This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
If the State of Iowa was destined to gain her fame more from manure than from meters, it was not for lack of effort on the part of Iowa's first poet, Hiram Alvin Reid.
Reid arrived in Davenport in 1855 to work on the Davenport Courier. He was trying to escape becoming a poet. But try as he might to keep active—he also worked after hours on the Twin City Directory and clerked at the Museum Ice Cream Saloon, and gave a lecture on the history of three hundred women's names to a slim audience at the Congregational Church—poetry soon caught up with him.
"I am a poet because I can't help it," he wrote. "I have several times tried to stop...but the stoppage caused a benumbing pressure within my mind, and then burst forth again with added violence. Its impulsive flow has swept me into the great sea of letters."
Reid's boat on this sea was a small volume of, The Heart Lace and Other Poems, published Davenport in October 1856—Iowa's first published literary work.
Hiram Reid launched Iowa culture with a christening worthy of the Titanic. In meter and metaphor worthy of the Iliad and the Odyssey—indeed, many of them were taken from there—he praised the marvels of his day: There was the mighty Mississippi: "Mississippi, Father of Waters!/Itasca, rice-crowned Naiad of the North/Makes errant pilgrimage to far Belize..." And there was frontier Davenport: "Davenport, queen of the beautiful land,' Ignorance looketh unto thee for light..." And even the just-completed first bridge across the Mississippi: "Thou newest wonder of constructive skill,/Mortal tongue hath scarcely words profound/Of depth and big meaning to speak thy state;/Least not sublime the Red Man's solemn 'Ugh.'"
I am happy to report that Hiram Reid was eventually able to outrun poetry. He escaped to California and turned to publishing books like The History of Pasadena.
But by then the damage had been done. Reid left our Mississippi Valley with an image it has never quite been able to live up to. The poor Mississippi has had to do with catfish instead of naiads.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
