Emerson
Circa 1845, Ralph Waldo Emerson writes the long poem “Monadnoc” on what has become one of the most famous mountains in all of New England. The poem is 427 lines long, appears in print for the first time in a volume of poetry published in 1847. By mid-nineteenth century the name for the mountain had been used in print for nearly a hundred years. One, from 1749, in a piece titled “Summary of the British Settlements in North America” written by a physician from Boston named William Douglass. Douglass writes of a mountain vista, “In a clear day from it are distinctly to be seen the great Watchuset, the great Menadnock, Wateticks, and other noted Mountains. The great Watchuset Hill in Rutland lies W.N.W. about fifty miles. The grand Menadnock in waste lands in the Province of New Hampshire lies about twenty miles further North than Watchuset.”
Song Language Music Naming Subjectivity Translation Emerson History Erasure[violence] 427 Child of the Bear Indian Words Intention Rivers Preservation Body[music] Thresholds Dialogues Water Return