In Defense of Doggerel

Why We Should Let the Dreck Fly

I am a firm believer that these lines:

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name; “Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Dunder and Blixem! To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”

Were written not by Clement C. Moore, the Columbia educated theologian and published poet, but by Henry Livingston Jr., a Poughkeepsie farmer and hack poet who sometimes sent his verse and drawings to local papers.

The controversy is a long one, and there are lots of people who have looked into it are convinced that Clement C. Moore is the author of A Visit From Saint Nicholas. I think it is much more likely that Livingston wrote the poem. If he did, then Livingston stands as the patron saint of amateur writers; Soul Bloggers if you will.

Look, I don’t like to brag, but not only am I the bloggiest blogger in all of Blogaville, but I am also a THIRD GENERATION SOUL BLOGGER. I’m not kidding. Check this out:

That is a poem by my great-grandfather, Thomas F. Howard, printed in the Westerly Sun. It was dedicated to my great-aunt, Annie Howard, who had died in the influenza epidemic of 1918.

Here is the family mythology: “Annie Howard had beautiful auburn hair.” In case you’re unfamiliar with the mores of the 1800s, you start any description of women by mentioning their most desirable physical attribute. “She took care of many other people during the epidemic of 1918 and became so worn down that she succumbed herself.” All of that could be pure hogwash.

Anna was born in 1894, and was 24 or 25 when she died. We’re not sure where she died. My older brother claims that my grandmother told a story about having to ride back on the train with the body from New York City. There may be some letters with a Hell’s Kitchen address on them.

No picture exists of her. The one on the left MAY be her, but someone, I can’t remember who, told me it wasn’t. Here is a picture of my grandfather outside of his Newspaper and Tobacco store that was on the Pawcatuck Bridge in Westerly.

The guy on the right was a newsdealer. He had a high school education thanks to the Westerly Public Schools. He considered himself a “naturalist” and he wrote verse… sometimes… I guess. The only poems we have by him are the ones printed in the Sun. For this post I wanted to include more, but I can’t find them. I hope they are in an album I have packed away above my barn. As I recall, they are all kind of maudlin. He lost two sons, ages three and five, to croup in 1891, and I remember reading a poem about them that wasn’t dissimilar to the one above.

My point is this: Newspapers have always filled their pages with the contributions of amateur writers. Throughout American history, many of the essays and opinion pieces in local papers were the work of paleobloggers. Their contributions were, for the most part, lost, but that doesn’t mean that some of them weren’t genius.

A Visit From Saint Nicholas was so good that the publishing world HAD TO CREDIT A PUBLISHED WRITER or it didn’t make sense. We all want the “Great Man” to exist, whether we are seeking kings, philosophers, or artists. Now we’ve included women, so we’re looking for the great men and women… and we’ll begrudgingly admit that even if they are people of color or some other marginalized group maybe they can be great too… but they must be GREAT. They must possess what the rest of us do not. Usually when you scratch the surface you discover that what they had was family money. Family money that let them do what they wanted.

The promise of the Internet, and of Medium in the beginning, was that there was no gatekeeper. This would be the platform where you wouldn’t have to pass through a martini soaked Harper Collins editor to get seen. The tubes were supposed to let us create our OWN literary communities¹.

I guess we still can, but, man, the algorithms don’t make it easy, do they? We’re all swimming upstream. It shouldn’t be this hard to find readers, should it? I promise you, it has gotten harder here on Medium.

As one steeped and sustained by patriarchal racist bullshit, I think the idea of “great writers” is patriarchal racist bullshit. I’m not saying Melville isn’t great, but so is A Visit From Saint Nicholas. And it was probably created by a hack like us.

I don’t read poetry anymore, except on Medium. I read a lot of poems on Medium. Some of them are truly great.

I like what we have going here, even though sometimes I get frustrated that Medium ISN’T DOING WHAT I WANT THEM TO DO WITH THIS SITE THAT I USED FOR FREE FOR MANY YEARS.

The collective wisdom of our generation is on the tubes. Who knows, maybe some important author will steal your work and publish it in one of Medium’s curated magazines. Then you’ll be famous like Livingston.

¹ I’m on the record for saying that I will pay to belong to a democratic blogging platform. $10 a month? Does that sound fair?