“The pieces of the puzzle come together seamlessly; better still, Kendrick’s investigation informs and enriches the Humourist essays, illuminating their historical and literary contexts.” —Publishers Weekly
Publisher’s Weekly Cover, December 15-22, 2025
I knew the review was scheduled to appear. I’d marked the date. I’d even ordered copies in advance.
Still, nothing quite prepares you for the moment when the work arrives by weight.
Nineteen pounds, to be exact.
The box from Fry Communications sat innocently enough at the door, but when I lifted it, I laughed—an unguarded, surprised laugh. This wasn’t an email notification or a discreet PDF link. This was paper. Ink. Volume. Evidence that something quiet and patient had crossed a threshold into the world of objects.
Inside were stacks of Publishers Weekly—the December 15-22 issue, fresh from the press. And there it was: the review of Unmasking The Humourist, resting calmly among other books, other arguments, other claims on a reader’s attention. No fanfare. No special lighting. Just…there. As if it had always belonged.
The review in context.
That may sound small. It isn’t.
For writers—especially those of us who work in literary recovery, archival research, and historical attribution—most of the labor happens far from spectacle. It happens in libraries and databases, in footnotes and marginalia, in moments when you are unsure whether the trail you’re following will narrow into clarity or vanish altogether. There are no crowds for this kind of work. No applause when you discover one more corroborating detail, one more pattern that holds.
Unmasking The Humourist grew out of precisely that kind of sustained attention. The essays at its center—satirical, incisive, mischievous pieces published pseudonymously in the South-Carolina Gazette in the early 1750s—had long been admired but never convincingly attributed. Their author hid in plain sight. The work demanded patience: weighing tone against context, tracing bureaucratic fingerprints, listening carefully to what language reveals when you stop rushing it.
And patience is not fashionable. We live in a moment that rewards speed, certainty, and hot takes. Literary recovery is none of those things. It is slow, provisional, and often lonely. You work without knowing whether recognition will ever arrive—or whether it even should. You work because the work matters.
That’s why seeing the review in Publishers Weekly mattered to me—not as a trophy, but as confirmation that the argument held. That it made sense beyond my own desk. That it earned its place in the broader conversation about early American literature and satire.
What struck me most wasn’t pride. It was scale.
The full review.
Here was my book, not elevated or isolated, but contextualized—surrounded by other studies, other voices, other claims. This is where scholarship belongs: not shouted, but situated. Not proclaimed, but tested.
There’s something grounding about that.
I spread the pages out on the table. I read the review again, this time with the odd sensation of distance—as though I were encountering the project for the first time. The reviewer understood what I had tried to do. Better still, they understood why it mattered. That’s the quiet victory every researcher hopes for.
And then there was the sheer physicality of it all. The stacks. The heft. The knowledge that these copies would travel—to libraries, to colleagues, to readers I’ll never meet. Work that had lived for years in notes and drafts now had mass. It could be lifted. Shared. Passed hand to hand.
Research takes time. Recovery takes patience.
But sometimes—blessedly, unexpectedly—the work becomes something you can actually lift.
And when it does, you pause. You hold it. You let it be real.
“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885). French novelist, poet, and statesman (adapted from his Histoire d’un crime, 1877.)
Victor Hugo’s insight feels especially fitting today. After nearly three centuries in obscurity, Alexander Gordon’s essays have finally found their moment—and their audience.
My book, Unmasking The Humourist: Alexander Gordon’s Lost Essays of Colonial Charleston, South Carolina, has just been named a Top New Release in U.S. Literary Criticism on Amazon.
From colonial Charleston to Amazon’s Top New Release banner — Alexander Gordon finally takes his bow.
That bright orange banner may be a digital flourish, but for me, it symbolizes something much deeper: the recovery of a voice that nearly slipped into oblivion.
A Journey Nearly Three Centuries in the Making
Alexander Gordon’s satirical essays, published pseudonymously in colonial Charleston in 1753-54, were witty, sharp, and—until now—lost to time. For nearly three centuries, they lay hidden in crumbling newspapers, unnoticed by scholars, unread by modern audiences.
When I started my work on the Humourist essays, I could not have imagined how far the search would take me—through archives, biographies, and dusty trails. It became a mystery worth solving, a conversation across centuries.
Why It Matters
Bringing Gordon back into the light isn’t just about literary recovery—it’s about restoring a missing piece of cultural history and literary history—America’s and Charleston’s. His voice adds texture to our understanding of early America: its humor, its politics, its people.
Seeing readers discover him today—on a platform as modern and massive as Amazon—is a reminder that scholarship doesn’t live only in libraries. It can leap across time and space, reshaping how we see the past and present alike.
A Note of Gratitude
This milestone belongs not just to me, but to everyone who has encouraged me, asked the hard questions, and believed in the value of preserving what was almost lost.
Here’s to Alexander Gordon, finally taking his bow on the 21st-century stage. And here’s to the readers who will now join him there.
If you know someone who loves history, literature, or Charleston’s rich past, I invite you to share this book with them. The Humourist has waited nearly three hundred years for his audience—perhaps now is the moment he finds it.
“A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of the speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the richest treasures of love.”
—Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850; French novelist and playwright whose works are considered foundational to the realism movement in literature; the quote is from his novel Père Goriot.)
Last week, I unveiled the captivating and downright riveting backstory of my The Infant Sphinx: Collected Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, highlighting the book’s serendipitous journey from manuscript to publication. I recounted my bold encounter with the president of Scarecrow Press at an American Library Association conference, leading to the acceptance of my manuscript. I shared with you the details of preparing my own camera-ready copy to ensure that the letters I had spent ten years locating, transcribing, and annotating were faithful to their originals when they were published and sent out into the world for all the world to read.
