Out of Fashion

I’ve been exploring names from a list of American poets from the 19th century, and today I have Horace Biddle (1811 – 1900).  What caught my eye with Mr. Biddle was this:  Horace Peters Biddle was a lawyer, judge, poet, musicologist and famous hermit.

Yes, the “famous hermit” part sounded interesting.

However, prior to becoming a hermit, though, Biddle also served a stint as a Supreme Court justice in Indiana – and that story of how he got that position is pretty convoluted.  You can read about that and more on this Wikipedia page, HERE.  

In addition to writing poetry, Biddle also published several works on literary theory, including The Definition of Poetry (1873) and The Analysis of Rhyme (1876). 

I found Biddle’s essay “The Definition of Poetry,” HERE. 

It, too, seems a bit convoluted.

I have to admit, I was a bit under the weather yesterday (today too!), so I felt lethargic and more than a bit discombobulated, but I read Biddle’s treatise anyway; however, through most if not all of it, I swear I was listening to Jim reading his ox hairball to Huckelberry Finn.  Biddle’s endeavor was to formulate a definition of poetry “to embrace every example or specimen of the thing defined, and yet so exact as to reject every example of specimen not belonging to the same class.”

After a lengthy discussion on the fine arts versus the useful arts and “what is beauty,” Biddle landed on his definition:  “Poetry is beautiful thought, expressed in appropriate language – having no reference to the useful.”  This definition comes at the bottom of page 20 in his essay, and then for several pages after that he offers insights into each fragment of his definition, “Poetry is beautiful,” “thought,” “expressed,” “In appropriate language,” and “Having no reference to the useful.”  

Accordingly, he concludes his essay with this: “We have thus, following both modes of investigation, constructed and analyzed our definition, and we think that, under the severest scrutiny, it will be found that all poetry is beautiful thought, expressed in appropriate language – having no reference to the useful; and that all beautiful thought, expressed in appropriate language – having no reference to the useful, is poetry.”

It sounds rather clinical, no? And about as clear as mud, as they say. 

As to the meaning of poetry, Emily Dickinson told her friend and mentor Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”

For me, that’s a bit more succinct. 

I found a book of Biddle’s poetry online., HERE. 

One does not have to look far into the book to discover beautiful thought “expressed in appropriate language,” i.e., language thought at the time to be poetical. In the preface, “The Poet to his Poems,” and in the first two selections, “Home Memories” and “The Cottage,” I found the following bardic terms:  Yearning soul, thee, thou, Ye, unheralded, deign, haply, vouchsafe, ere, bosom, o’er, doth, dome, din, church-bells, ’twas, Methought, ’tis, lyre, Time’s wing, tarried, and azure.  Zephyrs, streamlet, ringlet, the mead, minstrel, the bower, noon-tide, lambkin, and more appear in the next few poems.

Check out these lines from Biddle’s ode to “Thought” which appears later in the book:
 
And thou canst pierce the hardest rock,
As though in twain ‘twere riven,
Though ‘twould defy the lightning’s shock
Hurled from the vault of heaven.
 
Words have ne’er been so poetic, no?

Honestly, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with Biddle’s poetry, it’s just all very dated.  It’s like looking at fashions from the past.  (PICS) There was a time and place when late-1800’s fashions looked fashionable – and that was in the late 1800s.  That seems to be the case with Biddle’s poetry.  There was a time and place for it.  However, it incorporates no “classic” look, a style to cross the ages. It’s old fashioned.  Bygone lines for a bygone era.  

Tomorrow I’ll share another poem or two by Biddle, paired with a poem or two by Dickinson.  For now, let’s get back to that claim that Biddle was a “famous hermit.”  Well, the Wikipedia article doesn’t really provide more than “In his last years Biddle became rather reclusive, rarely leaving his home in Logansport”; however, at the bottom of the page, I discovered a link to a Wikipedia page entitled, “American Hermits,” HERE.  I’ve heard of two on the list, the Collyer Brothers and Ted Kaczynski.  Yikes – I clicked on one of the names to discover this: “Sarah Bishop (c. 1759 – c. 1809) was an affluent American woman who was forced to become a female pirate during the years of 1778–1780. She escaped from the ship, swam to shore, and lived in a cave as a hermit for about thirty years until she froze to death.”

Then I learned that Samuel Griswold Goodrich wrote a poem about Bishop, HERE.  Check out the opening lines:

For many a year the mountain hag
Was a theme of village wonder,
For she lived in a cave of the dizzy craig,
Where the eagle bore his plunder.

Oddly enough, Goodrich’s name does NOT appear on the list I found of American poets from the 19th century; nor does his pseudonym, Peter Parley.  From a page on Wikipedia, “Goodrich and his brother Charles wrote books for young people. His series, beginning in 1827 under the name of Peter Parley, embraced geography, biography, history, science and miscellaneous tales” – and it was here I realized that Emily Dickinson had mentioned Peter Parley in not one, but in two of her poems, “Sic transit gloria mundi.”  and "I can't tell you -- but you feel it."

From that "Sic transit gloria mundi" come these lines:  “Hurrah for Peter Parley / Hurrah for Daniel Boone / Three cheers sir, for the gentleman / Who first observed the moon.” 

Below:  Two poems by Dickinson which mention Peter Parley.