In 1922, the
poet James Rorty published “What Michael Said to the Census-Taker.” The
poem is not well-known; just 150 pretty copies were printed by a San
Francisco antiquarian named Edwin Grabhorn.
Rorty, who
was also an author, editor, and journalist, would become best known for
co-founding The New Masses, a leftist
magazine associated with the Communist Party of the United States of America. He also decried Senator Joseph McCarthy and
published McCarthy and the Communists, which
is thought to have helped diminish the senator’s influence, and other works of
social criticism.
The son of
Irish immigrants, born in 1890 in the industrial city of Middletown, N.Y.,
Rorty graduated from Tufts University. He drove an ambulance during World War I
and received the Distinguished Service Cross.
Upon his return to the U.S., Rorty worked in advertising before cynicism
set in and he turned to writing full-time.
“What Michael
Said to the Census-Taker” embodies themes to which Rorty returned throughout
his life: pacifism, defiance, justice, and hypocrisy. It’s an interesting poem and well worth
reading, which is why I’m posting it here.
"yapping on the roadside of the world"
"Homer sang to me"
"I saw the torches sway and go out."
"When the moon rose over Calvary, I was there."
"A red glow flushed the cheek of the saint in
the stained-glass window"
"I'm Bolshevik!"
"And the jail's open door flapping,
flapping in the wind."
"If you want to know who I am, I shall tell you"
*The poem is
in the public domain.
**The philosopher
Richard M. Rorty was the son of James Rorty.
https://www.throughthehourglass.com/2019/07/my-world-is-not-your-world-o-census.html
That poem is pretty epic! Whitmanesque.
ReplyDeleteMy great-uncle, the balloonist Robert Sanford Olmsted, also went to Tufts and then served in the war. They might well have known each other.