Happy Birthday Edgar Albert Guest

Born on the 20th August 1881 Edgar Albert Guest became one of the most popular American poets of his generation with a daily poem of his being syndicated in newspapers across the states for almost fifty years.

Guest was actually born in the city of Birmingham, the manufacturing hub of the British Empire at that time but emigrated with his parents to Michigan in the USA at age 10 and was raised and educated with the values of small town America.
At the age of 13 he began as a copy-boy with the Detroit Free Press and, following his fathers death in 1898 he became one of their full time reporters. He also started writing verses and submitting them to his editor who, liking the youngsters themes and style, began printing them in the newspaper. Many of them in a column entitled “Breakfast Table Chat”
Guest chose topics that resonated with his audience. For example “Father” [ http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/4205 ] which takes sly digs at the pontificating American male who has an answer for everything. He was an advocate of making the best of things in poems such as Hard Luck [ http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/4200 ] which basically says that it’s no use complaining about your bad luck, everybody has similar experiences. It is this rough and ready philosophy and use of familiar examples that endeared his poetry to his readers.
Guest often took as his themes the Family, the Community, and the Work Ethic. His poem “It Couldn’t Be Done” [ http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/44726 ] is a classic example of this and is often quoted today by people who have never heard of Guest.
Guest also began a weekly column entitled Chaff. Very soon his poems began to attract favourable letters and Guest began writing one a day. An output which he continued almost non stop for over forty years. The editor, recognising a good thing when he saw it arranged for their syndication in other papers. Edgar Albert Guest, the People’s Poet had arrived. He began publishing and distributing his own books of poetry with the help of his brother Harry but after the roaring success of the first two he came to an arrangement with a Chicago publisher. In all he published over twenty books and estimates of his poetic output vary between 13,000 and 15,000 poems.
Guest, who kept himself fully occupied, had little time for slackers as is shown in poems such as “Peace” [ http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/107669 ] and “How do you Tackle Your Work” [ http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/61868 ] he also believed firmly in the family as can be seen from the number of poems about mothers and fathers. Poems such as “The Mother’s Question [ http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/32060 ] and “When Father Shook The Stove” [ http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/61848 ]

Edgar Albert Guest may have described himself simply as “A newspaperman who wrote verses” but his nation gave him the title of “People’s Poet” and his home state of Michigan made him their first Poet Laureate. Now as we approach the 100th anniversary of his first book of poetry we salute a great poet and wish him Happy Birthday.