An Account Of The Poem Games
Vachel Lindsay
In the summer of 1916 in the parlor of Mrs. William Vaughn Moody;
and in the following winter in the Chicago Little Theatre,
under the auspices of Poetry, A Magazine of Verse; and in Mandel Hall,
the University of Chicago, under the auspices of the Senior Class,—
these Poem Games were presented. Miss Eleanor Dougherty
was the dancer throughout. The entire undertaking developed
through the generous cooperation and advice of Mrs. William Vaughn Moody.
The writer is exceedingly grateful to Mrs. Moody and all concerned
for making place for the idea. Now comes the test of its vitality.
Can it go on in the absence of its initiators?
Mr. Lewellyn Jones, of the Chicago Evening Post, announced the affair
as a “rhythmic picnic”. Mr. Maurice Browne of the Chicago Little Theatre
said Miss Dougherty was at the beginning of the old Greek Tragic Dance.
Somewhere between lies the accomplishment.
In the Congo volume, as is indicated in the margins,
the meaning of a few of the verses is aided by chanting.
In the Poem Games the English word is still first in importance,
the dancer comes second, the chanter third. The marginal directions
of King Solomon indicate the spirit in which all the pantomime was developed.
Miss Dougherty designed her own costumes, and worked out
her own stage business for King Solomon, The Potatoes’ Dance,
The King of Yellow Butterflies and Aladdin and the Jinn (The Congo, page 140).
In the last, “‘I am your slave,’ said the Jinn” was repeated four times
at the end of each stanza.
The Poem Game idea was first indorsed in the Wellesley kindergarten,
by the children. They improvised pantomime and dance for the Potatoes’ Dance,
while the writer chanted it, and while Professor Hamilton C. Macdougall
of the Wellesley musical department followed on the piano
the outline of the jingle. Later Professor Macdougall very kindly wrote down
his piano rendition. A study of this transcript helps to confirm the idea
that when the cadences of a bit of verse are a little exaggerated,
they are tunes, yet of a truth they are tunes which can be
but vaguely recorded by notation or expressed by an instrument.
The author of this book is now against instrumental music
in this type of work. It blurs the English.
Professor Macdougall has in various conversations helped the author
toward a Poem Game theory. He agrees that neither the dancing
nor the chanting nor any other thing should be allowed to run away
with the original intention of the words. The chanting should not be carried
to the point where it seeks to rival conventional musical composition.
The dancer should be subordinated to the natural rhythms of English speech,
and not attempt to incorporate bodily all the precedents
of professional dancing.
Speaking generally, poetic ideas can be conveyed word by word,
faster than musical feeling. The repetitions in the Poem Games
are to keep the singing, the dancing and the ideas at one pace.
The repetitions may be varied according to the necessities
of the individual dancer. Dancing is slower than poetry and faster than music
in developing the same thoughts. In folk dances and vaudeville,
the verse, music, and dancing are on so simple a basis the time elements
can be easily combined. Likewise the rhythms and the other elements.
Miss Dougherty is particularly illustrative in her pantomime,
but there were many verses she looked over and rejected
because they could not be rendered without blurring the original intent.
Possibly every poem in the world has its dancer somewhere waiting,
who can dance but that one poem. Certainly those poems would be
most successful in games, where the tone color is so close to the meaning
that any exaggeration of that color by dancing and chanting
only makes the story clearer. The writer would like to see some one try
Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast, or Swinburne’s Atalanta in Calydon.
Certainly in those poems the decorative rhythm and the meaning
are absolutely one.
With no dancing evolutions, the author of this book
has chanted John Brown and King Solomon for the last two years
for many audiences. It took but a minute to teach the people the responses.
As a rule they had no advance notice they were going to sing.
The versifier sang the parts of the King and Queen in turn,
and found each audience perfectly willing to be the oxen, the sweethearts,
the swans, the sons, the shepherds, etc.
A year ago the writer had the honor of chanting for
the Florence Fleming Noyes school of dancers. In one short evening
they made the first section of the Congo into an incantation,
the King Solomon into an extraordinarily graceful series of tableaus,
and the Potatoes’ Dance into a veritable whirlwind.
Later came the more elaborately prepared Chicago experiment.
In the King of Yellow Butterflies and the Potatoes’ Dance
Miss Dougherty occupied the entire eye of the audience and interpreted,
while the versifier chanted the poems as a semi-invisible orchestra,
by the side of the curtain. For Aladdin and for King Solomon
Miss Dougherty and the writer divided the stage between them,
but the author was little more than the orchestra. The main intention
was carried out, which was to combine the work of the dancer
with the words of the production and the responses of the audience.
The present rhymer has no ambitions as a stage manager.
The Poem Game idea, in its rhythmic picnic stage, is recommended to amateurs,
its further development to be on their own initiative.
Informal parties might divide into groups of dancers and groups of chanters.
The whole might be worked out in the spirit in which
children play King William was King James’ Son, London Bridge,
or As We Go Round the Mulberry Bush. And the author of this book
would certainly welcome the tragic dance, if Miss Dougherty
will gather a company about her and go forward, using any acceptable poems,
new or old. Swinburne’s Atalanta in Calydon is perhaps
the most literal and rhythmic example of the idea we have in English,
though it may not be available when tried out.
The main revolution necessary for dancing improvisers,
who would go a longer way with the Poem Game idea,
is to shake off the Isadora Duncan and the Russian precedents for a while,
and abolish the orchestra and piano, replacing all these
with the natural meaning and cadences of English speech.
The work would come closer to acting, than dancing is now conceived.
