Stephen Graham’s account of tramping through the Rockies with Vachel Lindsay is built on a striking contrast: the poet’s two voices. One is “harsh and strident,” the voice of a “hell-roarer” and political agitator; the other is “sonorous and golden,” the voice of a Homeric harper. Graham observes how these voices trade dominance depending on the day and the landscape. When the mountains close in, the political noise fades, and Lindsay croons poems by heart, his face bird-like, his eyes nearly shut. The narrative itself shifts pace accordingly—from rapid-fire political banter to slow, chanting reverence.

The Poet’s Two Voices

Graham explicitly identifies two registers in Lindsay’s speech. The first is the “politician” voice: strident, argumentative, given to toasts and orations. In one excerpt, Lindsay launches into a misquoted Patrick Henry speech, and Graham deliberately repeats the line “I—do—not—care—for—others” to needle him back into laughter. The second voice emerges when the pair “washed off our politics from our minds at high noon in a river.” Then Lindsay chants Kipling’s “Buddha at Kamàkura” repeatedly, “like a prayer.” Graham notes that the printed poem is only a clue; the real poem is in the performance. This duality is not merely described but enacted in the text’s own rhythm, swinging between conversational sparring and lyrical quotation.

Rhythms of the Trail

The book’s pace is tied to the terrain. Graham writes that “some days with us were naturally dedicated to poetry,” when “the steps on the mountains caught the rhythms” and “the gliding waterfalls and the intensely coloured listening flowers suggested the mood of the poets.” On such days, “the hymns were silenced,” and “Silence hung on the mute figures of Bryan and Altgelt.” The political references—Bryan, Altgelt, Roosevelt—are literally put to rest. The prose slows, becomes more incantatory, mirroring Lindsay’s chanting. Elsewhere, the narrative accelerates into comic dispute, as when Lindsay refuses to toast “the enemies of King George” but will toast “the enemies of the English people,” leading to a deadpan stalemate. These shifts in tempo are the book’s structural principle.

Performance and the Printed Page

Graham insists that Lindsay’s poems are “written to be read aloud, chanted, or declaimed,” and that the audience often joins in choruses. The excerpts bear this out: Lindsay’s “unending chant” of Patrick Henry and his crooned repetitions of “Buddha at Kamàkura” are performances that the text can only approximate. Graham’s own prose tries to capture the oral quality—he transcribes the chant’s rhythm, notes the “sonorous, heaven-reaching voice,” and describes Lindsay’s physical transformation when reciting: “his eyes almost close, his lips purse up and open like a thrush’s beak.” The editorial note here is that the book itself is a hybrid: part travelogue, part transcript of a living performance. Readers should imagine the sound, not just the sense.

Because the excerpts are limited, the full arc of the tramp—its route, duration, and the balance of political versus poetic days—remains unclear. What is evident is that Graham’s narrative is less a geographical record than a study in vocal and rhythmic contrast. Readers attentive to shifts in sentence length, to the alternation of quoted argument and quoted verse, will find the book’s design most apparent. Treat each episode as a performance in miniature, with the Rockies as a changing backdrop that cues the poet’s voice.