[PW] Re: Thanks RE: Re: Poem Quest

[Dennis Lien]

At 01:54 PM 12/4/2006, you wrote:
>
>In which case, you might also like to know that according to Grangers 
>Index to Poetry (6th ed, 1973), the poem "Armand Dussault" also appears in 
>"What Cheer: an anthology of American and British Humorous and Witty 
>Verse", ed by David McCord.   Maybe someone has access to that and can 
>check to see if the cited lines appear.
>
>Dan


We have WHAT CHEER and I just checked it.  Alas, no joy.  The "Armand Dussault"
poem by Wilson MacDonald is in French-Canadian dialect (as are a couple other
poems by him in the anthology), but none is the baseball poem sought.

We have three collections of MacDonald's own poetry; I checked two of them
(CAW CAW BALLADS and COMBER COVE) without luck (these do not contain his
dialect poetry anyway).  The third is in storage (OUT OF THE WILDERNESS)
and it doesn't sound promising.

It belatedly occurs to me that the baseball poem involves a game between
New York and Baltimore, which should help date it.  Baltimore had a major
league team in the American League in 1901-1902, then not again until
1954.  And New York didn't have an American League team until 1903 (in
fact, that 1901-1902 Baltimore team is what moved and became the Yankees).
So the poem almost has to have been written in 1954 or later.

(And Baltimore had a team in the Federal League, but New York didn't;
while New York had a team in the Players' League, and Baltimore didn't.)

Dennis Lien / U of Minnesota Libraries // d-lien at umn.edu