[New-Poetry] Lincoln's love of poetry

[Judy Prince]

Thanks to Finnegan for the link, and thanks, Sam, for this and your later
posting of the FDR.
My now grown-strong belief is that the beauties of our writing and speaking
come to us in large measure from our hearing and reading the most memorable
beauties of others', and that we're inspired in the same ways, from the same
sources.  Seems like a no-brainer belief, but in day-to-day living for most
of us the 'beauties' are devalued and de-emphasised.

I further think that  the rhymes and rhythms of poetry that many
commercially successful living adult poets eschew and would denigrate---but
that children and young adults instantly love---model much of the beauty
that's at the heart of profound poetry.  I'm referring to everything from
play chants and songs, to nursery rhymes, to "children's" verse, to EA Poe
and Longfellow, as well as others and more that Englishfolk know and
treasure.
Best,

Judy

2009/4/1 <Rsgwynn1 at cs.com>

> Thank god that Lincoln didn't live long enough to read Carl Sandburg, but
> he grew up with Shakespeare and Milton and, as the article notes, wrote
> verse himself (as did George Washington and John Quincy Adams; Jefferson
> apparently didn't but wrote a very perceptive essay on English prosody for a
> French friend).  By some strange fate, a copy of the first edition of Leaves
> of Grass apparently found its way to Springfield, where Lincoln was fond of
> quoting it to Herndon.
>
> I often point out to my students that Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is, with
> very minor tweaks, blank verse, as is a lyrical passage (a soliloquy) from
> Frederick Douglass's autobiography (where he apostrophizes ships on the
> Chesapeake).  Douglass trained himself as an orator by reading and reciting
> from a popular anthology of the times, The Columbian Orator, so I suspect
> his own "verse" is more premeditated than Lincoln's (given that Lincoln
> apparently wrote TGA is a short time).  Still, Lincoln managed to retain the
> rhythms of the poets he read and admired in his own oratory: "Four score and
> seven years ago our fathers . . . ."  Perfect I5.   Incidentally, there are
> many famous lines from The Declaration of Independence that are pure I5: "We
> hold these truths to be self-evident" "Our lives, our fortunes, and our
> sacred honor."  Franklin also wrote verse; I'm not sure that Adams did, but
> he certainly read a lot of it.  A lot of this may not be conscious, but
> those who have loved and "absorbed" blank verse remember it: "That we have
> nothing to fear but fear itself."
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