Whittier’s Bicentenary

About Whittier’s Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl, Maglaras says, "It is to poetry what Beethoven's 'Ninth Symphony' is to music. No word is out of place. It's completely from the heart, truly incomparable work."

Maglaras has begun a project of recording Whittier’s poems, and the recording artist is sponsoring events throughout 2007, which marks the 200th birthday anniversary of the New England poet, including a reading of Whittier’s most widely-known poem Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl.

Whittier the Poet

Born December 17, 1807 in Haverhill, Massachusetts, John Greenleaf Whittier became an ardent abolitionist and was a founding member of the Republican Party. He enjoyed the works of Robert Burns and was inspired to emulate him.

Whittier‘s Snow-Bound was first published in 1866 and sold 20,000 copies within a few months. After its reprinting it sold 2000 more copies.

Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl

Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl is a long poem of 759 lines. It was first published as a single volume in 1866, and it immediately became very popular. In his introduction, Whittier writes, “The inmates of the family at the Whittier homestead, who are referred to in the poem, were my father, mother, my brother and two sisters, and my uncle and aunt both unmarried. In addition, there was the district schoolmaster who boarded with us.”

Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl was greeted with many favorable reviews that focused on the simplicity and power of Whittier’s writing. The reviewer for The North American Review writes, “We are indebted again to Mr. Whittier, as we have been so often before, for a very real and very refined pleasure. It is true to nature and local coloring, pure in sentiment, quietly deep in feeling, and full of those simple touches that show the poetic eye and the trained hand.”

This review eloquently captures the essence of Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl. Whittier’s works have fallen out of favor with contemporary poetry readers who place too much undeserved value on shock and degradation, and that’s too bad because reading Snow-Bound is a pleasurable, as well as enlightening, experience.

A Whittier Revival

It is quite heartening to see that a contemporary artist is so enthusiastic about an early American poet that he is acting to share that enthusiasm. This is Whittier’s bicentennial, and Michael Maglaras is making it a Whittier revival. Congratulations to Mr. Maglaras on his accomplishments and best wishes for his celebrations of Whittier, one of America’s most important poets as well as one of America’s most important Americans.