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Note from poet’s almanac: Edward Estlin Cummings, born on October 14, 1894, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a poet known for his radical experimentation with form and syntax.
“Sweet Feedom’s Song”
Today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, now celebrated as part of the President’s Day holiday. It is still vital that we honor the passion he bought to serve and save the nation and our better selves.
A Poem of America
My Country, ‘Tis of Thee“, also known as “America“, is learned in grade school and sung at most public and patrioc events. The lyrics were written by Samuel Francis Smith.[2] The song served as one of the de facto national anthems of the United States before the adoption of “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the official U.S. national anthem in 1931.[3] (Wikipedia)
Ironically, the melody used is adapted from the national anthem of the United Kingdom, “God Save the King“. Below is a version using the song’s meter and words to communicate a message in poetry calling for Lincoln’s vision to be realized.
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Frank Barbour Coffin, born on January 12, 1870, in Holly Springs, Mississippi, was an African American poet and pharmacist who owned and operated one of the earliest drugstores serving the Black community of Little Rock, Arkansas. He authored one poetry collection, Coffin’s Poems with Ajax’ Ordeals (The Colored Advocate, 1897), and his poetry was otherwise published in journals. Coffin died on March 1, 1951, in Little Rock. (Souce: Poets.org)
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
by Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Two Readings for Insight
In a beautifully composed family Christmas letter, the final paragraph is the closing stanza of a poem Walls and Bridges. It was written by the husband to his wife in celebration of their 53 years of marriage. The poem recounts his thoughts listening to a priest’s sermon in Hamilton, Montana during the peak of the 2024 election season.
You asked me why I go to church,
When so many that we know no longer do.
And I replied,
I don’t know where to find
A better explanation of the world
The way it is and the way
We want it to be.
A Cooperative Response to a Dominant Online Retailer
These Artisans Built a Coop Alternative to Etsy
The opening paragraphs of this December 11 article by Cinnamon Janzer of Next City:
In 2022, Etsy’s earnings topped $109 million in consolidated net income. “Despite significant macroeconomic headwinds, we maintained the vast majority of our pandemic gains and delivered double digit revenue growth and excellent profitability for the year,” Etsy CEO Josh Silverman said in a press release.
Days later, Silverman announced that the marketplace platform would raise the transaction fee Etsy takes from each sale from 5% to 6.5%. In response, some 14,000 Etsy sellers closed their shops and went on strike for eight days.
The article presents details of the initiative to build a better digital marketplace where members would own the platform.
The goal was to create an organization with a direct stake in the livelihood of its user artisans.
The Artisans Cooperative was launched in the fall of 2023.
The funding model is described on the website and includes both members and owners. Outside assistance from groups like Start a Coop, Operation Buffalo and Seed Commons was also important.
The effort is still a work in progress. No credit unions have apparently been involved yet. But it would seem a natural affiliation and potential further benefit of membership for the coops users.
The most important message is the artisan-organizer’s belief that people have the option to organize and manage their economic efforts with a cooperative design. Certainly a spirit much in need of rekindling in the much older and larger credit union system.
Read and ask if your credit union has this belief in its mission for its members.
The Windy City in Poetry
Chicago
by Carl Sandburg
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders;
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your
painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have
seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Bulding, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his
ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.
(Editors note: My hometown from 1974-1981 when working at First Chicago and then Supervisor of Credit Unions for Illinois’ Department of Financial Institutions)
Crossing the Bar For Mortal Stakes
This 1889 poem, Crossing the Bar, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson has been quoted on many occasions in life’s passages: graduations, changing vocations, marriage/divorce, and the obviousreference to life’s end.
I just attended my granddaughter’s college graduation at which a musical setting of the poem was sung.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5FlS76eTVs)
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
Student Observations on Crossing the Bar
The poem’s sentiment certainly matched the setting for those leaving the familiar shared college experiences to venture out on individual journeys. The two senior speakers spoke of this challenge when “putting out to sea.”
One asked: How do we locate ourselves in the big picture questions confronting society and hold ourselves accountable?
Another: As we pursue our individual paths we underestimate the power of community; yet that is how we are able to emerge with the confidence to go forth.
There was an aspiration in their words best captured in the final stanza of Robert Frost’s poem Two Tramps:
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes.
All of us will cross several metaphorical bars in our lifetimes. Often this arises from the never ending effort to find in Frost’s phrase work that is play for mortal stakes.
I believe that is why so many enjoy the credit union movement as a profession and doing good works serving members, “where love and need are one.”
Nature: an Artistic Resource and Renewer of the Soul
Photo by Cody Doherty
The Giant Cactus of Arizona
by Harriet Monroe (1914)
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Note from Poem-a-day: Harriet Monroe, born on December 23, 1860, in Chicago, was a poet, critic, and editor best known as the founding publisher and editor of Poetry magazine.
