Songs of Ourselves: The Uses of Poetry in \t\t America

Americans—especially those who read poetry—like to ask whether \t\t poetry matters; Rubin's big cultural history demonstrates how, and how widely, \t\t it once did. From the 1880s through the 1950s, Americans of many tastes and \t\t stations considered poetry part of their daily lives; they read it to one \t\t another at home, memorized and recited it at schools, in citizenship \t\t ceremonies, in churches, in synagogues and in parades, and quoted it to \t\t reassure themselves, argue with one another or demonstrate their links to their \t\t past. Using a wide range of primary sources, Rubin (The \t\t Making of Middlebrow Culture) constructs a detailed and determinedly \t\t democratic study. Americans, she makes clear, saw poets as "celebrity and \t\t cipher," friend and wise elder, sophisticate and innocent, sometimes—as with \t\t Edna St. Vincent Millay—all these at once. Their many uses for verse \t\t contradicts simple oppositions of highbrow-lowbrow, canonical-obscure. Rubin \t\t might have spent less space on some conclusions few will find surprising (e.g., \t\t the continuing popularity of Longfellow), and she never quite says why (or \t\t whether) these uses of poetry have diminished. Nevertheless, her study should \t\t get attention, not just from historical circles but from people who want poems \t\t to matter now. B&w illus. (Apr.)