I am pleased to invite you to my second collaborative reading with Tom Ragle, of Our Favorite Poems, this Thursday, November 19 at 7:00 pm at Guilford Community Church. Admission is free, with donations covering the modest cost of our use of the church for this event.
Last May, we read a program of sonnets, and decided this time that we’d each read some of our favorite poems, and see what correlations emerge.
Tom is reading a number of English poems, from the Elizabethan era to the early 20th century, including an interesting grouping of three different treatments of “Come live with me and be my love,” by Marlowe, Raleigh and Donne. The Romantics are also represented, as well as poems of Americans Walt Whitman and Robert Frost.
I am reading American poems, except for one by a Scot, featuring three favorite poets whose work is not widely known: John Malcolm Brinnin and Vermonters William Mundell and Frances Frost. Among other Vermont poets, I include two with Guilford connections: Royall Tyler and Verandah Porche.
We have noticed that most poetry readings nowadays are by poets reading their own work, a valued activity! But we miss the tradition of public readings of others’ poems, whether great classics or hidden gems, and thus the reason for our series. Please join us. — Don McLean
Nomenclature
Two spectacular names in that list:
Royall Tyler and Verandah Porche
Royall was quite a fellow. Didn’t he write one of the first American plays? And was an early legal-eagle, too?
I think I may have met Verandah’s kids at some point (if they are Front, Side, and Back Porche) : )
Tyler Porche
Wow, imagine getting an actual comment in response to a posting for a poetry reading!
Both Royall Tyler & Verandah Porche have Guilford connections — Tyler lived in Guilford for a decade beginning in 1791; Verandah Porche, as is probably widely known, has lived in Guilford since 1968. (Tyler jumped ship & moved to Brattleboro, renting a farm off what s now Orchard Street in West B., then finally owning his own house, on what is now the corner of Putney Rd & Park Place, occupied by an accounting firm these days. He is buried in Prospect Hill Cemetery on So Main St.)
Tyler is often credited with having written “the first America play,” or “the first American comedy.” The distinction is slightly narrower, though significant: his play “The Contrast” was the first comedy by an American to be PROFESSIONALLY staged, in New York in 1787.
Verandah Porche just received one of the brand-new Ellen McCullough-Lovell Arts in Education awards; her collaboration with painter Kathleen Kolb, “Shedding Light on the Working Forest” is currently on exhibit at the Brattleboro Museum & Arts Center.
Anyhow, both poets are represented on the reading Tom Ragle & I are giving on Thursday evening; please join us!
More thoughts on poems.
Why not discuss poetry a bit? It’s certainly more pleasant than most of what’s going on in the world at the moment. : )
Ah, yes, The Contrast. Thanks for the reminder. (have you read it or seen it performed? Is it any good?)
Poetry and drama were the two areas of English class that teachers never did a good job explaining or helping me with. To be honest, they weren’t that great at getting me interested in fiction, either. It took me until well past college to “get” poetry.
Short poems with rules appealed to me first – limericks, haiku, and simple rhymes. Iambic pentameter, sonnets, and more advanced constructions were interesting later on. The freeform beat poetry even makes sense to me, now, after learning more about jazz.
Music and poetry seem closely tied.
Royall
Years ago, a group of us met in a Brattleboro home & read plays (this was about 1973 or so) and after we’d done a few by Shaw and so forth someone asked if we could come up with something lesser-known & possibly locally-connected. I had been noticing in Guilford an historical road marker (at that time located in Algiers Village, now located in front of the Guilford Historical Society Museum in Guilford Center) saying that a fellow named Royall Tyler had lived in Guilford & written a play, The Contrast. We procured a few copies of the play & enjoyed reading it. That led me to a long investigation of Tyler, during which I read all his works, wrote a choral piece setting 7 of his poems, & eventually, co-authored a biographical play with Christina Gibbons, featuring Royall & Mary Palmer Tyler. This was performed for the Vermont Bicentennial at Brooks Library & at the Grange in Guilford.
Meanwhile, in 1976, for the American Bicentennial, the Guilford Historical Society put on a production of The Contrast directed by George Lewis, with gorgeous, authentic period costumes by Pamela Moore. The same year, I convinced Monteverdi Players director John Carroll to mount an outdoor production of Tyler’s other extant play, The Island of Barrataria. A few years later, Zeke Hecker turned that play into a musical, which Friends of Music at Guilford produced.
Anyway, back to The Contrast. Tyler had never seen a professional theater production when, in 1787, he was sent to New York City on a military mission. He attended a performance of an English restoration-style comedy (I think it may have been School for Scandal, or She Stoops to Conquer) and was so taken with it that he went back to his hotel room and wrote a play in that style, very skillfully done. The twist is that it’s an American play, which treats “the contrast” between fancy English styles, which were the norm in American society, and the rough-hewn, coarser Yankee style. A principal character, the Yankee, Jonathan, became an archetype in 19th century American comic literature.
The play is quite lively, well written, amusing, and fun.