{"id":2424,"date":"2011-04-07T15:25:02","date_gmt":"2011-04-07T20:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/?p=2424"},"modified":"2011-04-07T15:25:02","modified_gmt":"2011-04-07T20:25:02","slug":"poets-and-poetry-i-see-the-hills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/2011\/04\/07\/poets-and-poetry-i-see-the-hills\/","title":{"rendered":"Poets and Poetry: I See the Hills"},"content":{"rendered":"

April is National Poetry Month, so it seems fitting to share\u00a0 the work of a few of our local poets each week.<\/em><\/p>\n

George Cram Cook<\/a>, author and playwright, was born in Davenport\u00a0on October 7, 1873.\u00a0\u00a0 Although he considered Greece his “cultural home,” a few of Mr. Cook’s poems showed his affection for the Midwest:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I see the Hills<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>
\nSouthward from my window I see the hills of Illinois.
\nThe river spreads between\u2014a frozen tumult of jagged blocks of ice.
\nThe slopes of the hills rise sunlit, covered with snow,
\nThe crests of the hills and black with woods;
\nThe valleys are black with the shadow of the hills.<\/p>\n

Last week the ice-floes formed; the water crystallized.
\nSheets of ice slid, ground, crunched, crackled, split into fragments that
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 twisted, sank, thrust into the air, and fell piling one upon another,
\nPushed gulfward by the unswerving weight of the Mississippi.
\nFor weeks that water will slide down its bed of salt and sand and gravel in
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 order to be at peace in the sea\u2014a thousand feet nearer the center of the earth.
\nUnseen the water slides between the unmoving ice, the river\u2019s roof
\nBuilt without hands by the cold of rushing air
\nWhose floor the ice is now.
\nThe ice is man\u2019s bridge. He has chopped a road for the wagon-sleds and
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 horses of teamsters hauling loads of black and glittering coal from the coal banks.
\nThe ice fascinated me,
\nI see the lines of force that broke the floes and thrust their fragments up
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 in apparent confusion.
\nBut I see more that what is apparent.
\nI see the unseen current;
\nI feel the mathematics of its forces,
\nThe exactitude of position of each fragment,
\nThe inexorable and flawless logic of each ice block in the river, each
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 crystal in the block, each molecule in the crystal.
\nIt is all true.
\nThere is no error in it.
\nThere has been no mistake.
\nEach inch and each iota of the ice
\nIs where it has to be\u2014
\nIts present state and location the resultant of its history, indissolubly
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 part of the history of the eternal universe,
\nI look from the rough wide fields of ice to the hills beyond,
\nI look carelessly, not prying into the secrets of the hills,
\nBut they come to me
\nThe secrets of the hills come giving themselves to me,
\nThey lay off veil after veil for me\u2014the veils of ages,
\nThey are bare to the comprehension of my soul;
\nI see the lines of force that thrust them up.
\nI see the wear of the ages of frost and rain that wore them down.
\nMy vision sweeps back to the days when the rock lay hardening beneath the sea;
\nAnd on to the days when the black and glittering coal was alive.
\nMighty ferns waved slowly in mist,
\nThe hot dampness of vapor sifted through giant fronds.
\nForests of fern covered all the part of the earth where coal lies buried now,
\nThe warmth of the earth rose in exhalations,
\nThe envelope of cloud shut in the warmth of the earth,
\nShut out the light of the sun,
\nAnd in the dim warm misty air grew giant fronds
\nThe dying made the black and glittering coal.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April is National Poetry Month, so it seems fitting to share\u00a0 the work of a few of our local poets each week. George Cram Cook, author and playwright, was born in Davenport\u00a0on October 7, 1873.\u00a0\u00a0 Although he considered Greece his … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[593,601,600],"class_list":["post-2424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-history","tag-george-cram-cook","tag-i-see-the-hills","tag-poets-and-poetry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXc-D6","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2424"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2428,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424\/revisions\/2428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}