I ended the post with a teaser, hoping to lure you back this week!
In my Scarecrow Press folder that I had forgotten about, I found a forgotten copy of a review that I wrote of my own book. How preposterous is that? Well, it sounds exactly like something that I would do. I’m always telling friends and colleagues that I know no shame. I guess I didn’t back then either. However, I can not for the life of me remember whether I sent my self-review out for publication. I must have because what I discovered in my dusty folder is a photocopy, and it’s so faded that I struggled to read it.
But read it, I did. Dare I say that I enjoyed doing so? I did. Even this many years later, my review strikes me as fresh and refreshing. I’m surprised that I seemed to have found my writer’s voice relatively early in my career, and it has not changed that much at all. Dare I say that I have worked hard down through the years to keep my writer’s voice–even in academic publications–from sounding snotty? I have. Simplicity is always a suit that fits me perfectly in all ways.
By and large, I stand by everything in my review, except for two points. When I wrote the review, I really liked the book’s title, TheInfantSphinx. However, since then, I’ve come to like the title less, and I have come to know Freeman more. Let me explain. In the review, I commented that “I confess to a deep-down-inside wish that a cache of letters secreted away somewhere would be made public and smash to smithereens my claim of having yielded up all there is.”
A cache of letters has not appeared, but enough individual letters have surfaced here and there that I’m working on an updated two-volume work that will use a name more to my liking and more to the liking of Freeman’s closest friends–and presumably more to Freeman’s liking as well– since it’s the name they called her: Dolly. The book title will be Dolly: Life and Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Vol. I: The New England Years (1852-1901). Vol. II: The New Jersey Years (1902-1930).
Now, DearReaders, I know no shame as I share with you my review of my own scholarly book, written 39 years ago and published for the first time right here, right now..
Enjoy!
Confessions of an Editor: The Infant Sphinx Reviewed
The Infant Sphinx: Collected Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Edited with Biographical/Critical Introductions and Annotations by Brent L. Kendrick. (Metuchen, N.J. and London: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1985) 634 pages Illus. ISBN 0-8108-1775-06 $35.00
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, American short-story writer and novelist with more than forty fictional volumes to her credit, has been so long and so unjustly neglected by twentieth century readers that I don’t even blush as I write my own review of her collected letters. A contemporary of Mark Twain, she shared with him the honor of being one of America’s most beloved writers. She was the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Gold Medal for Distinguished Work in Fiction. She was among the first women elected to membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters. She was the one posthumously honored when the American Academy of Arts and Letters installed its bronze doors in 1938: “Dedicated to the Memory of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and the Women Writers of America.”
Obviously, Freeman deserves attention. Twenty-two of her books are in print today. It is fitting that her collected letters should join those volumes rightfully hers and that they should join the slight biography of her that is in print and the equally small critical study.
Freeman was herself described by her townspeople in Randolph, Massachusetts, where she was born in 1852, as “a tiny person, all in brown, like a little mouse.” This volume of her letters is similarly attired: brown buckram covers with gold stamping. But its 634 pages make it somewhat more than tiny. I confess a fear, though, that despite its size and its wealth of information, it might go unnoticed in as unjust a fashion as Freeman herself has gone. I hope not. Once letters appear in print, people are compelled to consult them.
Forgetting this feat, however, it seems to me that a review by a book’s editor (or, for that matter, by a book’s author) is rather innovative and not such a bad idea after all. Who better knows what went into its making? Who better knows why it appears as it does? The answer, of course, is the editor.
TheInfantSphinx was conceived in September 1972. I had just read my first Mary E. Wilkins Freeman short story, “On the Walpole Road.” Before then I had never heard the author’s name. That story so impressed me with its technique, its humor, its characters’ steadfastness in the face of obstacles that I recognized an unusual combination of realism with an inherent belief in man’s thrust toward greatness. Here was a peculiarly American story that was truthful yet positive.
I liked that story so much that I wanted to read more. I moved on to Freeman’s A Humble Romance (1887). The selection was accidental. Little did I know at the time that it was her first collection of adult short stories. Little did I know that it made her a near-overnight success. I learned both facts later. What I knew after finishing that volume was that I liked this author more and more. Then, I read her second collection, A New England Nun (1891). My initial opinion was confirmed: here were powerful stories and powerful characters. Here was a thematic thrust toward greatness. Or, as Freeman said herself in “The Revolt of Mother,” “nobility of character manifests itself in small loop holes when it is not provided large doors.”
I was so intrigued that I wanted to know more about the author. Her biography had been written. But it reduced her entire life to only 194 pages. In fact, it skimmed over her last 30 years in a mere 36 pages. And possibly, worst of all, it had not one photograph of the writer who had so won my attention.
Solace came in the belief that biographies are not always that insightful anyway. So, I resolved to read her letters. I immediately went to a local university library. When I found no catalog entry for Freeman’s correspondence, I attributed it to underdeveloped collections. I checked BooksinPrint. No luck. I perused guides to our nation’s libraries. Again, no luck. Ultimately, I faced up to the bittersweet fact: Freeman’s letters had never been published.
I resolved at once to undertake the task. I did not dream that it would require nearly ten years. But little did I dream that the letters were deposited in more than fifty library collections (public and personal). They are. Or, perhaps more accurately, were. They are physically still with their owners, of course. But the beauty of an edition of letters is the bringing together of so many separate parts into their rightful whole. That which was scattered becomes united.
