TERRE HAUTE —
I made up my mind when I moved my home office out of the house last summer that I’d organize some of my books, that I’d categorize and catalogue them in a way that would help me find the one I wanted when I wanted it. I can’t say it worked out as well as I had hoped. Already, I have the overflow stacked on the floor and shoved into the spaces where previous tenants once lived. Gradually, expediency is replacing order, so fiction and non-fiction, biographies and novels, are scandalously co-mingling on my shelves.
I did, however, manage to reserve spots closest to my desk for the books that are the closest to me in other ways, and I doubt if they’re going to be reshuffled much over the years. Nearly a dozen of them are by Edgar Guest, the Everyman poet of whom most of us breathing these days have never heard. But for much of the last century, Guest was a household name, a man who published more than 20 books of poetry, had a long-running radio show and who appeared on television. He also attracted critics who considered his folksiness and humor as overly sentimental and hackneyed. One source I found in anticipation of writing this story said, “Guest’s verse reflects the sensibility of his era, and is hardly read today.”Nonetheless, I have enjoyed reading Guest’s poetry over the years. His is a comforting voice in a world that I fear has gone mad, and I find myself occasionally sitting in the lamplight of my space reading from one of his slender blue volumes.
I first read a fragment of one of Guest’s poems years and years ago, and in those days, before the Internet and search engine quick hits, I typed up the few lines I had on a creaky old typewriter and placed them under the glass of my office desk not knowing who wrote them. In time, I discovered Guest’s authorship, that the poem was called “Success,” and that those words would begin an off-again, on-again search for his old books. That is still a bit of a passion for me. The third stanza of the poem is still a favorite:
And I can live my life on earth
Contented to the end,
If but a few shall know my worth
And proudly call me friend.
Guest was born in England in 1881; he came to America with his parents when he was 10, settled in Michigan and found himself running the errands of an office boy for the Detroit Free Press at 14. He never finished school, but eventually became a reporter, first covering local labor stories, then the Detroit waterfront and then the police beat. One has to wonder if he soon saw the worst of the human condition in his work and decided to try his hand at poetry; in December 1898, his first poem appeared in the Free Press. Guest began writing a weekly column and verse, called “Blue Monday Chat,” for the paper by 1904.
According to Poemhunter.com, one story has it that Guest stood in the rain at a fellow newsman’s funeral in 1908; he was the lone mourner. Resolving not to be forgotten, as his colleague was, Guest decided he would write almost exclusively in verse from that time on. Within a year, he and his brother, Harry, a typesetter who had bought a sale box of type, printed 800 copies of Guest’s first book, “Home Rhymes.” By 1914, he had three books in print, and in 1916, his “Heap o’ Livin’” sold a million copies.
Guest’s poetry is simple and optimistic and domestic. With titles such as “Life Is What We Make It” and “No Use Sighin’,” his work is never going to be considered high art. He said it best: “I take simple everyday things that happen to me, and I figure it happens to a lot of other people, and I make simple rhymes out of them.”
Over time, I have come to look for Guest’s books as they snooze among garage sale flotsam and on bookstore nostalgia shelves; I even have his “Harbor Lights Of Home” checked out of the library as I write this. The book’s title came as a result of a $1,000 prize that Guest’s publisher — The Reilly and Lee Co. — had offered in the fall of 1928. The winner, the Rev. M.S. Rice, was invited to write a foreword to the book, and said, “These are difficult days in our social world. Many things are drifting and uncertain. The home is imperiled. … Edgar Guest, is in my judgment, the finest force in America today in defense of the home.”
A few years ago, I was rummaging through a box of books at an auction, a habit to which I am pleasantly addicted. I found among the cobwebs and dirt and musty volumes a decent collection of poems by James Whitcomb Riley. But tucked inside the huge book, whether accidentally or intentionally, was a familiar blue and gold edition of “When Day Is Done,” a first printing, older by a few months than a treasured copy my mom bought for me in a used bookstore.
Like all good auction addicts, I screwed on a poker face to outbid a competitor, who later came to me wanting the Riley book; she hadn’t even picked it up to discover the hidden Guest pearl inside. Since it was simply an old re-print, I let her have it, which made us both happy that day.
Today, that Guest book sits on a shelf with my other favorites. They aren’t expensive, leather-bound tomes or rare copies. They are simply friends. That is a sentiment with which Guest wholeheartedly agreed, and with his poem, “Books,” I’ll leave you…
Upon my shelf they stand in rows,
A city-full of human souls,
Sages, philosophers and drolls-
Good friends that everybody knows.
The drunkard shoulders with the saint;
The great are neighboring with the quaint
And they will greet me one and all
At any hour I care to call.
There’s Dickens with his humble crew
That has no end of joy to give
With all his people I can live
By moving just a foot or two
Or should I choose to sail the sea,
Stevenson there will pilot me,
While jovial, lovable Mark Twain
Waits patiently my call again.
