmental blight.

 

Lindsay's Springfield home was his creative center, and he returned there many times during his career.  He cited his hometown and state more than 500 times in his publications.  "The things most worth while are one's own hearth and neighborhood," said Lindsay.

 

In recent years, Lindsay's works increasingly are enjoying a renaissance of international interest.  His prophecies of individual and global concerns are striking an even more responsive chord now than they did when written 90 years ago.

 

Lindsay also enjoyed the respect of his colleagues.  Sinclair Lewis called Lindsay "one of our great poets, a power and a glory in the land."  Author, poet and Illinois native Carl Sandburg said, "I rate (his poems) among the supremely great American poems."

 

Many of Lindsay's written works and illustrations may be seen at the Vachel Lindsay Home State Historic Site at 603 S. Fifth Street in Springfield.  The home is open for public tours Tuesday through Saturday from noon to 4 p.m.  For more information, call (217) 524-0901.