The golden whales of California, and other rhymes in the American language

Chapter 48: THE MODEST JAZZ-BIRD

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About This Book

The collection gathers lyrical and narrative poems that range from long, scene-setting pieces celebrating California's landscapes and the new art of the moving picture to playful rhymed scenarios and verse games. It interleaves meditations on history, myth, science, and religion with comic sketches and dialectal songs, moves into wartime reflections and elegies for fallen poets, and closes with local, Midwestern vignettes and personal tributes. The poet shifts between high-lyric description, satirical invective, and vernacular rhythms, experimenting with form and voice to present an uneven but energetic portrait of American life, technology, and regional identity in early twentieth-century verse.

THE MODEST JAZZ-BIRD

The Jazz-bird sings a barnyard song—

A cock-a-doodle bray,

A jingle-bells, a boiler works,

A he-man’s roundelay.

The eagle said, “My noisy son,

I send you out to fight!”

So the youngster spread his sunflower wings

And roared with all his might.

His headlight eyes went flashing

From Oregon to Maine;

And the land was dark with airships

In the darting Jazz-bird’s train.

Crossing the howling ocean,

His bell-mouth shook the sky;

And the Yankees in the trenches

Gave back the hue and cry.

And Europe had not heard the like—

And Germany went down!

The fowl of steel with clashing claws

Tore off the Kaiser’s crown.