October 07, 2008
The Hoax That Backfired (1877)
Early in James Whitcomb Riley's writing career, he tried to prove that for a poem to be popular, it had to be by somebody famous. He wrote "Leonainie" in the style of a well-known poet and convinced the Indiana newspaper he worked for to print it under that name. To help stir up some controversy, Riley wrote an anonymous article in a rival paper claiming that the poem was a hoax. But the poem's fame spread, and when newspapers in the East printed the poem, Riley's role was revealed, and he was fired. The poem is below: can you guess who he was trying to imitate?
Leonainie
Leonainie — Angels named her;
And they took the light
Of the laughing stars and framed her
In a smile of white;
And they made her hair of gloomy
Midnight, and her eyes of bloomy
Moonshine, and they brought her to me
In the solemn night.--
In the solemn night of summer,
When my heart of gloom
Blossomed up to greet the comer
Like a rose in bloom;
All forbodings that distressed me
I forgot as Joy caressed me ù
(Lying Joy! that caught and pressed me
In the arms of doom!)
Only spake the little lisper
In the Angel-tongue;
Yet I, listening, heard her whisper,--
"Songs are only sung
Here below that they may grieve you ---
Tales are told you to deceive you,--
So must Leonainie leave you
While her love is young."
Then God smiled and it was morning.
Matchless and supreme
Heaven's glory seemed adorning
Earth with its esteem:
Every heart but mine seemed gifted
With the voice of prayer, and lifted
Where my Leonainie drifted
From me like a dream.
The supposed author of "Leonainie" was Edgar Allan Poe. Coincidentially, Poe died four years to the day before Riley was born.
Excerpt
From "Little Orphant Annie," by James Whitcomb Riley
An' little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue,
An' the lampwick sputters, an' the wind goes woo-oo!
An' you hear the crickets quit, an' the moon is gray
An' the lightnin'-bugs in dew is all squenched away, --
You better mind yer parents, and yer teachers fond and dear,
An' churish them ‘at loves you, an' dry the orphant's tear,
An' he'p the pore an' needy ones ‘at clusters all about,
Er the gobble-uns'll git you
Ef you
Don't
Watch
Out!
Born: James Whitcomb Riley, poet, essayist, journalist, Greenfield, Ind., 1849; Thomas James Wise, bibliophile, literary forger, Gravesend, England, 1859; Helen MacInnes, novelist, Glasgow, Scotland, 1907; Elizabeth Janeway, novelist, feminist, Brooklyn, N.Y., 1913; R.D. Laing, psychiatrist, author, Glasgow, Scotland, 1927; Imamu Amiri Baraka (ps. LeRoi Jones), poet, playwright, Newark, N.J., 1934; Thomas Keneally, novelist, New South Wales, Australia, 1935; Diane Ackerman, poet, nature writer, Waukegan, Ill., 1948.
Died: Edgar Allan Poe, short-story writer, poet, critic, editor, Baltimore, 1849; Henry Timrod, poet, essayist, Columbia, S.C., 1867; Oliver Wendell Holmes, poet, essayist, biographer, novelist, Cambridge, Mass., 1894; Natalia Ginzburg, playwright, short-story writer, novelist, Rome, 1991; Allan Bloom, critic, Chicago, 1992.
Quote for the day
I have a distinct feeling about people who think of writing. It is this. If anything can stop them it is probably no great loss. — Alexander Woollcott
Also from the Reader's Almanac:
- Stephen Crane: I Fought the Law and the Law Won (1896)
- Longfellow and the Cross of Snow (1861)
- Charles Dickens' last reading (1857)
- Melville climbs a mountain and catches a whale (1850)
- Lunar Tunes (1835)
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