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A
Century of Change
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Poetry
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Poetry in
Alaska
Much of the poetry written
aboard the Elder in 1899 was humorous verse.
Oftentimes one writer was poking fun at another's mishaps;
Bernard Fernow, for example, wrote several stanzas teasing
C. Hart Merriam for mistaking two arctic swans for polar
bears. But poet Charles Keeler took Alaska verse seriously.
One of his poems, "Alaska," opens the first volume of the
published journals of the expedition. Another, "To An
Alaskan Glacier," was included in Idylls of El
Dorado, a collection of poems he published a year after
the trip. The opening lines, copied below, include the
striking metaphor of the sea as mother to a glacier, with an
eery image of the calved iceberg slowly disappearing.
"To An Alaskan
Glacier"
Out of the cloud-world sweeps thy awful form,
Vast frozen river, fostered by the storm
Upon the drear peak's snow-encumbered crest,
Thy sides deep grinding in the mountain's breast
As down its slopes thou plowest to the sea
To leap into thy mother's arms, and be
There cradled into nothingness...
In his journals and letters from
the trip, John Burroughs often talked about being homesick.
This poem, inspired by the song of the Lapland longspur, is
no exception. Even the song of a new bird did not stop the
nature writer from thinking about his home in the Hudson
Valley of New York.
"To the Lapland
Longspur"
On Unalaska's emerald lea,
On lonely isles in Bering Sea,
On far Siberia's barren shore,
On north Alaska's tundra floor;
At morn, at noon, in pallid night,
We heard thy song and saw thy flight,
While I, sighing, could but think
Of my boyhood's bobolink.
Unlike Burroughs, the poet Sheila
Nickerson, a participant in the 2001 expedition, feels very
much at home in Alaska. She was the state's poet laureate
from 1977 to 1981. In the following poem, she gives the
grizzly bear, the largest terrestrial carnivore, a voice
both succinct and surprising.
"Grizzly Bear"
Home of the North Star,
I roam the night sky
as well as the north woods.
Nothing escapes me.
They have called me
Owner of the Earth,
Pride of the Woodland,
Forest Apple, Light Foot,
believing my strength flows
from a secret honey in my paws.
What they do not know
who worship me in fear
is the hunger:
the immensity of the search.
(top)
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Charles Keeler
Charles Keeler, photographed in
1899.
Click image for a
larger view
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"I am actually tired of the
constant strain of trying to take things in. I am
trying to learn from the scenery, the life and the
people about me including botanists, geologists,
marine invertebratologists, ornithologists and
professional story tellers."
Charles Keeler in a letter to his wife, Louise,
dated June 4, 1899.
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John Burroughs, photographed by
F. P. Clatworthy in California in 1909.
Click image for a
larger view
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"Passed my place on the
Hudson at 4:00 P.M. Looked long and fondly from the
car window upon the scenes I am to be absent from
until August. The sun is shining warmly. I see the
new green of the vineyards. Wife is waving her
white apron from the summer house. I sit alone in
my room in the Pullman car and am sad. Have I made
a mistake in joining this crowd for so long a trip?
Can I see nature under such conditions? But I am in
for it."
John Burroughs, writing about his decision to join
the Harriman Expedition, in a journal entry dated
May 23, 1899.
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