Oddities and Eccentricities from Garrett Scott
Eccentrics, Enthusiasts and Marginal Poets from Garrett Scott.
By Michael Stillman
We receive many exciting catalogues here at the Americana Exchange, but none are more fascinating than the occasional collection that crosses our mailbox from Garrett Scott, Bookseller, of Ann Arbor, Michigan. These catalogues are not the most artistic we see. The books offered are not among the classics of western civilization nor world culture. The authors are not the great writers of this time or any other, nor are they highly regarded historians, scientists, teachers, preachers, or anything else. These works did not change the thinking of mankind. There is probably nothing in here that can be described as "important." You never heard of these works or their authors for good reason. Still, there is one positive term that can be used to describe these writings - "original." This catalogue is filled with the thoughts of original and creative writers, both ahead of and behind their times. Rationality and common sense never posed a limitation to their creative thinking. Within this catalogue, you will find ideas you have never encountered, such as will stretch your imagination beyond the boundaries of good sense, taste, rationality, and every other such artificial barrier we tend to place on creative thinkers.
The title of Scott's 18th catalogue is Eccentrics, Enthusiasts and Marginal Poets. That is a good title for this group, though perhaps "marginal" is a euphemism for "bad." This is a collection of bizarre, but eminently entertaining, titles from 19th and early 20th century America. Much of it is quite rare, as many of these authors could only make it into print by self-publishing their works. All were earnest in their beliefs, generally more so than those with more conventional ideas. This is a catalogue anyone who collects oddities must have, but it will appeal to those with predictable collections as well. Many touch on local issues or contain imprints of small communities. For example, Peoria collectors will read about turn of the century local personalities in Richard Burt's War Songs, Poems and Odes by Captain R.W. Burt, a poet little remembered for good reason. What collection of planetary astronomy would be complete without Vodisa and Willard Magoon's Willard M. Magoon, Psychic and Healer? Magoon informs us, after an out-of-body journey to Mars, that the Red Planet's natives "had their electrically driven automobiles long before horseless carriages were thought of on earth and they had powerful long radios long before Marconi was born." Or, for those who collect the who really wrote Shakespeare controversy, there is Man v' Ape in the Play of Ear-Ce-Rammed, by Philip Samuel. Along with digressions about evolution, Samuel comes down on the side of Francis Bacon. He was in a position to know, for Samuel was Bacon reincarnated. Honestly. Here are a few more.
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Oddities and Eccentricities from Garrett Scott
Mark Twain's not so favorite poet Bloodgood Cutter.
One obscure poet who came within inches of greatness was Bloodgood Cutter, aka "the Long Island Farmer, or "the Poet Lariat." He came close when he happened to take an ocean voyage on the same ship as the great writer Mark Twain. Twain wasn't much better known than Cutter at the time, though the latter would memorialize Twain in verse:
"One droll person there was on board,
The passengers called him Mark Twain.
He'd talk and write all sort of stuff,
In his queer way it explain."
Cutter would write reams of material like this, which is why you don't know him. However, he would in turn be memorialized by Twain in his account of this journey, "Innocents Abroad." Twain would dub Cutter the "Poet Lariat." That moniker would later be used for various "cowboy poets," but I think Twain used it with Cutter for his habit of lassoing people into listening to his poetry. Twain, describing Cutter, would write, "He writes them [rhymes] on all possible subjects and gets them printed on slips of paper with his portrait at the head. These he will give to any man that comes along, whether he has anything against him or not. He has already written interminable poems on ‘The Good Ship Quaker City' and an ‘Ode to the Ocean' and ‘Recollections of the Pleasant Time on Deck Last Night,' which pleasant time consisting in his reciting some 75 stanzas of his poetry to a large party of passengers convened on the upper deck." Here is your chance for a pleasant time too. Item 38 is one of those handbills Twain describes, Long Island Farmer on Planting Flowers in his Wife's Burial Lot - April 1882. Priced at $50. However, if you want a complete collection of his works, there is The Long Island Farmer's Poems. Lines Written on the "Quaker City" Excursion to Palestine, and Other Poems, by Bloodgood H. Cutter. Mark Twain's "Larriat" [sic] in "Innocents Abroad." "We're on the Atlantic Ocean, And I feel a strange commotion." Item 39. $225.
Col. William Rowe was another underappreciated poet. In his 1908 Verse and Toast, he covers subjects from Abe Lincoln to local (Albany, N.Y.) dignitaries, plus 22 poems about different banks. For example, for the Empire Trust he writes, "There's a lot of directors for one to admire / In the trust Company, known as Empire." You can read the other 21 for a mere $37.50. Item 111.
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Oddities and Eccentricities from Garrett Scott
Diagram of the Aldersonian-Mosaic view of the world.
For the scientific minded, there is One Hundred Proofs that the Earth is Not a Globe, by William Carpenter. Carpenter was a follower of Zetetic astronomy, which posits the earth is a flat disc, with the North Star located over its center, and a wall of ice surrounding its outer edge. Item 25, from 1885. $125. Rev. Christopher Alderson had some even more interesting theories in his The Aldersonian-Mosaic System of Creation... He credits Moses as being the source of his theories, but notes, "My own name I add because Moses must not be responsible for my errors..." Good thing, or poor Moses' reputation would have been destroyed. Among Alderson's beliefs was that the earth is enclosed in a glass sphere, the moon is inhabited, and the sun is actually electricity reacting with the atmosphere. Item 3. $325.
Charles Flota in 1939 published Our Flag and My Dog. Scott notes that this is not "a meditation on canine patriotism," but two separate poems. The latter is the more interesting, once delivered in a courtroom on behalf of Ellis Pyle, whose dog had been killed. In the dog's voice, Flota writes:
"To seek and chase and kill
Some poor man's hound at will.
And as you drove your car on me
I dodged but ah ‘twas done,
Your willful, wanton will had won -
You'd killed me."
Flota did the same to poetry.
Item 55. $20.
Garrett Scott, Bookseller, may be found online at www.GSBbooks.com, telephone 734-741-8605.
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