A total of 517 items of correspondence were brought together in The Infant Sphinx. Although the last numbered letter in the volume is 510, seven others are “hidden” in between: 110a, 194a, 260a, 281a, 282a, 293a, and 439a. I confess some embarrassment. But what else could I do? All along I had prided myself in including all Freeman letters, even some so scant and some so poor they hardly deserved inclusion. But I wanted the title collected to be accurate. I wanted my claim of having include all letters to be true. So, when these seven wayward epistles were sent to me late in the editing stage, I felt compelled to place them in their proper chronological places.
I confess that I wish there were more. How can it be that a woman who lived so much of her life before the existence of the telephone began to deprive us all of letters wrote so few of the same? Or how can it be that those who received letters from one so popular and so famous kept so few? How can such a woman be survived by a mere 517 letters? I suggest in the edition that Freeman was so busy with her fiction that she did not have much time for letter writing. I point out too that many of her letters were deliberately or accidentally destroyed. I account for the dearth in other ways as well. But I confess to a deep-down-inside wish that a cache of letters secreted away somewhere would be made public and smash to smithereens my claim of having yielded up all there is.
Obviously, it did not take me ten years to collect and edit so few letters. I spent more than half that time gathering biographical material to include in the introduction. The Infant Sphinx has six. The “General Introduction” provides a broad overview. Then there are five others, one for each division. I did not plan it that way initially. But in the end the book took its own shape despite my predetermined wishes. I found myself following the natural biographical divisions of Freeman’s life. Part One, for example, focuses largely on Brattleboro, Vermont, where she launched her literary career, and it traces her shift from a children’s writer (poetry was the genre; children, the audience) to a short story writer for adults. That part, like each of the remaining four, has its own title: “Raising Wonders in a New Literary Field.”
I can take no real credit for those titles. As any perceptive reader will discover, each comes from the letters themselves. I simply selected the quote most appropriate to the section. I remain pleased with the choices. During the years covered by Part One, Freeman did raise wonders on both sides of the Atlantic, and it was in a new literary field. She shifted from poetry to short stories. Her audience changed from children to adults.
“Deviations from My Usual Line of Work” was her title for Part Two. It seemed fit. It was a period of artistic experimentation as she tried her hand at both dramas and novels. I’ve never really cared for her efforts in either direction. I would except from that blanket statement her first two novels, Jane Field (1893) and Pembroke (1894). As for her other thirteen novels, I have not bothered going back to see whether they are any better the second time around. High praises are sounded for her The Shoulders of Atlas (1908). Its probing into homosexuality was a pioneering effort for the time.
Part Three is called “A Hopeless Sort of Chase of Myself.” It was precisely that. Freeman was terribly overworked. She was overworked all her life. How else could she have written over forty volumes in a fifty-year career? But that was not the real reason she was engaged in a hopeless sort of chase. Somehow, she came up with the idea that she should marry even though she was nearly fifty. She decided to leave her native New England where her daily life (and her neighbors’, too) had become almost inseparable from her fiction. Marry. Move. She did both. But she did neither before going off to Paris, presumably to think things over. The trip only made her seasick. It did not change her mind.
She married Charles Manning Freeman, a non-practicing physician, who owned and operated a lucrative coal and lumber business. She moved to her husband’s hometown of Metuchen, New Jersey. Both took place on New Year’s Day, 1902.
That new beginning occupies Part Four, “Tiptoeing Along the Summit.” The quote has nothing to do with the early years of their marriage which were quite happy enough. Neither does it relate to the building of their colonial mansion, “Freewarren,” built with money earned from The Shoulders of Atlas. Nor does it have any relevance to the many volumes of fiction written during that time. Rather, it was prompted by Freeman’s belief that her novel Jerome (1897) was to be made into a movie. On that particular point, Freeman probably tottered from the summit. I was never able to locate a movie version of that novel. Perhaps it appeared under some other title. If so, the underlying work was not credited. Two other movies, however, were made from her books. One was An Alabaster Box (1917) based on the novel of the same name written collaboratively with Florence Morse Kingsley. The other was False Evidence (1919) based on Madelon. That Jerome was not preserved on celluloid hardly matters. Two other novels were. She could rightfully tiptoe.
Earlier in this review I claimed satisfaction with the letter quotes as subtitles. That is, I confess, only four-fifths true. I waivered with Part Five. I changed its title just a few weeks before the volume went to press. Originally, it had been called “Exigencies of Existence.” I had reservations from the start. In the first place, I like words that are easily pronounced and easily understood. Exigencies is neither. But I kept it because it pointed in the direction of truth. Freeman’s final years were difficult. She wrote less and less. Or, more accurately, she wrote quite a lot, but her work was rejected more and more. She had never enjoyed good health, and with age she did so even less.
But most difficult of all was the tragic ending of her marriage. Dr. Freeman had always been fond of his scotch. By 1917 he was so addicted to alcohol and drugs that he was committed to the New Jersey Asylum for the Insane at Trenton. He was released ultimately. Fearing for herself and her servants (of which she usually had several maids and a chauffeur), Freeman obtained a legal separation. Imagine her shock when the doctor died suddenly of heart failure on March 7, 1923, in the home of his chauffeur. Imagine again how she and her four sisters-in-law felt when the chauffeur brought forth a will, naming him as sole executor and heir and leaving Freeman with only $1.00. They fought and broke that will. It required many years and thousands of dollars in lawyers’ fees. All the details are in The Infant Sphinx. Little wonder that Freeman spoke of the exigencies of existence.
