For some reason my brother's 6th-grade teacher, Mrs. Arrowsmith, was a legend to me, so I was disappointed that she retired before I got to 6th grade. She did teach our class once though, as a substitute, maybe for a few days. I don't remember. What I do remember is a poem she read us about an old violin that an auctioneer is about to auction off cheap, but an old man comes up and plays it and the auctioneer and everyone else sees the violin's real value.

I thought it a clever poem. It was evident, even before the last stanza, that the poem was talking about more than a violin, and indeed, Mrs Arrowsmith asked us to write about what that more was. But I couldn't. The author already said everything that could be said about her meaning in the last stanza:

And many a man with life out of tune,
And battered and scarred with sin,
Is auctioned cheap to the thoughtless crowd
Much like the old violin.

I felt cheated. Perhaps that was the start of my intense dislike of didactic poetry. I have since developed a certain affection for this poem as part of my culture, though I still don't much like it as a poem. Indeed, Greg Newbold's edition of The Touch of the Master's Hand highlighted for me a technical problem with the poem. Listen to these four lines; that is, read them aloud:

Then, wiping the dust from the old violin,
And tightening the loose strings,
He played a melody pure and sweet,
As a caroling angel sings.

Note how the second line needs an extra syllable to maintain its rhythm, something like, "And tightening up the loose strings." How odd, I thought when reading this through. Perfect rhythm and meter are usually the hallmarks of didactic poetry, even if the poet has to distort syntax or pronunciation to get them.

But though I don't much care for Welch's poem, or for sentimental things in general, I do like Greg Newbold's illustrations and his design of this book. (I assume he designed it himself, since Gold Leaf is the vanity arm of Aspen, which answers Kent Larsen's 14 November query BTW, does anyone know of a vanity press for the LDS market? Are there enough authors not getting published that such a business could work?)

Newbold includes a "Special thanks to the Church of the Brethren historical library and archives," and a note that "the poem appears as it did in 1936." The pictures evoke the 1930's very nicely, partly by paying homage, though sentimental, to the wavy style of Thomas Hart Benton's murals, especially the view of the whole town. The first illustration sets a context for the poem: a collection of objects on an auction table: a cup and saucer, a doll, a picture in a frame, a Bible with green bookmarks, and, of course, an old violin.

The closing picture also suggests a context, and an answer to my problem of how to say something about the poem. It is refereshing that illustrations for a poem dealing with the Master's redeeming power don't end with a picture of the Lord coming in his glory, like a D.W. Griffith movie. Instead, the last part of the book illustrates a skidrow bum. The last picture shows a man with his arm around the drunk, taking him away from his life on the streets, and, since the picture is from the back, away from the readers. He's no longer a subject of the poem, because of "the change that is wrought / By the touch of the Master's hand."

I also like very much another illustration, the violinist. He is an old man in a tan suit (almost buckskin looking), and very gentle. We know he's a man because he's wearing a tie, but all we see of his face is the gentleness of his jaw and cheek, a gentleness so feminine I wondered if I was looking at a portrait of Myra Brooks Welch. I hope she was as gentle as her violinist and I hope the people who love her poem find this book and find in Greg Newbold's illustrations the spirit of what they love about the poem.

   Harlow Soderborg Clark
     4clarkha@uvsc.edu
Renounce war and proclaim peace
                --Joseph Smith  August 6