Newspaper Poetry - Loved and Scorned

 On January 4, 1840, the editors of the New Orleans Daily Picayune wrote, “To Correspondents—Poetry! Poetry! Poetry!—O, all ye poets and poetesses, muses and goddesses, for the love of charity have mercy on us, and send us no more poetry!” 

     Poetry was an everyday thing in the lives of previous generations. In the Victorian and Edwardian eras poetry was read and recited - accompanied with proper elocution motions - at nearly every event where people gathered. The church picnic, election campaigning, tradesmen’s conventions, commencement ceremonies, Fourth of July and Emancipation celebrations, birthday parties, graveside ceremonies…. The opening of a new building, the unveiling of a statue, the commemoration of an anniversary, noted figures’ birthdays… Poems were read at Teachers’ Institutes, ladies club meetings – everywhere. It probably wouldn’t seem proper to our ancestors if poems were not recited on a special occasion.

     They were performed at “entertainments,” such as dime socials to raise money for a church  or fraternal organization. Professional performances by poets such as James Whitcomb Riley sold out. Of course generations memorized and recited poetry at school. 

      Significantly, poems were a commonplace feature in newspapers. Many ran a poem a day, a practice that continued until the end of World War II. One study estimated that between 1800 and 1900, four million poems were printed in English newspapers. One scholar places the number at three to four million for American newspapers. 

     In specialty newspapers poems served a specific purpose. Frederick Douglass ran a poem in every issue of his anti-slavery newspaper The Northern Star, for example. They were meant to deepen support for abolition. These types of poems were a regular feature of many other anti-slavery newspapers. 

     In Utah the Women’s Exponent, a semi-official Mormon publication, was published from 1872 to 1914. In an analysis done by scholar Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, in its first ten years it published over 400 poems, 115 of them didactic, admonishing readers to moral behavior or teaching religious concepts, some unique to Mormonism. 

     In the popular press there was socially-engaged verse that addressed timely topics and concerns. In Beecher’s study, after religious themes, the next largest category she found were poems about death, especially the death of a loved one. This was followed by poems about children and mothers, then occasion poems (New Years, Christmas, etc), then tribute poems about public figures such as George Washington. Although her study was limited to a religious community’s publication and edited by women, similar results can be seen in newspapers across the country.

      Some of American literature’s “greats” got their start in the newspaper, such as John Greenleaf Whittier, William Cullen Bryant and James Whitcomb Riley. But most of the poetry was, as Beecher says, “superficial, bland, unimaginative, derived from known forms and themes, spelling out its message in language more akin to prose than to poetry except for a self-conscious adherence to rhyme and rhythm.” Scholars Hobbs and Januszewski said, “in critical discourse and popular understanding, "newspaper poetry" became associated primarily with poems [that were] painfully rhymed lyrics on children and love….By the late 1870s and 1880s, "newspaper poetry" was synonymous with the verse of school-aged children and the "moonstruck" as well as provincialism.”

     After Charles Guiteau assassinated President James Garfield in 1881, the Sun-Journal of Lewiston, Maine reported that Guiteau was receiving lots of correspondence in jail including “original poetry.” The writer humorously added, “We must raise our hands in holy horror against torturing any man, however wicked or depraved, with original poetry.”

The Bane of Newspaper Editors

      “Original poetry” was enthusiastically written by many. It was common for friends to write poems to celebrate a birthday or wedding anniversary, and to memorialize someone who just died. Newspapers were frequently approached by locals who wanted their poem in the paper. It seemed to be the bane of many a newspaper editor. And as one editor said, people seemed to think the paper was public property and therefore whatever they wanted should be printed for free. 

      “Among all the inconveniences and deprivations to which newspaper editors are subjected, we do not believe that one of our fraternity was ever heard to complain of a dearth of, “original poetry,” an editor for the Chicago Tribune wrote. 

     “Everybody, almost, writes “poetry” for the newspaper; school girls and school boys, and school teachers, even; young ladies in love and young gentlemen in love; old gentlemen afflicted with patriotism or religion, and mothers with babies the likes of which were never seen; sentimental misses who have lost their dearest friend, and who always have a couplet the “jingling” words of which are “heart” and “dart” – and many other people we might mention, do this sort of thing.

     We think that during our editorial experience we must have received…at least twenty-five bushels of this original poetry.” 

     But some newspaper editors could not resist trying their hand at original poetry that touched on local topics. The Coffeyville, Kansas editor of the Coffeyville Weekly Journal wrote poems about the problems of free-range hogs and dogs on the city streets, for example. He even ran this little verse in 1883 to promote advertising in his paper:

Little drops of printer’s ink,

A little type “displayed,”

Make our merchants bosses

And all their big parade.

