| At the Pitch
by Maxine Kumin
If I could only live at the pitch
that is near madness, Eberhart wrote
but there was his wife Betty hanging onto
his coattails for dear life to the end of her life.
No one intervened when my mother’s brother’s
wife ran off with the new young rabbi
every woman in the congregation had a crush on.
They rose unleashed, fleeing west
into the sooty sky over Philadelphia
in a pillar of fire, at the pitch that is near madness
touching down in the outskirts of Pittsburgh.
Cleveland. Chicago. O westward!
O fornication! I was sixteen.
Eberhart had written his poem before
he sailed off to World War II and a boy
had just put his tongue in my mouth
which meant he could make
me do anything. No one
holding onto his coattails, no one onto my skirt
until my father switched on the back porch light. “At the Pitch” by Maxine Kumin from Where I Live: New & Selected Poems. © Norton & Company, 2010. Reprinted with permission of the Maxine W. Kumin Literary Trust. (buy now) It’s the anniversary of the attack that began WWII in 1939. At 11 minutes after five in the morning, Hitler issued a proclamation for his army to invade Poland. He claimed it was a counterattack, that the Poles had started the whole thing, but in reality, German troops had been moving to the eastern border for weeks; Polish troops had simply moved up to their own border to defend it. Hitler had recently signed a pact with Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, surprising everyone, because the two men had been sworn enemies. Their intention was to carve up Poland, giving the western third to Germany while the Soviets took the rest.
Britain and France, allied with Poland, entered the war two days later. But by then it was too late to save Poland. The German army unleashed the new form of warfare they called Blitzkrieg, or “lightning war,” and within six days, had taken Krakow. Within 10, they were outside Warsaw. By early October, Poland had fallen. It’s the birthday of American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875) (books by this author), born in Chicago, creator of the popular fictional character Tarzan, King of the Apes. Burroughs was working in Chicago as a pencil-sharpener salesman when he decided to try his hand at writing for pulp magazines. He said, “If people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines, I could write stories just as rotten.” His efforts began appearing in All-Story Magazine (1912) and were a hit, influencing future science fiction writers like Ray Bradbury.
He was also secretly at work on an adventure story about a young boy in the jungles of West Africa. John Clayton, heir to the House of Greystoke, is adopted by kindly great apes after his parents die. The apes name the baby “Tarzan,” which means “white skin” in ape language. The boy is reared by the apes and learns the ways of the jungle. He also finds his parents’ abandoned cabin and their books, and he teaches himself to read and speak English.
Tarzan of the Apes was an instant success upon publication (1914). Burroughs made so much money he formed his own publishing house and bought land in California that eventually became the city of Tarzana.
The character captured the public’s imagination, spawning more than 40 novels, a comic book series, and numerous Hollywood films, which made Burroughs unhappy, because the films portrayed Tarzan as a savage. In the books, he is an erudite and wealthy heir to a noble English fortune. It was on this date in 1850 that P.T. Barnum brought Jenny Lind to New York. Lind, the “Swedish Nightingale,” was a gifted soprano who was wildly popular in Europe, and Barnum became aware of her in 1849, as she was wrapping up her third London season. He convinced her to tour the United States, even though he had never heard her sing and had no ear for music. Her reputation as a box-office draw was enough for him. Barnum offered her a thousand dollars a night, plus expenses. He usually paid artists after their performance, but Lind required the full amount for all of her 150 scheduled shows up front. Barnum mortgaged everything he had and still came up $5,000 short, so he borrowed the rest from a Philadelphia clergyman who believed that Lind would set a good moral example for American audiences. Lind was a well-known philanthropist, and was hoping to endow some schools in Sweden; she saw an American tour as a great opportunity to help others, and she distributed money to local charities everywhere she went. The public adored her.
Barnum publicized her visit in the months leading up to the start of her tour. His first press release really emphasized her moral qualities, saying, “A visit from such a woman who regards her artistic powers as a gift from Heaven and who helps the afflicted and distressed will be a blessing to America.” Lind had been virtually unknown in the States, but Barnum created so much buzz that 30,000 fans met her ship when it docked in New York City on September 1. The tour was a huge financial success, although Lind was uncomfortable with Barnum’s publicity tactics. She ended her contract with him in 1851, but toured for another year under her own name. Emily Dickinson was in the audience for one of her performances, and wrote rapturously: “... how bouquets fell in showers, and the roof was rent with applause — how it thundered outside, and inside with the thunder of God and of men — judge ye which was the loudest; ... she has an air of exile in her mild blue eyes, and a something sweet and touching in her native accent which charms her many friends.” It was on this day in 1773 that 20-year-old Phillis Wheatley published Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (books by this author). It was the first book of poetry published by an African-American person. Wheatley was born in West Africa and brought over as a slave when she was a young girl. She was purchased by a Boston family, who taught her to read and write, and eventually gave her her freedom. She went to London when her book was published, and she met many important people there, including the Lord Mayor, who gave her a copy of Paradise Lost. George Washington praised her talents, and she published numerous poems in magazines. But her husband fell into debt and then abandoned her when she was pregnant, and she died in childbirth, in a boarding house, when she was only 31 years old.
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