Saturday, February 04, 2006

100 years ago

One of the self-appointed tasks of this blog will be to chronicle Lindsay's life "100 years ago today." Without ready access to his diaries and notebooks, the biographies will have to serve as the source of these proposed entries.

The West-Going Heart: A Life of Vachel Lindsay by Eleanor Ruggles remains the definitive Lindsay biography. Ruggles provides plenty of dates, but there are some long gaps such the one between December 23, 1905 and March 3, 1906.

One hundred years ago today, Lindsay was living in New York City, working by day for the Nicholls Gas Tubing Works and teaching art by night at the YMCA. He and some of his friends had formed a club for the purpose of sharing nightly suppers. The fact that they engaged a cook and a young boy to serve them dinner brought a stern rebuke from Lindsay's father, who didn't approve of the direction Lindsay's life was taking.

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