Saturday, May 14, 2022
80 years of performance poetry
The dust has settled a little on my release of One Woman's Voice, a historical biography of my great grandmother, who was an elocutionist at the turn of the 19th century. She would read poems to encampments of Civil War veterans, who had lived through one of the most gruesome wars in history, and in their reunions there would be a bit of drinking and they were always glad to see her.
She would get up and recite these poems that were typical of the age - long, with melodious verse, visual with lots of details of battlefields, courage, guns, armies marching. This would put the soldiers in a kind of reliving-the-war mood and they would yell and demand an encore. If there was a general present, she would pull a poem out of her hat that referenced the general and his heroism in battle. She had a number of favorites and knew many of the generals, and soon became the favorite of the Grand Army of the Republic, which held regular reunions and encampments.
The G.A.R. was at its peak in maybe about 1885, right around when she was at hers, and was reciting in her best form. Probably the biggest event was a G.A.R. reunion in Minneapolis when she read a poem to the largest crowd ever in the "northwest." She was heard equally well by everyone and easily commanded the attention of the entire audience.
But her material naturally had to change as the years went on. And this was partly because poetry itself changed. She had gone through college immediately after Will Carleton, a man who set out to write poetry and make a living giving lectures on it; he also was a good public speaker. At one point Elizabeth, my great grandmother, read some of Carleton's poems as a natural and appropriate thing to do, since he wrote a wide variety and often he was being celebrated in one way or the other. But her choice of poems to read showed not only how her tastes evolved with the times, but also how poetry itself changed gradually over te years.
As an elocutionist, she was mostly concerned with whether her voice reached everyone and whether they got the emotion she was trying to convey. She did quite well at that and was generally considered one of the best elocutionists in the era. The late 1890's saw elocution reach its peak as an art, celebrated, taught in colleges, taught even in private schools set up for that purpose alone. A national association, the National Association of Elocutionists, started in the early 1890's and went strong until finally changing its name sometime around 1908. Elizabeth rode this wave and held every office in the organization except President.
Sometimes modern performance poets feel like they invented the art of reaching an audience orally and pulling out the emotion they want the audience to feel. In fact this kind of elocution was very common after the Civil War, and also before it, and also on through the Spanish War and up until World War I. She didn't have to tell anyone what elocution was, and that alone was different from now. She knew the field and was a master at it, and was respected for that.
One Woman's Voice is a story about her life. It also shows the evolution of poetry as history moves through the Mauve Decade and into the new century. I hope you'll give it a try. Scroll down or go here to find out more.
She would get up and recite these poems that were typical of the age - long, with melodious verse, visual with lots of details of battlefields, courage, guns, armies marching. This would put the soldiers in a kind of reliving-the-war mood and they would yell and demand an encore. If there was a general present, she would pull a poem out of her hat that referenced the general and his heroism in battle. She had a number of favorites and knew many of the generals, and soon became the favorite of the Grand Army of the Republic, which held regular reunions and encampments.
The G.A.R. was at its peak in maybe about 1885, right around when she was at hers, and was reciting in her best form. Probably the biggest event was a G.A.R. reunion in Minneapolis when she read a poem to the largest crowd ever in the "northwest." She was heard equally well by everyone and easily commanded the attention of the entire audience.
But her material naturally had to change as the years went on. And this was partly because poetry itself changed. She had gone through college immediately after Will Carleton, a man who set out to write poetry and make a living giving lectures on it; he also was a good public speaker. At one point Elizabeth, my great grandmother, read some of Carleton's poems as a natural and appropriate thing to do, since he wrote a wide variety and often he was being celebrated in one way or the other. But her choice of poems to read showed not only how her tastes evolved with the times, but also how poetry itself changed gradually over te years.
As an elocutionist, she was mostly concerned with whether her voice reached everyone and whether they got the emotion she was trying to convey. She did quite well at that and was generally considered one of the best elocutionists in the era. The late 1890's saw elocution reach its peak as an art, celebrated, taught in colleges, taught even in private schools set up for that purpose alone. A national association, the National Association of Elocutionists, started in the early 1890's and went strong until finally changing its name sometime around 1908. Elizabeth rode this wave and held every office in the organization except President.
Sometimes modern performance poets feel like they invented the art of reaching an audience orally and pulling out the emotion they want the audience to feel. In fact this kind of elocution was very common after the Civil War, and also before it, and also on through the Spanish War and up until World War I. She didn't have to tell anyone what elocution was, and that alone was different from now. She knew the field and was a master at it, and was respected for that.
One Woman's Voice is a story about her life. It also shows the evolution of poetry as history moves through the Mauve Decade and into the new century. I hope you'll give it a try. Scroll down or go here to find out more.
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