Tag Archives: Poetry

The Hartford Wits

from The Vision of Columbus (1787)

from The Vision of Columbus (1787)

by Joel Barlow

Joel Barlow (1754-1812), the last of the four original Hartford Wits, came to Yale in 1774 at the age of 20 after a stint at Dartmouth. Joel grew up on a farm in Redding, Connecticut, the fourth son of Samuel and Esther Barlow and one of nine total children. His humble upbringing as the son of a farmer led to a close friendship with classmate Noah Webster. 

Barlow became a French citizen in the winter of 1791-92, just as the French Revolution, of which he was a supporter, was coming to a head. Even during his European travels, Barlow never forgot his Connecticut heritage. The comical poem, The Hasty-Pudding: A Poem in Three Cantos (1793), written about his experience eating a cornmeal dish in a French inn that reminded him of the hasty pudding he grew up with, is perhaps the work that Barlow is best remembered for. In 1804, back in the United States, Barlow picked his The Vision of Columbus back up and expanded it to become The Columbiad: A Vision of Internal Peace (1807), which he hoped might restore American faith in democracy. Barlow served as a diplomat for the United States in Algiers and France before his death in 1812 in Warsaw, Poland. 

It is believed that Joel Barlow was inspired to begin this epic poem while in service to the Continental Army during the American Revolution. The Vision of Columbus provides an overview of America’s glorious past and promising future from the perspective of the explorer Christopher Columbus, who at the time was credited with the “founding” of America. In the poem, an angel visits an imprisoned Columbus to show him the country that he “discovered.”  Written shortly after Barlow became a minister, the influence of Christianity is clear, but Barlow also includes many ideas from the Enlightenment, advocating for knowledge, art, and science. Overall, Barlow applauds the “blest period” of time, when the “peaceful race / shall speak one language and one cause embrace,” which is in his mind, the cause of liberty.

The Vision of Columbus. Excerpt: Book IX.
“At this blest period, when thy peaceful race
Shall speak one language and one cause embrace,
Science and arts a speedier course shall find,
And open earlier on the infant mind.
No foreign terms shall crowd with barbarous rules.
The dull, unmeaning pageantry of schools;
Nor dark authorities, nor names unknown
Fill the learn’d head with ign’rance not its own
But truth’s fair eye, with beams unclouded, shine,
And simplest rules her moral lights confine;
One living language, one unborrow’d dress
Her boldest flights with happiest force express;
Triumphant virtue, in the garb of truth,
Win a pure passage to the heart of youth,
Pervade all climes, where suns or oceans roll,
And bid the gospel cheer the illumined whole.
As the glad day-star, on his golden throne,
Fair type of truth and promise of the sun,
Smiles up the orient, in his rosy ray,
Illumes the front of heaven, and leads the day
Thus soaring Science, daughter of the skies,
First o’er the nations bids her beauties rise,
Prepares the glorious way, to pour abroad
The beams of Heaven’s own morn, the splendors of a
Then blessed Religion leads the raptured mind,
Thro’ brighter fields and pleasures more refined
Teaches the roving eye, at one broad view,
To glance o’er time and look Existence thro’,
See worlds, and worlds, to Being’s formless end,
With all their hosts, on one dread Power depend,
Seraphs and suns and systems round him rise,
Live in his life and kindle from his eyes,
His boundless love, his all-pervading soul
Illume, sublime and harmonize the whole
Teaches the pride of man to fix its bound
In one small point of this amazing round
To shrink and rest, where Heaven has fix’d its fate,
A line its space, a moment for its date;
Instructs the heart a nobler joy to taste,
And share its feelings with another’s breast,
Extend its warmed wish for all mankind,
And catch the image of the Maker’s mind
While mutual love commands all strife to cease,
And earth join joyous in the songs of peace. 

 

Public domain.

