Week 9: BEGIN

Albert Pinkham Ryder, Evening Glow, The Old Red Cow, oil on canvas, 7-7/8 x 9 inches, mid-1870's

Begin, as in begin again... Ryder painted this when he was just a little older than those of you in the group. It's in the Brooklyn Museum. What do you make of the title? It relates to many of the things we've talked about this semester... Note the size--and how he uses the materials (oil on canvas)...

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The Flower-fed Buffalo 
Vachel Lindsay
 

The flower-fed buffaloes of the spring

In the days of long ago,

Ranged where the locomotives sing

And the prairie flowers lie low:—

The tossing, blooming, perfumed grass

Is swept away by the wheat,

Wheels and wheels and wheels spin by

In the spring that still is sweet.

But the flower-fed buffaloes of the spring

Left us, long ago.

They gore no more, they bellow no more,

They trundle around the hills no more:—

With the Blackfeet, lying low,

With the Pawnees, lying low,

Lying low.

Vachel Lindsay, "The Flower-Fed Buffaloes" from Going-to-the-Stars. Copyright © 1926 by Vachel Lindsay.  Reprinted by permission of Estate of Vachel Lindsay.

There's a version on Caedmon records with Vachel Lindsay himself reading the poem. Hearing his voice clarifies the meaning. Here's a link to an mp3 of the recording: https://berkeley.box.com/s/l5u82v3l48hi376xam6u

Vachel Linday (1879-1931)wrote the poem towards the end of his life; Ryder (1847-1917) made the painting closer to the beginning. Something also to consider...