But that title bothered me beyond my dislike of the word exigencies. The title conveyed only partial truth. Tragedy loomed large in Freeman’s final years. But so did glory. In 1919, Harper & Brothers, her principal publisher all along, brought out a Modern Classics edition of her New England Nun. In 1926, she was the first recipient of the prestigious William Dean Howells Gold Medal for Distinguished Work in Fiction. Also, in 1926, she was among the first women admitted to membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1928, Henry Lanier brought out The Best Short Stories of Mary E. Wilkins. Honor came from her Metuchen neighbors as well. They made her an honorary member of the Borough Improvement League. The mayor even proclaimed a “Mary E. Wilkins Day.” “Exigencies of Existence” simply would not do. I fretted. I looked. I looked and I fretted. Finally, I saw a phrase appropriate to the English language and in keeping with a conscience bent on telling the truth. At the last moment, it was selected for Part Five: “Obstacles in the Path of Pleasure and Duty.”
I can’t claim the book’s title either. Neither can Freeman. Henry Mills Alden takes full credit. One of her closest friends and also editor of Harper’s Weekly, he felt that she was so old and wise in some ways and so young and infantile in others that he called her “The Infant Sphinx.” She had visited in his Metuchen home for nearly a decade before moving there herself. The town immediately dubbed itself “The Brainy Borough.” Afterwards the Freemans and the Aldens dined together often. They played bridge together with even greater frequency. And the Aldens regularly critiqued her work. That is, until she became so sensitive that they dared voice only approval. Henry Alden was certainly qualified to give the transplanted spinster an epithet. His certainly outdistanced “Pussy Willow,” the nickname given her by Mary Louise Booth, another close friend and editor of Harper’s Bazar. Equally inferior were three other endearments: “Mamie,” “Dolly,” and “Cherie.” Alden certainly knew best.
The range of possibilities underlying his epithet comes across strongest in the analysis of Freeman as a businesswoman. I confess that there were times when the dollar sign loomed so large and so often in the letters that Freeman’s artistic integrity was called into question. Such bargaining. Such quibbling. Such subtle strategies to get higher and higher prices. Such skill in financially pitting editor against editor. But I confess at the same time that I enjoyed a restoration of faith when I read in the letters that such actions panged her own New England conscience and that they were prompted by harsh necessity.
Here was no Harriet Beecher Stowe with a family and husband to back her. Here was no Sarah Orne Jewett with a doctor for a father. Here was Mary Wilkins. To be sure, she came from good New England stock on both sides. But there was no money. Her father had been a housewright in Randolph, Massachusetts. Later he was a dry goods merchant in Brattleboro, Vermont. But, when he died in 1883, Mary was left alone. Her inheritance was $969 in cash and one-half interest in the Steen/Wilkins block in Brattleboro, Vermont. She was forced to earn her own living. Writing was her second occupational choice. Years later, she recalled, “I did not want to write at all. I wanted to be an artist. But for lack of paint, etc., and sufficiency of pens, ink, and paper, I wrote” (Letter 478). She did a splendid job. One novel alone brought her outright $20,000. With that money she built a grand colonial house. With royalties earned from other fiction, she bought expensive automobiles and antique oriental rugs. She purchased emerald and diamond rings, just to cheer herself out of moods of depression. But she also invested wisely in stocks ranging from American Telephone and Telegraph to Bohemia Gold mining Company. After her death on March 13, 1930, the auctioned value of her estate came to $118,099. Obviously, this was one American writer with a clear business head. What I can’t quite understand is how such a good businesswoman could die and not leave a last will and testament. Freeman did just that.
I confess that I take great pride in the volume’s 16-page special photographic insert section. Here can be found photographs of Freeman, the men, the houses, and the honors in her life. Elsewhere in the volume can be found facsimiles of Freeman’s letters and an architectural drawing by her father.
And now I have my final confession. Writing a review such as this has been tremendously rewarding. I dare hazard it is just as objective, just as honest, and hopefully just as helpful as one by an outsider would be. I’ve never paid much attention to reviews. I’ve always wanted to make up my own mind. I’ve even known of reviews written by reviewers who had not even read the books. That certainly is not the case here.
A review is intended to whet the appetite, to encourage readers to read, to encourage books to sell. I hope this one scores a big success on all three counts. This much I know. Anyone interested in Mary E. Wilkins Freeman is compelled to read this edition, or risk being criticized for not exploring all the primary and secondary sources. Anyone interested in women’s studies would do well to take notice. Before Freeman’s time, she had no equal among American women writers. She very well may not have had since then. Anyone interested in nineteenth century American literature can find enough here of significance to merit consulting the volume’s thirty-page index at least. More than a hundred letters are to the House of Harper. There is also extensive correspondence to early American newspaper syndicates. Those individuals whose interests aren’t covered by these categories should read The Infant Sphinx just for the sake of their own enlightenment.
“The intersection of art and artificial intelligence is where imagination meets innovation, sparking a revolution in human potential.”
–Attributed to Ray Kurzweil (b. 1948; prominent American inventor, futurist, and author known for his groundbreaking work in artificial intelligence and technological forecasting.)
When I opened my kitchen door one morning last week, I knew that my lilacs had bloomed overnight. Their fragrance washed over my mountaintop world, signaling their presence long before I laid eyes on them. Amidst the whispers of spring’s arrival, my garden became a canvas painted in hues of lilac. Delicate clusters of lilac-colored blooms burst forth from slender branches, their petals unfurling like tiny, fragrant clouds against the blue sky. Each blossom carried a mesmerizing hue, ranging from soft lavender to rich violet, casting a gentle spell over the landscape. As the sunlight danced upon their petals, they seemed to shimmer with an otherworldly radiance, infusing my yard with tranquility and beauty. In their ephemeral splendor, my lilacs evoked a sense of wonder and awe, reminding me of the fleeting yet profound magic of nature’s creations.
At the same time, my lilacs transported me instantly to “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” Walt Whitman’s poignant elegiac response to the 1865 assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
It’s a long poem–16 free-verse stanzas, totaling 206 lines–that I remember from high school. I never made any attempt to memorize the entire poem, but I vowed to carry the first stanza around with me in my head forever so that I could forever celebrate Lincoln and Whitman whenever life gave me lilacs:
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love.