Source: https://archive.org/details/visionofcol00barl/page/252/mode/2up
The Hartford Wits

from The Anarchiad  (1786-1787)

from The Anarchiad or American Antiquities: a poem on the restoration of chaos and substantial night (1786-1787)

Excerpt: American Antiquities. – No. IV. Extract from The Anarchiad, Book XXIII

by David Humphreys, Joel Barlow, John Trumbull, and Lemuel Hopkins  

Dr. Lemuel Hopkins (1750-1801), principal author of The Anarchiad, was known as an innovative physician who specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis, to which he prescribed fresh air and a healthy diet over old-fashioned “cures” such as donkey’s milk instead cow’s milk. (He later wrote a satirical poem entitled “Epitaph on a Patient Killed by a Cancer Quack.”) Having received an honorary Master of Arts degree from Yale in 1784, Hopkins was aligned with the Wits in both their intellectual and literary pursuits as well as their Federalist political leanings.  Continue reading from The Anarchiad  (1786-1787) →

The Hartford Wits

Addressed to my Friends at Yale College (1776)

Addressed to my Friends at Yale College, on my Leaving them to join the army (1776)

by David Humphreys, 1776

David Humphreys (1752-1818) entered Yale at the age of 15 in 1767. Brought up in Derby, Connecticut, he was the youngest of Reverend Daniel and Sarah Riggs Bowers Humphreys’ five children and he grew up surrounded by wealth.  During his freshman year at Yale, David Humphreys is credited with establishing “Brothers in Unity,” a literary and debate club that became popular in the 19th century. Humphreys made Boston his home when he returned to America in 1801. However, Humphreys still visited Hartford and introduced Spanish merino sheep to Connecticut, building a successful woolen mill near Derby.  Continue reading Addressed to my Friends at Yale College (1776) →

The Hartford Wits

from M’Fingal (1782)

from M’Fingal (1782), Canto First, or The Town Meeting

by John Trumbull

John Trumbull (1750-1831), a child prodigy born to the Watertown, Connecticut branch of the Trumbull family, entered Yale in 1763 at the age of 13.  John’s father, the Reverend John Trumbull (1715-1787), was the pastor of the Watertown Congregational Church. His mother, Sarah Whitman, was the daughter of a Farmington minister. Historical evidence indicates that the family enslaved at least six people. Reverend John Trumbull’s cousin, Jonathan Trumbull (1710-1785), would become Connecticut’s governor in 1769, serving through the Revolutionary War until 1784. One of Jonathan’s sons, also named John Trumbull (1756-1843), was the famous American artist, “the painter of the American Revolution.”  Continue reading from M’Fingal (1782) →

Martha Linsley Spencer

So Long Ago

So Long Ago

by Martha Linsley Spencer

I held within my hands today
The book
in which she wrote her name —
“Prudence Corwin’s book.”
(it read)
“Seventeen hundred and seventy-nine.”
the letters
Clear and plain as she had written them,
So long ago —
Upon the title page
(it said)
“Paradise Lost, a poem — the author,
John Milton.”

My great Grandmother read this book —
So long ago — So long ago.

(Northford 1930.)

Public domain.
Uncategorized

Pastel in Gray

Pastel in Gray

by Martha Linsley Spencer

Translucent sky,
   softer than mother-of-pearl
   it gleams and grays
   over the city,
   over the river,
   above the bridge ——
Red, like a ruby
   hangs the trellised-star
   of radio.
Picked with golden-lighted windows,
   gray bulk of stone on stone
   merges into gray
   without a sharpened line,
   Where the Traveler’s Tower
   lifts its pinnacled height
   into the luminous dusk
   of the gray October twilight.

“S.L.M”

Latino/a Poets

Cultivo

Cultivo

by Luisa Caycedo-Kimura

once mourning doves   made me think

of graveyards

 

today        they peck     at weed seeds

clean        my land

 

the oldest on record     lived 30 years    and 4 months

from the time          it was tagged

 

until         it was shot

how many mates           did it mourn

 

American toads       breed

at the neighbor’s pond

 

I wring       laundry     to hang     on a clothesline

mostly black

 

when I was eight

a man trapped me    in the stairwell

 

to our New York        apartment

the note from his pocket     loose-leaf cutout

 

blue ink print      said I was       beautiful

a scalpel      in his pocket

 

how many      would die

in a war        without weapons

 

I was born        in the middle

of an Andean hurricane     the first time

 