Little bits of stinginess –

Discarding printer’s ink –

Bust the man of business

And see his credit sink. 

Nearly three decades later, around Thanksgiving, the editor of the Stromsburg, Nebraska newspaper wrote a poem with this stanza:

We are thankful, dear readers, to greet

All of you, and again we entreat

That you call on this pub.

And pay up for a sub.,

And we'll thank you and write a receipt.

Newspaper Editors’ Push Back

         The occasional editor’s own poetry notwithstanding, as early as the 1850s newspaper editors began to ask readers to refrain from sending their “original poetry” to the paper. In 1851 the Evansville Daily Journal in Illinois noted that in another newspaper they saw an “original poem.” 

      “But if the editor of that paper will turn to the 4th reader, a book common to our schools, he will find it there  – decidedly more original.” 

     Similarly, the Bismarck, North Dakota Tribune in September 1877 gave two examples of why they would no longer accept reader’s poems. The editor once yielded to pressure and ran a poem entitled “The Ice Gorge.” The poet was laughed at so much, the editor claimed, that the man canceled his paper and moved out of town. Another time, the editor ran an “original poem,” then a week later saw it in an old copy of the Chicago Tribune with the actual author’s name. “Don’t send ‘original poetry,’” the editor stressed. 

     There were examples given of the kind of bad poetry editors received. There was even a comical 1888 short story by popular writer John R. Musick which featured a newspaper editor, Allen Grey, who was hounded by competing bad poets. He was plagued by people like Miss Hopkins, the old maid school teacher who brought in the following poem:

Ode to a Bat Found Dead in a Garrett

You feathery, leathery, ungainly bat

Sail ‘round the room and fly in my hat,

Or haste to escape.

You amuse the boys, you frighten the cat,

But now you are dead, poor bat,

Lying on the floor

None make your shroud,

None shed a tear

Unfortunate bat,

Over your bier.

No tears be shed at this sad tale,

So by its wing upon this nail

I’ll hang it. Only a bat

Hung on a wall,

For folks to look at,

That is all. 

     Some papers also began a policy of charging by the line for those who insisted on seeing their poems in print. In 1873, for example, the Nashville, Illinois Journal editor wrote, “Owing to the fact that we have received enough “original poetry” to pad a saddle, we are compelled, for the sake of our readers and our own peace of mind, to reject the whole batch. And we hereby announce that we can not – will not – print “original poetry” without we receive pay, ten cents per line in advance. Some of these poems are good while others are shockingly bad in all respects, and to keep our own mind easy we must allow it to perish altogether. Again we say, “original poetry” is not wanted.”

     A humor piece that originally ran in the Chicago Tribune and was widely syndicated in 1889 (as far away as New Zealand) is the following exchange between a would-be poet and an editor:

An Insulted Poet

Caller (hesitatingly) – I have here a little production of my own which I should like to have you use for your poet’s corner if —

Editor (facetiously) – Poet’s corner! Certainly. We’re all poet scorners in this office. The janitor, perhaps, may find some use —-

Caller (stiffening up) – The poem, sir, is descriptive of my patent hedge trimmer, and I was going to ask you if a dollar a line would be sufficient compensation for publishing it as an advertisement. I don’t mind your allusion to the janitor but that diddly-dad about the poet scorner makes me tired. Don’t get between me and the door, sir if you please. I don’t want any explanation or apologies. You shouldn’t have this poem now if you got down on your knees for it. Good morning, sir and be banged to you. 

     In an 1872 piece from the Savannah News, which ran over the wire service and appeared in many papers, the editor wrote a “reply” to a local poet:  “Your ‘Sonnet to a Violet’ is good, but it is an invariable rule among newspapers to publish no original poetry unless it’s paid for in advance. The idea of making “heifer” rhyme to “zephyr” is something unique and would no doubt make a sensation. Our usual price for original poetry is eight dollars a line…”

      Of course he was being facetious, and eight dollars in 1872 was equivalent to about $185 today. 

     There was another humorous piece originating in Texas and running over the wire service in 1881 with a suggestion for ending highway robbery.

     “We have written to persons in West Texas who we suspect of designing to send us original poetry, to forward the manuscript in a registered package by stage. The stage robbers are in the habit of opening and examining the registered packages. After this, when a stage is robbed and any of our original poetry is stolen, all authorities have to do is send out a wagon ..to bring in the bodies of the highwaymen who have been bored to death.”

     In 1890, an item that appeared originally in the Methodist Herald ran on the wire service and appeared in many newspapers: “You will find the following choice advice…Brother, if you are about to send us a bit of original poetry…..don’t!”