I have been faithful to my vow down through the years. These days, here on my mountaintop, whenever my lilacs bloom, I linger–sometimes standing, sometimes pacing, sometimes kneeling–and I recite Whitman’s lines, inhaling deeply as I anchor myself to the deep roots of then, of now, and of eternity.
This past week, when the heady fragrance heralded my lilacs blooming, I felt an urgency to share what I experienced on Facebook. I posted several photos of my lilacs along with a brief sentence or two leading to the full text of “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” Even as I uploaded the poem, I thought to myself:
“Way too long. Not many followers will read the poem.”
As soon as I hit POST, my doubt weighed even heavier. By now, I know. FB folks like photos. FB folks like short. FB folks like clever. Of course, we do. I can relate. We need to move on so that we can LIKE whatever it is that we choose to like (or not) next.
I sat there nearly wishing that I had simply provided a summary of the poem for those who didn’t have time to read it all. I could have done so with ready ease, especially since I often taught the poem in my college-level American Literature courses. Even though it’s a long poem, it’s not hard to grasp. Through vivid imagery and lyrical language, Whitman mourns Lincoln’s death and explores themes of grief, nature, and the passage of time. The lilacs in the poem symbolize mourning and renewal, while the thrush’s song serves as a solemn requiem. Whitman’s elegy reflects on the impact of Lincoln’s death on the nation and contemplates the enduring cycle of life and death. The poem is considered one of Whitman’s greatest works and a masterpiece of American literature, capturing the profound emotions surrounding a pivotal moment in our nation’s history.
Of course, I had the option to edit my FB post and include a summary comparable to the preceding paragraph as a way perhaps of teasing my FB followers to read the entire poem. As I considered that option, an unthinkable thought strolled across my mindscape.
“See what kind of summary ChatGPT can write. Better still, ask ChatGPT to write a sonnet that captures the essence of Whitman’s poem.”
I know. I know. How dare I write about a famous elegy and pull AI into the same discussion? I confess that even for an ardent AI lover like me, bringing the two together felt almost like a sacrilege. Yet, there I was, grappling with the intersection of technology and poetry. I felt uneasy, yet the idea was already planted in my brain. I had to do something with it, and ignoring the idea was not an option.
It seemed to me in that moment–and it seems to me now–that I could let AI fool around with “When Lilac’s Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” without in any way diminishing my reverence for the original poem, for Whitman, or for his morning of Lincoln’s death. It seemed to me that I had an obligation to explore the idea that had grabbed hold of me just as intensely as the heady fragrance of my lilacs had commanded my respectful attention.
It was from that perspective that I set out not only to see what AI might do but also to see what I might learn. I knew, at that point, that I didn’t want a summary of the poem. I wanted to see whether AI could write a sonnet that would capture the essence of the original poem.
I started with ChatGPT, asking them to rewrite Whitman’s poem as a sonnet, keeping its message and Whitman’s poetic style. Below is ChatGPT’s untitled sonnet:
When lilacs bloomed in dooryard’s sacred space, And starry heavens wept with evening’s dew, I mourned, embracing nature’s tender grace, For Lincoln, lost, in death’s embrace so true.
The thrush’s song, a solemn requiem, Through leafy boughs, did echo sorrow’s call. As cedars wept, o’er fields and stream, with them, I wandered, grief’s heavy cloak did befall.
Yet midst the mourning, there bloomed a light, A radiant orb, in darkness’ deep domain. A symbol of hope, amid the endless night, In death’s embrace, new life shall yet attain.
Though Lilacs fade, and time’s cruel hand may sever, In nature’s cycle, life renews forever.
As I reached the end of the sonnet, I wondered what ChatGPT would have to say about their own poetic flight:
“Does your sonnet capture the essence of Whitman’s original poem?”
While I aimed to capture the essence of Whitman’s original poem, it’s important to note that translating a work as rich and complex as “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” into a different poetic form inevitably entails some loss of nuance and depth. My sonnet attempts to convey Whitman’s themes of mourning, nature’s solace, and the cycle of life and death within the constraints of the sonnet form, but it necessarily condenses and simplifies the original work. Whitman’s poem is expansive and deeply personal, and my sonnet can only offer a glimpse of its profound beauty and significance.
So, there you have it. Well, actually, you don’t have it all, not yet. There’s another chatbot that Microsoft launched on February 7, 2023. Copilot is billed as “your everyday AI companion” that searches for specific information, generates text such as emails and summaries, and creates images based on text prompts.
If I had committed a sacrilege by asking ChatGPT to turn Whitman’s famous poem into a sonnet, then I had just as well enjoy my transgression more fully by putting Copilot through the same hoops. I had to do so. I had no other choice. Read Copilot’s sonnet below:
When Lilacs Bloomed
When lilacs graced the dooryard, skies aglow, And stars, like tears, descended in the west, I mourned, and shall, as seasons come and go, With spring’s return, my heart forever pressed.
Perennial lilacs, fragrant and profound, Their purple blooms a balm for grief and pain, While stars, once bright, now hidden in night’s shroud, Evoke memories of love that still remain.
O fallen star, your absence veils the land, Yet lilacs whisper solace to my soul, In heart-shaped leaves, a tender touch, a strand, A sprig of hope, where grief and memories toll.
So let this sonnet bloom, a lilac’s grace, A tribute to the lost, in time and space.
