The Call of the Road

Vachel Lindsay introduced a genuinely new rhythm into American poetry and was America's first real folk poet--superior to Sandburg and articulating a sense of awe, loss and resentment at the passing of the older freedoms and dignities of pre industrial America. His topics (Negro revivals, Salvation Army meetings, Chautauqua gatherings) would seem to be utterly dated---yet Lindsay was a modernist in spite of himself and influenced greatly later poets and writers as dis separate as Hart Crane, Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Frost, James T Farrell and William Faulkner as well as Jack Kerouac. Professor Rogal argues it was Lindsay's vision of the American Midwest heartland and its people than informed and empowered Lindsay's greatest poetry. And his performance skills enhanced his poetry during his short vagabond lifetime. "... This work argues for the continuing importance of Vachel Lindsay...the author certainly puts forth a strong case for the poet's importance to the American poetic tradition and that tradition's inherent bardic energies and geomancy" Professor T. Badin. D/American Literature, Zagreb University