Fallen

Sunday morning at Cunel by Harvey Dunn
Smithsonian Museum of American History

Alice Corbin Henderson* was co-editor of Poetry magazine for ten years (1912- 1922), and in 1914, she proposed that the magazine sponsor a contest for the best war poem. The editors of Poetry received 738 submissions and selected fourteen to appear in their November 1914 issue.** The winning poem, “The Metal Checks,” was written by Louise Driscoll; other published entries were authored by Carl Sandburg, Amy Lowell, Wallace Stevens, Margaret Widdemer, Richard Aldington, and Maxwell Bodenheim.  The “war poetry issue” also included Alice Corbin’s submission: “Fallen.”

Fallen

He was wounded and he fell in the midst of hoarse shouting.

The tide passed, and the waves came and whispered about his ankles.

Far off he heard a cock crow—children laughing,

Rising at dawn to greet the storm of petals

Shaken from apple-boughs; he heard them cry,

And turned again to find the breast of her,

And sank confusèd with a little sigh. . . .

Thereafter water running, and a voice

That seemed to stir and flutter through the trenches

And set dead lips to talking. . . .

Wreckage was mingled with the storm of petals. . . .

He felt her near him, and the weight dropped off—

Suddenly. . . .

            —Alice Corbin

The poem expresses what Carl Sandburg praised as Corbin’s “urge for the brief and poignant.”† Capturing a soldier’s last moments of consciousness, “Fallen” compares wounded and dying men with the petals that drop from spring trees. In the dim light of morning following a dawn attack, the cacophony of war fades and is replaced by a vision of home, serenity, and safety. The  rush of soldiers stumbling forward through a hail of bullets settles into memories of ocean waves gently lapping at the shore. Confused, the dying man believes himself to be tenderly held by his mother or perhaps his wife or sweetheart, and he seems to hear her voice whispering to him.  Relaxing into her, he drops the weight of his life, and reality and memory blur as “wreckage was mingled with the storm of petals.”

Three years later, in April 1918—just one year after the US had entered the war—Poetry published Alice Corbin Hendersons’ editorial essay, “Send American Poets.” She wrote,  

Why not send poets to the front? Not to the trenches for active service, where many of them now are, but as official government agents to see and to record this war for future generations? The newspaper correspondent has an official position; there are official camera men, official moving picture photographers; why not poets in a similar capacity?.…What big magazine will be progressive enough to send an American poet to the front as an accredited correspondent?  Mr. Ring Lardner has been over for Collier’s—I wish Collier’s would send 

Carl Sandburg or Edgar Lee Masters or Vachel Lindsay over!††

Corbin’s suggestion affirms the variety of ways in which we know and understand reality; she was ahead of her time in acknowledging that there are no unfiltered facts or accounts of war.

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* The writer signed her poetry Alice Corbin, but used the name Alice Corbin Henderson for her prose and editorial work.  Her poems “The Harvest” and “A Litany in the Desert” also appear on this blog. 

** Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec, “When Women Write the First Poem: Louise Driscoll and the ‘war poem scandal,’” Miranda, vol. 2, 2010, journals.openedition.org/miranda/1296, Accessed 16 April 2018.

† Carl Sandburg quoted in T.M. Pearce’s Alice Corbin Henderson, Steck-Vaughn Company, 1969, p. 12.

†† Alice Corbin Henderson, “Send American Poets,” Poetry, vol. 12, no 1, April 1918, pp. 37-38.

The Harvest

It’s a mysterious poem that has been given various titles: “A Farmer’s Grace,” “Silver Rain,” “Mealtime Blessing,” and “Scarlet Poppies,” but most sources call it “The Harvest” and name its author as Alice C. Henderson (most likely Alice Corbin Henderson, the associate editor of Poetry magazine from 1912 – 1922).* 

 

The Harvest

The silver rain, the shining sun
The fields where scarlet poppies run
And all the ripples of the wheat
Are in the bread that we now eat.

And when we sit at every meal
And say our grace we always feel
That we are eating rain and sun
And fields where scarlet poppies run.

            —Alice C. Henderson

Given the images of plentiful grain and mealtime grace, it’s easy to see why the poem is popular at Thanksgiving.  It reminds us that we are all connected to the earth that provides our food, but other connections and reminders are also seeded throughout the poem.  If the poem were written during or after the First World War, the scarlet poppies would also readily evoke memories of John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” and the numerous other poems that associated the poppies of the Western Front with the dead of the Great War.

The scarlet poppies in “The Harvest” do not bloom or wave in the fields – they run in the way that blood runs on battlefields.  And during the war, food was deeply connected with fighting.  Citizens were reminded of the fact in the rationing posters that were everywhere:

“Don’t Waste Bread! Save Two Thick Slices Every Day and Defeat the “U” Boat

“Victory is a Question of Stamina – Send the Wheat, Meat, Fats, Sugar – the Fuel for Fighters”

“This is the loaf that must win the war”

“Waste of FOOD is Disloyalty; Economy of FOOD is Patriotism; Production of FOOD is National Service”

Even the poem’s title, “The Harvest,” suggests the grim harvest of battle and the millions of young men who had died, feeling a deep connection to their homelands. (Rupert Brooke’s “If I should die, think only this of me; / That there’s some corner of a foreign field / That is for ever England” is the best-known example).