You may have guessed what’s coming next. Yep. I asked Copilot the same question that I asked ChatGPT: “Does your sonnet capture the essence of Whitman’s original poem?” Copilot responded as follows:
Indeed, my sonnet endeavors to echo the essence of Walt Whitman’s original poem, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” Like Whitman, I pay homage to loss, memory, and the natural world. The lilacs, stars, and grief remain central, albeit in a condensed form. While my sonnet may not encompass every nuance, it seeks to honor the spirit of Whitman’s elegy.
Done? Not quite! We’ve got a new kid on the block, and they deserve a chance, too: Meta AI. They’ve been rolled out across various social media platforms: WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger. They can answer questions, create animations, and generate “high quality” images, according to Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Also, they’re built on the company’s latest large language model called Meta Llama 3.
Sounds impressive, no? Obviously, I had to see what kind of Whitmanesque sonnet they could create, using the same guidelines that I had been using. Here’s Meta AI’s poetic flight:
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d and fell, A solemn requiem for the fallen chief, The nation’s sorrow echoed, a mournful knell, As death’s dark veil shrouded the presidential seat.
The fragrant blooms, like memories, did cling To Lincoln’s legacy, a bittersweet refrain, The thrush’s song, a dirge, did sorrowfully ring, As nature mourned with us, in sympathetic pain.
Yet, in the midst of grief, a glimmer shone, A hope that death may not forever reign, For just as lilacs bloom again, so may be known A resurrection, a new birth from pain.
And so we’ll hold the memory of him dear, And cherish every bloom that dooryards bring near.
Obviously, too, I asked Meta AI the same question that I had asked their counterparts: “Does your sonnet capture the essence of Whitman’s original poem?” Meta AI responded:
My sonnet attempts to distill the essence of Whitman’s original poem, but it’s a challenging task to condense the complexity and nuance of Whitman’s poetry into a shorter form like a sonnet. Whitman’s poem is known for its free verse style, which allows for a more fluid and expansive exploration of themes and emotions.
My sonnet aims to capture the core themes of mourning, memory, and the cyclical nature of life and death, but it necessarily leaves out some of the richness and detail of the original poem. Whitman’s poem is also deeply rooted in the context of Lincoln’s assassination and the American Civil War, which adds a layer of historical and cultural significance that my sonnet can only allude to.
That being said, I tried to stay true to the spirit of Whitman’s poem by using language and imagery that evokes a sense of reverence, sorrow, and hope. I hope that my sonnet can serve as a tribute to Whitman’s original work and inspire readers to explore the beauty and power of his poetry.
So, there you have it. For now. Yes? Actually, no. We never really have it. Not ever. We’re constantly growing and learning and changing. Isn’t that what makes life worth living?
But, for now, let’s pretend that you really do have it all, everything that you need to transport yourself magically to somewhere that only you can decide and that only you will know whether and when you reach your destination.
● You’ve got Whitman’s original masterpiece, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”I wonder: will you read it, the entire original version? I wonder: will you let one line linger longerwith you than all of the others? I wonder: what line?why?
● You’ve got three AI-generated sonnets, each one a 14-line version of Whitman’s original 206-line elegy. I wonder: will you revisit them and decide which one is best?
● You’ve got their own assessment of their sonnets. I wonder: which one do you think is most insightful?
● You’ve seen three AI generators in action, tackling the same task. I wonder: which one would you want as your “everyday AI companion”? ChatGPT? Copilot? MetaAI?
As for me, I’ve gone and fooled around for another week, and now, I’m leaning back on my pillow with a wider than wide smile on my face. This has been as much fun as being in class, giving my students exactly what I have given you, asking them to think about our conversation until we meet again.
Right now, though, I’m thinking about one thing, and I’m chuckling. When my lilacs bloomed last week, I never dreamt that their fragrance and their sight would take me on a journey into the intersection of Walt Whitman’s poetry and artificial intelligence. Yet it did, and I’m glad that the magic happened. It gave me a platform to champion once more the ever-growing role of AI in shaping our understanding of the world around us. AI is not a novelty or a passing trend. It is a powerful tool that is here to stay. We must embrace its capabilities, harness its potential, and use it to deepen our appreciation and gain new insights into even the most sacrosanct aspects of human experience, including poetry. By engaging with AI-generated content, we open ourselves to new perspectives and new opportunities for learning, challenging us to reevaluate our assumptions and to expand our horizons.
However, as we navigate this complex landscape, let’s remember that AI is not a replacement for human creativity. It is a complement to it, a tool that amplifies our capabilities and extends the boundaries of our imagination. By embracing AI as a partner in our inquiries, we can unlock new avenues of expression and deepen our appreciation for the beauty and complexity of the human experience. As we move forward, let us continue to embrace the possibilities of AI, recognizing its capacity to enrich our lives and enhance our understanding of the world we inhabit.
One more thing, Dear Reader. If you haven’t read Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” please read it in its entirety. If you have read it before, please read it once again. In either case, I hope that you read the poem, appropriately, amidst lilacs, and, as you read, I hope their heady fragrance washes over your world and refreshes your soul.
I love words. In fact, I’m a word enthusiast. No, actually, I’m a word aficionado. I like the way words look, the way they sound, and the way they require me to rearrange and reposition my tongue and lips and teeth! I like the “mouth feel.”
I love euphonious words, especially: supine, scissors, fantabulous, panacea, disambiguate, luscious, discombobulate, scintilla, tremulous, orbicular, woebegone, sonorous, ethereal, pop, holler, britches, entwine, hullabaloo, phantasmagorical, serendipity, slew, velvety, liminal, dusk, ever, and even meniscus.
I love euphonious phrases, too: thread the needle, rev the engine, a touch ticklish, doplar sonar, sweet and sour, bad’s the best, or one of my own creation–recalled from a dream that I once dreamt–blue-pigeon-feather happy.
