105. Rhymes to be Traded for Bread by Vachel Lindsay

Vachel Lindsay was one of the great poets of American egalitarianism – an early twentieth-century Whitman. He got his start through a suggestion from his art teacher, Robert Henri. In March 1905 Lindsay was urgently in need of money, and asked Henri if he would ever cut it as an artist. Henri tactfully replied that he would do better trying to sell his poetry. Lindsay, either in desperation or inspiration, rushed off some copies of his poems and took them out in the streets of Manhattan, those most ‘world-sharpened and business-bitten avenues’ of New York. Pricing them at two cents per poem, he earned 15 cents on the first day (one doctor paid 5 cents for two poems) — and was elated. After binding his oeuvre into the collection Rhymes to be Traded for Bread, he began a series of tramps all over America bartering recitals for food and shelter. His first trek was in the spring of 1906, ranging on foot from Florida to Kentucky, traversing some 600 miles, selling poetry readings as he went. He undertook a similar tramp in the spring of 1908, this time from New York to Ohio, and again in the summer of 1912. He became famous, read for Woodrow Wilson and his cabinet, was praised by Yeats, and published several further collections.

Consulted:
Masters, Edgar Lee: Vachel Lindsay; A Poet in America (1969)