[This past
weekend, my younger son and
co-favorite-Guest
Poster Kyle Railton graduated from high school. As I wipe away proud Dad
tears, this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of texts and contexts for this momentous
occasion—leading up to a special weekend post on what’s next for the new grad!]
On two
ways in which biographical contexts greatly enhance a seemingly simple
graduation poem.
When read
in a vacuum, George Moses Horton’s “The Graduate Leaving
College” (1845) is a tender and sweet depiction of the final moments in a
college student’s career before he departs that educational institution which has
of course also become his community and home. A couple of word choices really
drive home the bittersweet tone: calling this cohort of students “the pensive
seniors”; and describing their final rest before the departure “one more transient
night.” Although the poem’s last word is “joy,” suggesting that the graduate’s
return to his childhood home is not without its pleasures as well, the
overarching tone is one of happy but nostalgic remembrance and leave-taking, as
captured by the first stanza line “My eyes let fall a friendly tear.” Again, a tender
and sweet depiction of this experience eventually shared by most every college
student, and indeed by every graduate of every kind of educational institution
(and, yes, by their proud papas as well).
But when
we add in the details of Horton’s quite amazing
biography (which I first learned about when I taught him in my 19th
Century African American Literature course a few years back, and which I
can’t do full justice to here so please do check out that first hyperlinked
piece from the University of North Carolina’s Special Collections folks), this
poem becomes significantly more interesting still. To quote a particularly relevant
passage, which follows sentences about Horton being enslaved near Chapel Hill
and developing relationships with the campus and town alike: “He earned money
for himself through selling romantic poetry commissioned by UNC students. These
poems were acrostics: the first letters of the lines spell out the subject’s
name. Horton composed poetry in his head and recited the poems while others transcribed
them.” “Graduate” is not an acrostic nor does it focus in any overt way on a
specific individual, and so likely wasn’t one of these directly commissioned
poems—but it of course reflects Horton’s relationship to UNC, his understanding
of both the experiences of college students and of this pivotal communal moment.
Yet it also
reflects more than that. Horton remained enslaved until the end of the Civil
War, but for the four decades before that moment consistently used his poetry
to argue for his freedom; such as his first poem, “On Liberty
and Slavery” (1828), which he published in the Lancaster (MA) Gazette
with the help of UNC
faculty member Caroline Lee Hentz. “Graduate” makes no mention of slavery,
nor is there any direct evidence in the text that its author is an enslaved person.
But when we know that he was, and know moreover that his poetry was a principal
means through which he expressed the layers of his identity that slavery could
not circumscribe, then I believe we have to see one of his most striking formal
choices—his use of the first-person pronouns “I” and “my” in the opening stanza—in
a new light. Here at the opening of this poem, one seemingly connected to the
UNC students whom Horton got to know well during his time around Chapel Hill,
Horton imagines himself as a college student, and one graduating to all that’s
next, and even better, in what lies beyond that experience. At once a bittersweet
detail, and a reflection of the ideals of education and graduation alike.
Next
graduation connection tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Graduation texts or topics you’d share?