Supporters

     Of course something doesn’t continue without meeting a need or demand. While it was a trial to news editors and had its detractors, newspaper poetry also had plenty of defenders. One letter to the editor from Raleigh, North Carolina in March 1865 wrote:

“It has long been the custom to use the words “Newspaper Poetry” in a disparaging way; just as we now frequently hear the word “Confederate” applied to a great many things. The idea intended to be conveyed by these terms is that something is inferior, if not worthless…I am aware that there is a great deal of “Newspaper Poetry” that is the veriest doggerel – perhaps a majority is of this character; but it will not do to pass one general sentence of condemnation upon it all. If a poem possesses merit – grand thoughts and grand ideas…what matters it whether it be published in a gilt edged volume with Turkey Morocco binding, or in a newspaper?”

     In 1882 Sol Miller, described as an old journalistic warhorse of Kansas said. “A newspaper without poetry is like Platonic love – love without the essence. It is like dumplings without “dip;” like bread without butter, mush without milk…like a rose without fragrance, like a cold buckwheat cake…”

     A man in Hoisington, Kansas wrote in 1899 that he spent hours writing a 16-line obituary poem to honor a friend, only to see that the Hoisington Dispatch did not print obituary poems or “cards of thanks.” He protested that reading a list of birthday gifts received, which he saw in the paper recently, “with a long list of neckties and handkerchiefs,” was no more interesting. Similarly, small-town newspapers often printed long lists of the attendees of birthday parties, wedding showers and so on. He had a point.

     In Piqua, Ohio in 1900 in the “club news” section of the paper, the Columbia Club reported on a Mrs. Sweezy reading an essay to her fellow members. It quoted sections of her paper. “There is one class of people who has added greatly to the happiness, inspiration and hope of American life… the newspaper poet. 

“There are more people who read news poetry than we think and these are the better classes, the higher order of minds, and the most sympathetic and aspiring hearts.” She closed with “Poetry is the highest of callings. It is spiritual gifts of poetry that are the world’s jewels, and among the best gifts to be earnestly coveted.” 

     Regardless of its critics, readers continued to enjoy newspaper poetry for decades more. 

Note:  My mother had a much-older cousin, Yvonne, born in 1917, who was two when she lost her mother to influenza. Yvonne was raised by their grandparents, John and Mary Krause. One of her happy childhood memories, she told me once, was sitting with her grandfather, while together they clipped poems from the newspaper and pasted them into a scrapbook. This was a common pastime. 

Sources:

     Balkansky, Arlene. “Discover Poetry in Old News!” Headlines and Heroes - A Library of Congress Blog, 30 April 2020, https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2020/04/discover-poetry-in-old-news/

     Beecher, Maureen Ursenbach. “Poetry and the Private Lives: Newspaper Verse on the Mormon Frontier,” Brigham Young University Studies, Vol. 25 No. 3 (Summer 1985), pp. 55-65.

     Hobbs, Andrew and Claire Januszewski. “How Local Newspapers Came to Dominate Victorian Poetry Publishing,” Victorian Poetry, Vol. 52 No. 1 (Spring 2014), pp. 65-87.

     Lorang, Elizabeth M. “American Poetry and the Daily Newspaper From the Rise of the Penny Press to the New Journalism,” (2010). Dissertations, Theses and Student Research: Department of English.95. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishdiss/95

     Stein, Kevin. “When the Frost Is On the Pumpkin:” Newspaper Poetry’s History and Decline," chapter from Poetry’s Afterlife, Verse in the Digital Age, University of Michigan Press, 2010, https://www.press.umich.edu/1168182/poetrys_afterlife

Newspapers:

     “Newspaper Poetry,” The Weekly Standard (Raleigh, North Carolina), 1 March 1865, p. 3.

     Sonnet to Violet: Chicago Evening Post, 30 March 1872, p. 5.  

     Poetry Policy: Nashville Journal (Nashville, Illinois), 2 April 1873, p. 1.

     “A New Way to Kill Stage Robbers,” Champaign County Herald (Urbana, Illinois), 24 Aug 1881, p. 3.

     “An Insulted Poet,” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, Illinois), 12 Sept 1889, p. 4. 

     “Carl Russet’s Annual,” The Clinton Public (Clinton, Illinois), 19 Dec 1890, p. 7.

     Hiawatha Public Schools Celebrate Wendell Phillips Day,” The Kansas Democrat, 4 Dec 1890, p. 3.

     “The Rambler,” Hoisington Dispatch (Hoisington, Kansas), 16 March 1899, p. 8.

     “An Interesting Occasion - Wednesday Afternoon With the Columbian Club,” The Miami Helmet (Piqua, Ohio), 1 Feb 1900, p. 7. 

Editor's Poem: The Stromsburg News (Stromsburg, Nebraska), 24 Nov 1910, p. 1.

Copyright Andrea Auclair © 2023