Sometimes a friend drops in and looks
My little sitting room around
And, in a manner most profound,
Remarks: “Your shelves are lined with books!”
“Not books,” I say, “but people wise
And men to cling to or despise.
Vast peopled cities, calm and still;
For me to visit when I will.”
Mike Lunsford can be reached by e-mail at hickory913@aol.com or by writing to him c/o The Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Read more of Mike’s stories at http://tribstar.com/mike_lunsford, and visit his website at mikelunsford.com. He is currently working on his third collection of stories.
Mike Lunsford
The office boy who became a poet
- Mike Lunsford
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A walk in the woods
I went for a walk in the woods one day last week after work. It was a warm and green afternoon, and a fresh blue breeze blew in from the west like a new spring friend.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘Dowsers’ provide hope more than science
My grandfather was a man of God. Many times I saw him, his right hand held high in the air at his Wednesday night “prayer meeting,” praising the Lord before weeping at the altar on his knees. And yet, he was a “dowser,” a “diviner,” a “witcher” who, as a favor, would grab a forked sassafras stick and find water for some poor unfortunate whose well had gone dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: As of today, it’s unofficially spring
Despite the calendar telling us not to rush things, I think it is all right to go ahead and say spring is here. The Ides of March has passed, Easter is coming soon, and I have already been out in my yard with a rake, getting my boots muddy. It looks like spring to me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Twain’s Sawyer helps us yearn for ‘wilderness of childhood’
My cousin, Roger, stopped in one day last summer for a glass of tea and a little conversation. Rog has lived an hour’s drive away for years and now, and besides summer reunions, I don’t see him nearly often enough. He’s a good man who has raised a good family, and he owns a healthy sense of appreciation for not only the life he has now, but also the lives we had years ago as kids.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Cheerful green of wheat fights winter blahs
There is a light drizzle of freezing rain tapping at the door of my cabin today. It is little more than a week before the words I am writing are due to appear on your breakfast table or work desk with your morning coffee and scrambled eggs. But I write when I can, and today, despite a full schedule of televised football games, and the stacks of ungraded papers in my briefcase, and a good book lying open on my nightstand, I am clacking away on a keyboard to the whir of a heater and the steady drip of my gutters.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On the simple joys of watching it snow ...
It began to snow about 20 minutes ago, as I write this, light, wind-driven flakes that fall silently into my woods as I watch from a window.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On this day above all, ‘Peace on earth, good will to men’
More than a year after his wife’s death, the great American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote in his diary on Christmas Day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Remembering a Lefty Frizzell-kind of Christmas ...
My brother and sister and I sat around a Thanksgiving dinner table a month ago, shifting in our seats just enough to make our yet-to-be digested turkey sit a little more easily, and, as we often do when we get together, we reminisced about our childhoods for a while.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The wonders of wading in ‘The Iridescence of a Shallow Stream’
I have no idea how many times I have written a story that begins with the wistful phrase, “When I was a boy. ...”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Little man who came to dinner changes feel of household
My 7-year-old nephew, Carson, came to visit us last week. That in itself isn’t earth-shattering news, for he often drops by with one of his parents or the other, the last time dressed as a ghoul for Halloween. But for a couple like Joanie and me, whose youngest child is now nearly two decades past Carson’s age, having a little guy like him in the house, even for a few hours, takes a bit of adjusting.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Reflections: a bit of red glass and our daily thanksgivings
I sat in the half-light of my old desk lamp a few nights ago, a chilly wind blowing in from the northwest that made me appreciative of my long-sleeved shirt and purring heater.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Growing up — and ‘old’ — with many mouths to feed
At our family reunion last summer, I asked my brother if I could borrow a pair of photo albums he had put together. Over the past couple of years, I have committed quite a few of our family’s old yellowing snapshots to newly cropped and digitalized lives, and I wanted to do the same with some of the pictures John has collected for himself.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Violets in October – a pleasant surprise
I guess I don’t pay much attention to the weather forecasts these days because it surprised me a bit when our furnace kicked on a few nights ago.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A library is a good thing — even a little, homegrown one
I grew up with libraries, and I can’t imagine there ever being a time when I won’t want to wander one exploring it like some bookworm-Balboa, finding an author or title that I never really knew existed before. Creating those “Eureka” moments seems to be a dying interest now that so many of us download and digest books electronically without ever really considering that there just might be some hidden gem we’d have liked even more had we simply stumbled upon it on a shelf by accident. I think those moments of discovery are not unlike kicking up lost treasure a mile from where X marks the spot.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘soothsayer’ who came to dinner
I’ve had a good time opening my mail these past few weeks. Sure, I still received the usual junk about lower credit card rates and satellite television packages, but the genuine letters made me smile; most were about a story I wrote in late August.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The agony of de‘feet’ has this writer on his heels
I don’t know if I can electrocute myself by using a computer and soaking my feet in a pan of warm water at the same time, but I am contemplating taking the risk. My feet, particularly the right foot, have staged a 10-digit rebellion over the past few months. After a half-century of commendable service, my pods are screaming to be taken in for repairs, a big inconvenience for a guy who works on his feet all day and whose “sole” form of serious exercise is putting one foot in front of another walking the local roadways.