However, all of my favorite melodious phrases and words pale in comparison to the phrase considered by many linguists (who study phonaesthetics and know all about the properties of sound) to be the most beautiful word in the English language: cellar door! I was flabbergasted when I made that discovery, but matters of sound are so momentous and so weighty that lengthy debates surround them. For example, many people attribute the coinage of cellar door to fantasy writer J. R. R. Tolkien who used it in his 1955 speech “English and Welsh.” But as American lexicographer Grant Barrett established in his February 11, 2010, New York Times article aptly titled, “Cellar Door,” we must give credit to Shakespearean scholar Cyrus Lauron Hooper who used cellar door in his 1903 novel Gee-Boy.
Sometimes one of these little beauties gets stuck inside my head and manifests a fierce determination not to go away. For example, the melodious word ricochet has been bouncing around in there for an epoch at least—perhaps even longer—and it’s not alone. It’s flourishing there as part of an entire phrase—an entire stanza, actually—from “The Lanyard,” a poem by Billy Collins, former United States Poet Laureate:
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
Mind you: I don’t mind the fact that the stanza from the poem and the word ricochet won’t go away. I love poetry just as much as I love melodious words and phrases. And who doesn’t love Billy Collins?
And it’s easy to understand why this particular stanza from Billy Collins’ poem would linger in my mind. Like the speaker in his poem—presumably Collins himself—I, too, have been ricocheting slowly off the walls of my home library, moving from my cluttered desk with my personal computer (where I carry out my home-style professorial responsibilities) to my even more cluttered farm table with my considerably smaller tablet (where I fulfill whatever it is that I achieve when I write—whatever writing is—and where I first began this blog on November 26, 2012.
And continuing to compare myself to the speaker in Collins’ “The Lanyard” so that I might perhaps stop the word ricochet from ricocheting around in my head, I, too, am moving from my professorial computer to my writerly tablet, from stacks of papers on the former to stacks of books and two envelopes on the latter.
And it is on the two envelopes that my eyes fall even as I type this post. It is on the two envelopes that my eyes have been falling for several years. And it is on the two envelopes that my eyes will forever fall until I muster courage to open them.
My blog followers will perhaps remember those two envelopes, first mentioned in my December 31, 2014, post:
I have in my possession copies of critical Alexander Gordon manuscripts obtained from libraries in Scotland and England. Although I have had the packages for several months, I have not opened them yet because I know that the contents will take my Humourist research to new heights, and I have had neither time nor nerve to make the journey.
However, January 2015 will place me exactly where I need to be in terms of time and nerve to open the packages, review the manuscripts, and share my findings with you, right here in this blog.
So, there! Now you know! Those two envelopes are still on my desk waiting to be opened. I cannot claim that I have not had time, for I have had time aplenty. And I cannot claim that I have not had nerve to open the envelopes because I remain confident that the contents will take my Humourist research to new heights and higher ground.
In reality, I have no more time now than before, and I have no more nerve now than before. But what I do have now is the knowledge that now is the right time to write. Simply put, I have created the space, and I have allowed myself to enter. (Thank you, Natalie Goldberg, for reminding me:
…we never question the feasibility of a football team practicing long hours for one game; yet in writing we rarely give ourselves the space for practice (Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within).
So I am ricocheting slowly off the walls of my library for three reasons and three reasons only.
Ricochet Reason One. I have been away from my blog for so long that the resulting space is galatic, a perfect home for the word ricochet. And as I type, I cannot help but wonder: Is it really the word ricochet that is bouncing off vacuum space? Or is it really guilt? Perhaps both, but, now—on this momentary reflection—I suspect the latter. And that’s perfectly fine because my guilt makes me perfectly American, or, as Ezra Pound said about Robert Frost, “vurry Amur’k’n” (Dear Editor: A History of Poetry in Letters, edited by Joseph Parisi and Stephen Young).
Just by writing what I have written here, I have given rest to reason one. What a blessed relief.
Ricochet Reason Two. I cannot help but wonder about my followers—my blog followers. At one point, they numbered well over 100, and the blog had more than 5,000 visits from people in exactly 100 countries. Not bad for a blog dedicated to the challenges of research, specifically—for now, at least—to the challenge of identifying the author of a group of noteworthy and heretofore pseudonymous Colonial American essays.
Are any of the faithful still with me? I wonder.
And if I post, will they read what I have to say? Will anyone? And if no one reads, will I have written anything at all, really?
It is very much the same as the proverbial old question, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
Philosophers have long argued that sound, colour, taste, smell and touch are all secondary qualities which exist only in our minds. We have no basis for our common-sense assumption that these secondary qualities reflect or represent reality as it really is. So, if we interpret the word ‘sound’ to mean a human experience rather than a physical phenomenon, then when there is nobody around there is a sense in which the falling tree makes no sound at all. […] Without a measuring device to record it, there is a sense in which the recognisable properties of quantum particles such as electrons do not exist, just as the falling tree makes no sound at all. (Jim Baggett, Quantum Theory: If a Tree Falls in the Forest …).
Followers, be my measure. If you are out there, measure me with comment.
And if you are not yet following, follow. (I am reminded of the Iowa corn farmer in Field of Dreams and the voice that he heard telling him to build a baseball diamond, “If you build it, he will come.” The farmer built it, and they came. Perhaps in my rebuilding, my followers will come. If you do, measure me with your comments, too.)
Just by writing what I have written here, I have given rest to reason two as well. Again, what a blessed relief.
Ricochet Reason Three. Of the two envelopes waiting to be opened—those two parcels that will take my Humourist research to new heights—which shall I open first? The one from Scotland measuring 14 x 10/16 inches and weighing a hefty 17.21 ounces? (Is bigger better?) Or the one from England, measuring 6 x 3/4 inches and weighing a nearly weightless 1.16 ounce? (Do good things really come in small packages?)
