'Fighting through life's travails'

 

“To throw oneself to the side of the oppressed is the only dignified thing to do in life.” – Edwin Markham

Born in Oregon on this date in 1852, Markham grew up in a broken home, worked the family farm as a child, was mostly self-educated, and against the wishes of his family (he was youngest of 10 children) decided to go to college and study literature.

 

After earning degrees in The Classics and teaching literature for several years, Markham fell in love with poetry and began writing full time in his late 40s, the start of a 40-year career.  His two most famous poems are "The Man with the Hoe," inspired by the painting by the artist Jean-Francois Millet, and "Lincoln, the Man of the People," read at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial.  The author of 7 poetry collections, he was named Poet Laureate of Oregon in the 1930s when he also published his highly regarded Eighty Poems at Eighty. 

 

Shortly before his death in 1940, he was named as the first recipient of the American Academy of Poets Award for his “contributions to American literature and impact on the poetic landscape.”

 

A prolific letter writer and book collector, Markham amassed more than 15,000 books.  He bequeathed them and his personal papers and letters, including years of correspondence with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ambrose Bierce, and fellow poets Carl Sandburg and Amy Lowell, to tiny Wagner College in New York City.  

 

“Great it is to believe in the dream as we stand in youth by the starry stream," he wrote, "but a greater thing is to fight life through and say at the end, the dream is true!”