I saw mamá      her blue eyes

reflected green            from the flame

 

of a candle    the last time   in Florida

her eyes         were shut

 

yesterday       Aaron and I      planned

a garden         for our new         Connecticut home

 

asparagus and blueberries can’t be harvested

for two years

 

seeds must avoid      hickory taproots

cilantro      has to be        direct seeded

 

doesn’t like       to be moved

my older sister bought           her first house

 

after med school

lived there               twenty years

 

before renting it out            I’ve moved

twenty times       from rental to rental

 

clouds dissipate        on our ridge

we buy spades      trowels

 

pruners         window sheers

fog on the trees        lingers

 

coats        the open grass

droplets      vaporize       burn the fog

 

how does one quench         an instinct

to bolt

 

Copyright 2021 Luisa Caycedo-Kimura

From All Were Limones (The Word Works, 2025); originally published in Shennandoah, Spring 2021

Used by permission of the author.
Latino/a Poets

Snow on Port-au-Prince: A Dirge

Snow on Port-au-Prince: A Dirge

by Ines P. Rivera-Prosdocimi

Snow covers Port-au-Prince.
At dawn, you cover the trees, the eyelids and lips
of the sleeping and those who wait.
The neighborhood priest lies quietly; a mob fights
over him, over his arms fixed and crossed over
his chest. His purple mouth holds the names
of their dead. And the concrete crucifix still sits,
a black monument within the rubble. There will be
more bodies to burn and bury. This one is
one more. Don’t be afraid of death, Anna sings.

Papa repeats Haitians have always had dignity.
They are not ashamed of being black
like most Dominicans. At dawn, Papa sits rocking
before the TV, my god, my god, as a boy
spreads his arms to the sun; his snow covered limbs.
The neighborhood priest lies quietly; a mob fights
for his soul. In the Caribbean we bury our dead
quickly, knowing coffins don’t preserve a thing.
Don’t be afraid of death, Anna sings.

Snow dust covers Port-au-Prince.
At Dawn, you cover us. You cover
our bodies and rest in our mouths. You cover
our babies. You cover our concrete castles
now fallen, and our streets. You bury
our playgrounds, and our children’s children.
You bury the orange of the flamboyan trees,
and all of the colors that are Haiti. And you cover
this holy man we cannot burn or bury,
and so we sing his name. Don’t be afraid
of death, Anna sings and sings. Brothers,
the body is still, the soul in our mouths.

(2018)

Used by permission of the author.
Latino/a Poets

Surrogate Twins

Surrogate Twin

by Ines P. Rivera-Prosdocimi

After my twin, my next love was a kindergarten boy.
Lawrence with his white hair and white grin
as he stood in the corner peeking at me
as I peed to show him we were blood.
Our hands were the same size, though different
colors, and we fought like we liked running
or story books, or sticking our tongues out
at the girls who  found it fun to collect clovers.
We told each other those things we keep—
if our twin sisters died, we’d die too,
and take all the maps in the map room to find
our souls. He may not remember
the way he traced my hand forever,
or how I said God gave the teacher’s aide cancer.
I wish I could say, last I heard, my buddy Lawrence…
but truth is, the day before he moved,
he held a clip knife to my neck, then leaned in,
put his warm forehead against me.
We were six or seven. A dusky afternoon.
A long silence before we both took a breath.

(2018)

Used by permission of the author.
Latino/a Poets

Unbound

Unbound

by Shakira R. Perez

In this life, there is no room for me.
No room for dark skin, tangled hair and romantic accents.
No room for bedroom eyes, infectious laughter and bare shoulders.
No room for spiritual warriors, coconut shells and omens.
No room for brujeria, palo santo and mal de ojo.
No room for the rogue, rebellious or the raunchy.

So you set rules.

Because you are afraid.

Afraid that even the darkest skin will emit the brightest light.
Afraid that your husband will lose himself in my magic
Afraid that I am protected by ancestral blessings and an army of angels.
Afraid that I will make you see yourself for who you really are
Afraid that what you despise about me is what you wished you loved about yourself.

So you cage me in and limit the sky.
But little do you know that within this cage,
I am free.

Free
to dream of galaxies and supernovas,
  to remember that I was chosen,
    to heal from others and heal myself,
      to seek God’s face,
        to live.

You can’t contain me.

I am too much for this world.

(2021)

Used by permission of the author.