Bad Poetry: Fred Emerson Brooks

Fred Emerson Brooks was a very popular late-nineteenth-century poet. He wrote collections of verse on a wide variety of subjects. A literary device he was especially fond of was writing in dialect. Audiences ate it up.

Brooks was touted as "Always Smiling. Always There. The Man Who Never Disappoints." The Central Lyceum Board of Chicago gushed about him: "To supply the place of Brooks we would have to secure the best humorist, the finest orator, a star actor, the foremost character delineator, a dialect reader, a story-teller, a ventriloquist, an animal imitator, and there would still be lacking the author."

This is an except from Old Eagle. Not too many words rhyme with "eagle," but that doesn't worry Fred:

From thine eyrie, the crag,
Watch over thy flag,
And ne'er let it trail in the dust!
Soaring high in the air
Ever this aegis bear:
"In Freedom and God is our Trust."

Fear not, grand eagle,
The bay of the beagle!

Tribeca Café

I had to spend a good part of today doing some research at Hartford Hospital. So I decided to make a little detour on the way home and treat myself to a coffee at the Tribeca Café in Glastonbury. Daughter Cordelia lives only a couple of miles from the place, and can't stop raving about it.

I'm not quite sure how the café came upon its name. It's in a section of Connecticut that couldn't be more suburban. I guess that the owner wanted a name that would convey hipness: TriBeCa is hip, and this place is hip, too, although in a different way.

The café is beautiful inside--reminds me of the old Xando's in New Haven--and very clean, and the coffee's delicious. It's got plasma TVs, including one in a private room furnished with chic sofas. You can close the French doors and, for the price of a cup of coffee, watch your favorite program in privacy and style.

Outdoors is a patio with what's described as a "fire pit." It's more like a wall of fire--a bed of blue glass chips atop a brick wall with a propane-fueled element buried inside, apparently. Cordelia reports it's pretty spectacular when it's lit. I'll have to go back one evening and see for myself.