“The Harvest” is a prayer of thanksgiving for rain and sun and wheat and poppies – and perhaps also for the soldiers who are buried on the fields of the First World War.  Those who eat the rain and sun are also partaking in a communion with the dead as they literally eat the bread of sacrifice.  If “The Harvest” is a thanksgiving grace, it closes not with “Amen,” but “Lest We Forget.”

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*This blog has previously posted on Alice Corbin (the name she signed to her poetry).  You can read more about her and her poem “Litany in the Desert” at this link. 

Litany of war

Alice Corbin Henderson

In September of 1914, shortly after the First World War began, the American magazine Poetry announced a war poetry contest: writers were invited to submit poems addressing the war in Europe; the best poems would be published in the November 1914 issue, and the winning poem would be awarded a $100 prize. In her essay “Poetry and War” that appeared in the November war poetry issue, the magazine’s assistant editor, Alice Corbin Henderson, wrote,

“War has actually lost its illusion and its glamour.…The American feeling about the war is a genuine revolt against war, and we have believed that Poetry might help to serve the cause of peace by encouraging the expression of this spirit of protest.”

Most Americans were initially against their country’s involvement in the First World War, and George Washington’s Farewell Address of 1796 was often cited as support for American neutrality: “Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice? It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”

However, by the time the United States entered the war in April of 1917, the mood of the country had shifted.  Like many other American writers, Alice Corbin Henderson* had joined the Vigilantes, a writers’ syndicate dedicated to composing and publishing patriotic editorials and poetry for “the current crisis.” With over 300 members pledged to the organization, the Vigilantes included such well-known authors as Edgar Lee Masters, Amy Lowell, and Vachel Lindsay.

Corbin’s poem “A Litany in the Desert” is a litany for war. With the rhythms of a prayer, its chanted repetitions build lengthy lists that reveal the conflicted, complex feelings many Americans held about the bloodshed that was “to make the world safe for democracy.” 

                        A Litany in the Desert

                                    I

      On the other side of the Sangre de Cristo mountains

there is a great welter of steel and flame. I have read

that it is so. I know nothing of it here.

      On the other side of the water there is terrible carnage.

I have read that it is so. I know nothing of it here.

      I do not know why men fight and die. I do not know

why men sweat and slave. I know nothing of it here.

Sangre de Cristos, photo by Dave Hensley

                                    II

     Out of the peace of your great valleys, America, out of

the depth and silence of your deep canyons,

     Out of the wide stretch of yellow cornfields, out of the

stealthy sweep of your rich prairies,

     Out of the high mountain peaks, out of the intense

purity of your snows,

     Invigorate us, O America.

     Out of the deep peace of your breast, out of the sure

strength of your loins,

     Recreate us, O America.

     Not from the smoke and the fever and fret, not from

the welter of furnaces, from the fierce melting-pot of

cities;

     But from the quiet fields, from the little places, from

the dark lamp-lit nights – from the plains, from the

cabins, from the little house in the mountains,

     Breathe strength upon us:

     And give us the young men who will make us great.

The poem begins with a litany of incomprehension: its first short stanza repeats “I know nothing” and “I do not know” five times.  One can read of the war, its steel and flame, its artillery and bombs, and still “know nothing.” The tragedies of the war are so vast as to seem almost unreal. Although this war of “terrible carnage” appears impossibly distant from the mountains of New Mexico, the very name of the mountains – the Sangre de Cristo (Spanish for blood of Christ) -- carries the echo of another brutal sacrifice of innocence.

The second part of the poem looks not to the war, but turns its gaze to the American landscape.

In “The Soldier,” Rupert Brooke contrasts death in war with the life-giving beauties of the English countryside, its flowers, suns, rivers, and rich earth. In “Litany of the Desert,” Alice Corbin measures war against the sweep of America’s prairies, the depth and silence of its canyons, the purity of its snow-covered mountain peaks, and the peace of its great valleys. The immensity and spirit of America are greater than the scope and horrors of the Great War itself. 

What will bring about the end to this modern industrial war? Not the labors of cities, not the furnaces and smoky factories.  The poem asserts that the war will be vanquished by the spirit of the American land that has been born and bred into the young men who come from quiet fields, mountain cabins, and little places. Invigorated and recreated, taking courage and sure strength from roots sunk deep into the landscape, American soldiers will “make us great” as they set off for war fortified by the freedom inherent in the very bedrock of their country. 

Few people remember Alice Corbin Henderson as a poet, writer, or editor: she is, however, known for her advocacy of Native American rights and her support of Native American arts. She and her husband helped to establish the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian.  In an essay on the literature of New Mexico written during the Second World War, Corbin Henderson again shared her sacred reverence for the land, asserting, “the soil itself has the power of re-creating the imaginative vision.”** 

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*The author used her maiden name (Alice Corbin) when writing poetry and her married name (Alice Henderson) when writing prose. She is credited with discovering and promoting the work of poets Carl Sandburg, Sherwood Anderson, and Edgar Lee Masters; Ezra Pound and DH Lawrence were her friends and close colleagues. In reviewing her 1921 collection The Red Earth: Poems of New Mexico, Carl Sandburg said Corbin's poetry was "clean and aloof as the high deliberate table-lands where it was written" (Poetry, XVIII, June 1921). 

** Alice Corbin Henderson, “Literature” in New Mexico: A Guide to the Colorful State, 1940, page 135.