Wild and Crazy Poets

Poets trashed hotel rooms long before rock 'n' roll stars did. Myrna Garanis, for Geist, discusses the long-forgotten poet Vachel Lindsay and the fabled Davenport Hotel in Spokane, Washington.

From the piece...

It all started when a lawyer named Ben Kizer, a great admirer of Vachel Lindsay’s work, persuaded city officials and Louis Davenport, owner of the hotel, to buck up Spokane’s image from backwater town to cultural metropolis by bringing Lindsay in as a guest. At the time, Lindsay was hugely popular as a troubadour, travelling all over the United States, and well known as an author whose most famous book was Johnny Appleseed and Other Poems. Kizer assured the Spokane business community that Lindsay would be literary bait, attracting other big names to Spokane. They ensconced him in Room 1129 , a suite large and grand enough for entertaining. Louis Davenport and Lindsay supporters would pay his hotel bills, and it was understood, though not so well by Lindsay, that he was to pay back the establishment by giving performances, writing pieces glorifying the city, and educating Spokane citizens on the spoken arts.

Lindsay took advantage of his privileged position, spreading his entertainment entourage down to the entire main floor of the Davenport: dining room, smoking room, lobby, even the ballroom. He composed nine elegiac poems about Spokane, which were published in the city’s Spokesman-Review newspaper. They include “Under Spokane’s Brocaded Sun,” which begins with this stanza:

Under Spokane’s brocaded sun, and her deeply embroidered moon
I walk on the Rim Rock rampart put there by heaven’s hand,
Long before the city came, before the ocean or the land.
This Rim Rock has one eastern notch for the river to run in
And the other notch is a water gate at first northwest;
Then south;
Grotesquely around, coils the rampart, like a hoop-snake
Tail in mouth.

As a poet-performer, Lindsay brought excitement and a sort of glamour to the Davenport and to Spokane.