The Congo & Other Poems

by Vachel Lindsay

From the Introduction by Harriet It is hardly necessary, perhaps, to mention Mr. Lindsay's loyalty to the people of his place and hour, or the training in sympathy with their aims and ideals which he has achieved through vagabondish wanderings in the Middle West. And we may permit time to decide how far he expresses their emotion. But it may be opportune to emphasize his plea for poetry as a song art, an art appealing to the ear rather than the eye. The first section of this volume is especially an effort to restore poetry to its proper place—the audience-chamber, and take it out of the library, the closet. In the library it has become, so far as the people are concerned, almost a lost art, and perhaps it can be restored to the people only through a renewal of its appeal to the ear.

Genres: Poetry, Africa, Classics, Nonfiction

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1914

About the author

Vachel Lindsay was an American poet responsible for pioneering modern singing poetry. His most famous work is "The Congo" which clearly exhibits his focus on sound in his poetry, using onomotopeia to imitate the pounding drums and chants of Congo's indigenous people.

Reviews

[Illiterate · Rating 1 out of 5]

Praise God - missionaries save black heathen from mumbo-jumbo. The other poems are no better.

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 2 out of 5]

That rhythmic, towering, well-known five star declamatory marvel, The Congo, clearly overshadows the rest of this collection of poetry.

The Firemen´s Ball held my interest, with its unusual reference to a cleansing, buddhist fire at its metaphorical center, as did four of the whimsical and wry Moon poems for children (Euclid, The haughty Snail-King, What the Rattlesnake said and What the gambler said), all of which deserve four stars each.

There are some interesting verses, rhymes and rhythms scattered around the rest of the rather humdrum or stale one to two star poems.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

The works of Vachel Lindsay are living proof that poetry is made to be read aloud. Just start The Congo and you will find yourself reading it aloud by the end. To read his anti-poetry is to read some soul winning passionate poetry. A real abolitionist.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

5 stars for the onomatopoeia, the sounds, the rhythms, especially in ~The Congo.~

2 stars for much of the rest of the writing, though there were a few other good spots.

Yes, yup, and yeah: The Congo, and a few other poems, are examples of a writer trying to be an advocate for some other group of people, specifically in this case, Africans/African-Americans/Native Americans, and screwing up pretty badly.

Essentially, he treats these groups as primitives; I don’t think that was his intent, but that’s what comes forth from the poems where he tries to be an advocate.

In other poems he decries the evil of war in the name of a nation’s flag and talks about heaven and God and saints and angels.

[K Marcu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Congo & Master of the Dance were very good. The others were alright

[Tom Oman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hmm

[behsforensics]

Cutting is for The Congo: A Study of the
Negro Race
By Vachel Lindsay

[Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vachel Lindsay's poetic career really launched when he hiked from Illinois to New Mexico, carrying with him copies of his pamphlet, "Poems to be Traded for Bread". That he actually made it across the country in this way is due not only to the poems, but to his performances of them. And it was, apparently, during this journey that he wrote "The Congo (a Study of the Negro Race)".

Lindsay's singsong verses (as I mentioned a week or so back in my review of _General William Booth Enters Into Heaven_) demand to be read out loud, if not chanted; and the poems in the first section of this collection - including the title piece - include instructions for reading aloud: now high-pitched, now basso; chanted, sung, and whispered; fast and slow. Following these instructions doesn't allow one to reproduce his dramatic performances, but at least gives some idea of what they must have been like.

The subtitle of "The Congo" is misleading. It isn't a "study" of anything, at least not in any academic sense; it is an attempt to adapt/adopt (these day's we'd probably say "appropriate") the rhythms and attitudes of the black folks he encountered along his life's rather-tortuously wandering path, and to do so in a way that pleads for the rights of "Negroes" to be equally respected. That it misfired, that it was indeed ill-conceived, can not be doubted; but neither can the good will with which it was attempted.

Most of the other poems fare better today. A particular favorite of mine is a section of twenty short poems about the moon, as seen from the points of view of twenty different people and animals.

I probably shan't seek out any further Lindsay, but I've enjoyed these two books of poetry.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lindsay was one of those odd birds who really went to great lengths to revive and rekindle poetry as an oral art, a performance artist well before his time. This is commendable. Poetry, for the thousands of years of its cultivation, has largely, until relatively recently, been an oral art. This is all well and good.
But the poems are just terrible! Pedestrian, poorly rhymed...I'd rather recite out loud passages from Richard Simmons' diary. A good idea, poorly executed with its content.

[Joe Molenaar · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can feel the influence this had on Tom Waits.