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Mike Lunsford: Summer’s hidden beauty worth the wait
The great naturalist John Burroughs once said that nature teaches more than she preaches. I can’t recall a summer where that rings true more than this one, for that old sun of ours truly taught us a thing or two these past three months.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time to redefine the concept of ‘assisted living’
Although it has been nearly two months now, I can’t forget the few afternoon hours I spent on a hot June day this summer at a local “assisted living” facility in town. I had been asked to speak to a group of men there about Father’s Day, but for most part, the wonderful old guys who came to listen certainly made my day more memorable than I did theirs.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Observations on smooth stones and blue-green water…
It was raining when I began to write this. Although no one could rightfully call what we got this afternoon a “downpour,” it was nice to have my windows open to hear the steady drops of a passing shower tapping on my dry-as-dust deck and hard-as-concrete yard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: This summer has us recalling the heat of ’36
It was “only” 99 degrees one afternoon last week when I decided to work on a backyard deck. With a jack and a drill and a little more sweat than I wanted to invest in the project, I went about the business of leveling its sags and dips a bit. The sun pounded down on my head and shoulders like a thug’s blackjack, but as I packed my tools and drank a glass of cool water under a big maple tree a few hours later, I couldn’t help but think about how lucky I’ve been these past few dusty and drought-stricken weeks. I have worked under this summer’s heat lamp for only a few hours at a time, but God help the roofers and utility linesmen and firemen, and so many others, who are out in it day after long hot day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We had no better friend than Andy Taylor
The world is a sadder place now that Andy Griffith has died, but at least we still have Andy Taylor.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Wading deeper into the subject of Blue Herons
Like a relative who has worn out his welcome, the hot, parched weather of this young summer has already overstayed its visit with us, so my wife and I have found ourselves walking our road later in the evenings to keep our feet cool and our backs dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Thanking two dads whose gifts have never stopped coming…
It is nearly a week until Father’s Day, but I have had my dad, and my father-in-law — a second dad to me — on my mind today. I wrote about both men just a few weeks ago, but I have set my mind to write about them again anyway. I don’t want this story to be sad; they both loved to laugh and wouldn’t want that. No, I just wanted to tell them hello, and to thank them again for what they still do for me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Feeding time at the homestead draws a host of new guests
I stepped outside into the warmth of an unusually mild early March morning last week to do what I always do just before I grab my briefcase and book bag and lunch bag and head off to work. It’s nearly always dark when I leave, even as the sun gets up earlier and earlier in the late winter, so I often go about the business of feeding our cats with porch lights on and a flashlight in hand.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
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Bridge Collapse Survivor: 'Rough Day'
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Officials: Truck Hit Bridge Before Collapse
Jersey Shore Open for Business
First Person: Mom Discusses Famous Tornado Photo
Officials: Tsarnaev Friend Linked to Slaying
Sheriff: No Sign Killing of 2 Kids Was Planned
Boy Scouts Approve Plan to Accept Gay Boys
Two Suspects in Murder Known to London Police
Raw: Utah Teen Arrested in Death of His Brothers
Raw: Scuffles in London After Hacking Death
Raw: Memorial Day Flags Placed at Arlington
Obama:Sexual Assault Threatens Trust in Military
Johnson: Don't Blame Islam or UK Policy
American Held in Grisly Czech Murders
Obama Defends Drone Strikes, With Limits
Today in History May 24
Raw: Jurors Deadlock on Jodi Arias Penalty
UK-bound Pakistan Plane Diverted, 2 Men Arrested
Closer Look at Okla. School Where Children Died
AK-47-wielding thug may be the most bumbling crook ever
Oklahoma Survivors, Heroes Survey Damage
Trout's cycle a boost for Angels
Raw: New Video of Deadly Oklahoma Tornado
Kim Kardashian Flaunts Pregnant Bikini Body in Greece
NBA star pledges $1M to help tornado recovery
Shakira's Shocking Talent
Morgan Freeman falls asleep on air
GRAPHIC: Blood-Soaked Machete Killer Caught on Tape
Elin Nordegren Furious With Lindsey Vonn For Parading Kids in Public
Camera Captures Climber As He Loses Grip And Falls
Helen Mirren Meets with Dying Boy in Queen Elizabeth's Place
Crowd Chants '¡Si, Se Puede!' After Passage of Immigration Bill
DWTS Crowns a Winner
Police Ram House to End Hostage Standoff
Demi Moore a Rocks Bikini at Harry Morton's Family House
Anthony Weiner: I'm running for New York City mayor
Kate Middleton's Dress Flies Up
VIRAL: Baby makes epic soccer goal
The Hangover Baby All Grown Up