To give rest to reason three—and be thrice blessed—I must open both envelopes.
Perhaps what I face is like picking petals off a daisy: “I love him. I love him not.” However, in this instance, both envelopes are equally good and the last petal will be an affirmation.
Or, maybe, a more apt comparison would be to Frank Stockton’s famous American short story “The Lady, or the Tiger?” published in The Centurymagazine in November 1882. In the story, a young man must choose between two doors. Behind one, a beautiful lady. Behind the other, an awful, relentless tiger.
Stockton leaves his readers with an open ending:
And so I leave it with all of you: Which came out of the opened door,—the lady, or the tiger?
For me, both doors—both envelopes, if you will—are equally good and both will be auspicious and bodacious.
Unlike Stockton, however, I will be straightforward and honest. I will let you know what I find not only in the first envelope but also in the second. In fact, I will chronicle each and every detail as I open the envelopes and as I discover the joys that await me.
This I promise: in next week’s post, I will write all, right here.
“A lot of the fun lies in trying to penetrate the mystery; and this is best done by saying over the lines to yourself again and again, till they pass through the stage of sounding like nonsense, and finally return to a full sense that had at first escaped notice.” —Anthony Hecht
Dare I confess how gratified I have been with my blog’s traffic since it began a week ago today? Well, I am!
446 views (including 1 from the United Kingdom!)
38 followers
Not bad stats for my first week. Now bad at all for a first-time blogger. Thank you!
And since I am confessing, let me confess something else: I’ve shared my joy—and my amazement—with a handful of folks in my close circle, and, over and over again, they have replied enthusiastically with the likes of:
“WOW! Doesn’t surprise me a BIT!!!!! Everybody wants to know who wrote those essays!”
Some of your comments affirm:
“Ahhh…everyone loves a good mystery!”
“Oooh, I love a good mystery! … I look forward to watching you unravel this centuries old mystery.”
To be certain, I’m hooked on the mystery, too: who was The Humourist? Preparing a critical edition of his essays will be straightforward—well, to the extent that scholarly research is ever straightforward. On the other hand, identifying the author will require keen analysis and extensive research in order to make a conclusive (and, if not conclusive, then convincing) case that will stand up to scrutiny and review.
Solving the mystery hinges to a large degree on internal clues to be extracted from the essays. Looking at the Humourist’s November 26, 1753, essay, we find three clues already.
Clue One: One of my followers—soyfig, in fact—picked up on this one by writing: “I had to read the Humourist’s first essay three times before I began to understand it! They certainly wrote on a higher plane then than now!”
Indeed. Whoever he is, the Humourist is erudite. In one short essay, he provides a sweeping overview of literary tastes, going all the way back to “Days of monkish Ignorance” and continuing on up to novel writing that reigned in his own time.
Clue Two: Whoever he is, the Humourist seems fascinated by the past. He opens his first essay with a quote from Horace, and he refers to the past several times in that essay: “If we make a Retrospect into past Times” and “various Tastes of Mankind in the former ages.”
Clue Three: Whoever he is, the Humourist seems to have an intense interest in painting: “as an inducement to the World to read my Paper, they may shortly expect a Present of my Picture.” However, as we shall discover next week in his December 10, 1753, essay, “as it is impossible to procure it [the painting] in any reasonable time, if the painter be allowed to shew his skill or do justice to my person, I shall therefore beg my readers patience, and present them with a true sketch of my figure in print.”
What a mystery! What a puzzle!
As I move ahead with my efforts to solve the mystery, I have another confession to make: I love the task of transcribing the Humourist essays—of sitting at my computer, typing away on the keyboard.
Typing. I love it: typing! It’s not nearly as poetic as the suggestion that Anthony Hecht offers up for penetrating a mystery: “saying over the lines to yourself again and again, till they pass through the stage of sounding like nonsense, and finally return to a full sense that had at first escaped notice.”
Typing. It’s probably more akin to what Carl Jung says about mysteries:
“Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.”
In that sense, then, as I transcribe the Humourist’s essays—as I type them—my hands are helping me become familiar with the essence of his literary outpourings, character by character, letter by letter, word by word, paragraph by paragraph, essay by essay. My hands are helping me become familiar with his style. My hands are helping me see what he put in—and what he left out!
After I have typed one of his essays once or twice—actually, I typed his November 26, 1753, essay three times—I can say with some degree of certainty: I know that essay well.
I know that essay even better because I have done what I always do with documents: I checked the Readability Statistics. So, here’s Clue Four.Whoever he is, the readability statistics for the Humourist’s November 26, 1753, essay are as follows:
Counts
Words: 444
Characters: 2181
Paragraphs: 20
Sentences: 13
Averages
Sentences per Paragraph: 1.3
Words per Sentence: 24.6
Characters per Word: 4.6
Readability
Passive Sentences: 15%
Flesch Reading Ease: 56.7
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 10.3
Admittedly, these readability statistics are skewed because the Humourist quotes other writers rather extensively in his first essay. Nonetheless, it is a beginning.
As we move to future essays—and as I continue doing what I have begun doing—all the clues will converge, and I am certain that the Humourist himself will lead me to discovering who he is.
But I digress. My scheme for sharing Humourist essays with you will be in the same fashion that he shared them with the world: weekly. This week, however, he did not publish an essay. (His next one will appear on December 10.)
Therefore, as I contemplated my post for this week, I was intrigued by how intrigued my readers were by the mystery—by my efforts to solve this literary whodunit—and I was particularly smitten by “soyfig’s” comment:
The Wired Researcher 