Easter Transformation
Before
My Easter Dove
by Henrietta Cordelia Ray
There came a dove, an Easter dove,
When morning stars grew dim;
It fluttered round my lattice bars,
To chant a matin hymn.
It brought a lily in its beak,
Aglow with dewy sheen;
I caught the strain, the incense breathed,
And uttered praise between.
It brought a shrine of holy thoughts
To calm my soul that day;
I caught the meaning of the note,
Why did it fly away?
Come peaceful dove, sweet Easter dove!
Above earth’s storm and strife,
Sing of the joy of Easter-tide,
Of light and hope and life. (1910)
After
Easter’s Freedom
In a famous passage of Paradise Lost, Milton’s God acknowledges that He could have created Adam and Eve without freedom. But what would there be to praise? “Not free, what proof could they have given sincere / Of true allegiance, constant faith or love, / Where only what they needs must do appeared, / Not what they would?” (Source: Legalizing the Resurrection)
“We are Creatures of Constant Awe”
In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa* (2024)
Ada Limón (United States Poet Laurette since 2022)
Arching under the night sky inky
with black expansiveness, we point
to the planets we know, we
pin quick wishes on stars. From earth,
we read the sky as if it is an unerring book
of the universe, expert and evident.
Still, there are mysteries below our sky:
the whale song, the songbird singing
its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.
We are creatures of constant awe,
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.
And it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain,
each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
O second moon, we, too, are made
of water, of vast and beckoning seas.
We, too, are made of wonders, of great
and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,
of a need to call out through the dark.
*One of the largest of Jupiter’s 90 moons.
(This poem is in the public domain.)
“Doing Your Bit”-A Duty Every Generation Encounters
The Black Man’s Bit
by Leslie Pinckney Hill published in 1921
“Leslie Pinckney Hill was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, on May 14, 1880. He attended public schools in East Orange, New Jersey, before graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in 1903. He earned a master’s degree a year later.”
In the foreword in the book this poem appears, Hill wrote, “Nothing in the life of the nation has seemed to me more significant than that dark civilization which the colored man has built up in the midst of a white society organized against it. The Negro has been driven under all the burdens of oppression, both material and spiritual, to the brink of desperation, but he has always been saved by his philosophy of life. He has advanced against all opposition by a certain elevation of his spirit. He has been made strong in tribulation. He has constrained oppression to give him wings.
“In such poems as ‘The Black Man’s Bit,’ I have desired to exhibit something of this indestructible spiritual quality of my race (during WW I). I trust that there may be in all at least an implied appeal to that spirit of human brotherhood by which alone the world must find the path to peace.” (Source: poets.org)
O there’s talk from school to pulpit, and the barber’s place is rife,
And the shoe shop and the supper table hum,
With the tale of Dixie’s black men who have shared the mighty strife
For that freedom of the better time to come.
Every mother’s eye is brighter, every father’s back is straighter,
And our girls are tripping lightly in their pride,
And by none except a Teuton, or a slacker, or a traitor,
Will the right to their elation be denied.
They said they were too slow, too dull, too this and that to do it,
They couldn’t match the method of the Hun,
And then to arm a million—why, the land would surely rue it
If a million blacks were taught to use a gun.
But right won out, and they went in at all detractors smiling;
They learned as quick as any how to shoot,
They took the prize at loading ships, and riveting and piling,
And trained a thousand officers to boot.
And when they went ’twas with a boon no others had been bringing,
For whether with a pick or with a gun,
They lightened every labor with a wondrous sort of singing,
And turned the pall of battle into fun.
O the Frenchman was a marvel, and the Yankee was a wonder,
And the British line was like a granite wall,
But for singing as they leaped away to draw the Kaiser’s thunder,
The swarthy sons of Dixie beat them all.
And now that they have helped to break the rattling Hunnish sabre,
They’ll trail the Suwanee River back again
To Dixie home, and native song, and school and honest labor,
To be as men among their fellow men.
No special thanks or praise they’ll ask, no clapping on the shoulder
They did their bit, and won, and all men know it
And Dixie will be proud of them, and grown a little older,
And wiser, too, will welcome them and show it.
A Contemporary Moment
I read this poem about wartime duty and on Monday, received these two pictures from an event at the Lincoln Memorial. It honored wounded Ukrainian soldiers sent to the US for treatment.
Hill’s words again:
“He has advanced against all opposition by a certain elevation of his spirit. He has been made strong in tribulation. He has constrained oppression to give him wings.”
And wiser, too, (we) will welcome them and show it.
