525a 6/28/24
My mental meanderings have taken me down various paths recently, and portions of my recent posts have focused on creative artists (in poetry, visual arts, music) who are agents of change and who “push the boundaries.”
Of course, one must consider whether they push the boundaries forward; are the changes thoughtful and meaningful; do the changes have staying power?
Continued...
525b 6/28/24
Interestingly – as in the case I mentioned yesterday of Arthur Wesley Dow and Georgia O’Keefe – there are cases where the agents of change influence those in the next generation – and then they themselves are forgotten.
At the end of yesterday’s post, I mentioned Vachel Lindsay and Langston Hughes. Of the two, which name do you recognize?
Continued...
525c 6/28/24
In the 1920s, Hughes was working as a busboy at a hotel’s restaurant in Washington, DC, and one day he recognized a customer at the restaurant, poet Vachel Lindsay – a very well-known poet at the time who is considered a founder of modern “singing poetry,” as he referred to it, in which verses were meant to be sung or chanted.
Hughes handed some of his poems to Lindsay, and...
Continued...
525d 6/28/24
...Lindsay was so impressed, he publicized his discovery of a new poet and helped establish Hughes’ career.
Today there’s a chain of restaurants in the DC area called “Busboys and Poets,” named for that encounter between Lindsay and Hughes.
Fin.
