The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1913-07-19
THOMAS AUGUSTINE
DAILY, MORTAL BARD
Known as the 'Dago Poet" From a
Story Told About an Italian
Base Ball Game.
Told it So Well and Often That His
Friends Were Soon Enjoying
mia Carlotta."
Then Became the Recognized In
terpreter in Literature of the
Italian Immigrant.


Italian Immigrant.
The claim to Immortality is not
lightly to be made. 1t is vast say
ing. 1t looks SO far, it leaps and per-
haps overlooks so much. In any In.
dividual case prediction can only aver
there is no knowing. The sure thing
is mortality, an end, vanishing. But
an equally sure thing is the fact Of
life going before. If one shall die,
then one is not already, and has not
been ever. dead. One is alive. Is it
slight claim, the claim to mortality,
the declaration Of life? ] think not,
and I shall try to show how living
poet is very much alive and how he
turns the things Of life into forms Of
power and beauty, regarding whose
duration, whose longevity, whose i'm
mortality, there is no knowing.
Named Thomas Augustine DAILY,
citizen of Philadelphia, Democrat
Irish: Catholic, he is known as the
"Dago Poet:' And he came to be the
Dago poet from telling q yarn about
an Italian baseball game. He told 1t
so well-and SO often-that his friends
urged him to do something else in the
same vein. Mia Carlotta" was the re-
suit; and from that day to this the
young Irish newspaper reporter has
been the recognized interpreter in lit
erature of the Italian immigrant.
But observe the process: young
man, reporter, baseball, ter-dinner
speech, Dago barber. Assuredly these
are strange "gradus ad Parnassum."
What other poet met his Pegasus at
the peanut stand? The point as this:
DAILY put out his hand and touched
life. and he made it doubly live. He
put this life into verse. He has gone
through the whole range of this Dago
life-its birth, its weddings, it's
deaths, and all their various modifica-
| tions, all the things between-grind-
| organs and parrots and peanuts, dane
ing and song and tears: fathers, fat
aunts, mothers, babies, lovers; thrift
laziness, misery and wealth; athletics
and patriotism; in a word, the whole
range of Dago days and nights, the
height and depth, the length and
breadth Of the life-this Daily Che was
once a crack Fordham short-stop) has
| put into literature. Now this is not
| the way Spenser achieved everlasting
f, ness, nor that other illustrious Eliza
bethan who wasn't Bacon, though
! even today one could sit down and read
i Ariosto and Boccacio and Plutarch and
! even Dante-if that is all were nec-
/: essary. And the great Puritan did not
so win his immortal bays, nor Cole
ridge, nora big drop-Tennyson.
!; And there was all this great library
wealth for the young dreaming report
er to go to. King Arthur might have
moved majestic in the loom of his
musing, or the Lady of the Lake, and
all the steeds of old Romance. Vik-
ings in their black ships, Danaans and
the Medici-all these might have been
his instead, he has given us-police-
men and peanuts.
Now I am not concerned for the mo-
ment with poetic form, but with its
subject matter. I shall speak of form
later. But I say here is a poet who
is what the Greeks essentially demand
Of a poet, namely d maker, a crea-
tor. This poet has made life live. The
judgment is inclusive. One needs not
to specify the pathos or the humor
of life; one says the whole.
Is not this big claim to make for
| the young reporter, ex-short stop ?
The proof of it is the books. These
are too we'll known for me to quote
them here. Read the poems and you
will find them life-that, at the very
least. And this is only one-third of
Days literary achievement, though as
regards creation" as we here use
| the term, as yet it is the best third.
Besides the Dago. DAILY has put liv-
ing Irish into books, not SO many
Irish, but just as living. Here again
he departed from poetic precedent:
let US say that Of Spenser who, it will