A Book of Verse
An Anthology Compiled by American People
While I was in New York four months ago, I came upon this book: The Desk Drawer Anthology, a collection of verses compiled from 1937 to 1940.
While casually going through the foreword, I found a compelling story of how the book was conceived and compiled.
It goes something like this, and I paraphrase:
Two friends, Theodore, a writer, and Aleck, a radio host, while holidaying by a lake in Vermont, were talking lazily to each other. The conversation turned to poetry, and one of them said: “Many people wrote one or more good verses that somehow escaped the accident of fame and were lost in the files of a local newspaper.”
Their conversation then turned to whether American people cared for poetry. Aleck, the radio host, said they did and, as proof, he said that among the personal effects of each soldier killed in the previous World War were almost invariably found tattered yellow clippings of verse.
From there, the conversation moved to the possibility of collecting a verse that people may have saved in their scrapbooks and diaries, put away in their desk drawers, and forgotten about.
Aleck said that if Theodore and his sister, Alice (also a writer), agreed to edit the anthology, he would use his radio show to appeal to his audience to send in any such verse they might have saved in their desk drawers.
All three agreed to proceed with the project, and Aleck issued an appeal on his next radio show, asking his audience to send their replies directly to Theodore. As an incentive, he told his listeners that anyone whose submission was accepted would be given a free copy of the anthology. If more than one person sent the same poem, the person who sent it first would get the free copy.
Theodore describes what happened next:
“While Aleck was broadcasting the news to his audience, I was in Europe… When I returned, I literally had to dig my way into my office. The letters had arrived not by battalions but by armies. Responses had come from all over the country, from great cities, country villages, and lonely farms. All had furnished their quota. College professors, naval officers, lawyers, farmers, workingmen, and women of every walk of life had responded. Poetry seemed to have formed a common if unrecognized brotherhood among people of the most diverse lives and occupations.”
In all, more than 40,000 poems were submitted. Poor Theodore was snowed under.
Theodore and Alice got together and laid down some rules for a submission to be accepted and decided to give preference to good verse written by little-known Americans on American subjects. Next in order would be favorites from American poets of the last 100 years or so and English poets of the same period.
Also, they would exclude the classics of Shakespeare and Milton, for they could be found in any anthology but would include less-known verse by well-known modern poets.
The result was an anthology compiled virtually by the American people. The editors named it The Desk Drawer Anthology.
Incidentally, the anthology's editors, Theodore and his sister Alice, happened to be the children of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States.
Poetry comes to us, the readers, externally through books and words. And we enjoy it when those words echo our thoughts and emotions.
Here are a few short poems from the Desk Drawer Anthology, among many, that I liked, some for their humor, others for their charm and poignancy.
1. A Desk Motto
In summer, Spring, and also Fall
I do not like to work at all.
In Winter, as you may have guessed
My favorite indoor sport is rest.
Don Marquis
2. Humane Thought
Be kind to all dumb animals
And give small birds a crumb;
Be kind to human beings too.
They are sometimes pretty dumb.
Rebecca Mccann
3. King Solomon and King David
King Solomon and King David
Led merry, merry lives,
Had many, many lady friends
And many, many wives.
But when old age crept on them,
With many, many qualms,
King Solomon wrote the Proverbs
And King David wrote the Psalms.
Dr. James Ball Naylor
(Proverbs and Psalms are two popular books of the Old Testament known for preaching moral values)
4. A Prayer Found in Chester Cathedral
Give me a good digestion, Lord,
And also something to digest;
Give me a healthy body, Lord,
With sense to keep it at its best;
Give me a healthy mind, good Lord,
To keep the good and pure in sight,
Which seeing sin is not appalled
But finds a way to set it right;
Don’t let me worry overmuch
About the fussy thing called I.
Give me sense of humor, Lord,
Give me the grace to see a joke,
To get some happiness from life
And pass it on to other folk.
Anonymous
5. The Golf Links
The golf links like so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And the see the men at play
Sarah N. Cleghorn
(The Child Labor Amendment was not ratified then)
6. Life is a Lovely Thing
Long, long ago, when it was spring,
I thought life was a lovely thing;
And now, with snow on dale and hill,
I think so still
Minnie Case Hopkins
7. Intolerance
Across the way my neighbor’s windows shine,
His rooftree shields him from the storms that frown;
He toiled and saved to build it, staunch and brown.
And though my neighbor’s house is not like mine,
I would not pull it down.
With patient care my neighbor, too, had built
A house of faith, wherein his soul might stay,
A haven from the winds that sweep life’s way.
It differed from my own — I felt no guilt –
I burned it yesterday!
Molly Anderson Haley
8. Age
Age is a quality of mind;
If you’ve left your dreams behind,
If Hope is cold,
If you no longer look ahead,
If your ambition’s fires are dead,
Then you are old.
But, — if from Life you take the best,
If in Life you keep the zest,
If Love you hold,
No matter how the years go by,
No matter how the birthdays fly,
You are not old.
Edward Tuck
