Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Katherine Lee Bates
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.melindaponder.com/index.html
CITY:
STATE: MA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Indianapolis, IN.
EDUCATION:Wellesley College, B.A.; Salem State College, M.Ed.; Boston College, M.A., Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Boston College, Newton, MA, instructor in English, 1983-87; Pine Manor College, Chestnut Hill, MA, Department of English, 1987–, became professor emerita.
AWARDS:Horton-Hallowell Fellowship, Wellesley College, 1986-87; faculty development grants from Pine Manor College, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1993, 1994-95, 1997, 1998-99, summer 1999, 2003-05; Lindsey Professorship, Pine Manor College, 1991-92; Kellogg Fellowship, Pine Manor College, 1993-94; Wean Fellowship, Pine Manor College, 1998-99, 2005-06;; North East Modern Language Association Summer Fellowship, 1999; Josephine Abercrombie Chair in Writing, Pine Manor College, 1999-2002; Alpha Chi Honor Society, Honorary Membership, Pine Manor College; Alpha Sigma Nu Honor Society, Boston College; Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, Salem State College.
WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including Seeing into the Life of Things: Essays on Religion and Literature, and to journals and periodicals, including Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, Chicago Tribune, and Christian Science Monitor.
SIDELIGHTS
Melissa M. Ponder, a longtime professor of English at Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, is the author of books on Nathaniel Hawthorne and Katharine Lee Bates. Ponder first became interested in Bates when attending Wellesley College, where Bates earned her degree and later taught. Then, teaching at Pine Manor, “I could vividly picture Katharine’s similar life as a teacher and scholar,” Ponder explained on her website. “I understood why Katharine promoted women’s achievements and education—and why she was often frustrated with endless faculty meetings.” Bates is best known for writing the poem that became the lyrics to “America the Beautiful,” but Ponder’s biography of her, Katharine Lee Bates: From Sea to Shining Sea, gives ample space to Bates’s other accomplishments. She grew up poor in the village of Falmouth on Massachusetts’s Cape Cod; her mother was widowed shortly after Bates’s birth in 1859. She managed to get an education, however, becoming a member of Wellesley’s second graduating class in 1880. With most professions closed to women, she joined the faculty at Wellesley, where she established the English department. She often encountered sexism in academia, and her fierce independence was sometimes challenged by suitors–two male and one female, according to Ponder. As a teacher and textbook author, she advocated for recognition of women writers, and she was a novelist as well. She also was active in social reform movements and traveled extensively. She was inspired to write “America the Beautiful” during a trip to Colorado in 1893. She and a close friend, Katharine Coman, went west to teach summer school in Colorado Springs, which had a degree of sophistication, and they also visited the rough mining boom town of Cripple Creek. The Colorado scenery and the people she met there led her to write the poem, which Bates considered to be a prayer for the United States as it suffered through economic depression that year.
“I think that it completely empowered her, that summer out here,” Ponder told Jake Brownell in an interview for Colorado radio station KRCC. “I think it transformed her into feeling that she could do this, and her voice was necessary. I think that especially seeing the women out here but also even in Cripple Creek, the independence and the idea that anybody could strike it rich, including the women who have who did there. She admired that.” Of “America the Beautiful,” she added: “It was a prayer for God to ‘shed his grace on thee’ to help this country that needed help. It was a celebration in a sense but it was a reminder to people of what they had in common.”
A Kirkus Reviews contributor commended the biography, for which Ponder drew on Bates family diaries, letters, and memoirs. “Ponder, a lucid writer, is particularly effective at showing how Bates’ tumultuous environment, as America transitioned from a largely rural to an industrial society, inspired her poetry and novels,” the critic observed, then summed the book up as “a biography that skillfully sets Bates’ work against the backdrop of the times in which she lived.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2017, review of Katharine Lee Bates: From Sea to Shining Sea.
ONLINE
KRCC Web site, http://krcc.org/ (November 20, 2017), Jake Brownell, “America the Beautiful: How Colorado Springs Shaped a Patriotic Anthem” (broadcast transcript).
Melinda M. Ponder Website, http://melindaponder.com (March 24, 2018).
Pine Manor College Website, http://www.pmc.edu/ (March 24, 2018), brief biography.
MELINDA M. PONDER is a graduate of Katharine Lee Bates’s Wellesley College and received a M.A. in American Studies and a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Boston College. She has published numerous articles and given many talks and interviews on Katharine Lee Bates, and has published two books on Nathaniel Hawthorne as well.
Born in Indianapolis, Ponder now resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is Professor of English Emerita at Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.
Quoted in Sidelights: "I could vividly picture Katharine’s similar life as a teacher and scholar. I understood why Katharine promoted women’s achievements and education—and why she was often frustrated with endless faculty meetings."
I first became intrigued with Katharine Lee Bates’ story when I attended Wellesley College and studied English— in the same English Department that Katharine Lee Bates established at the school decades earlier.
I continued my academic career as a published literary critic with an M.A. in American Studies and a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Boston College and then as a college professor.
As coordinator of the English B.A. program and the Women’s Studies program at Pine Manor College, a small formerly all-women’s college about the size of Katharine’s young Wellesley College, I could vividly picture Katharine’s similar life as a teacher and scholar. I understood why Katharine promoted women’s achievements and education—and why she was often frustrated with endless faculty meetings.
I have written and published numerous articles and essays on Katharine Lee Bates, and reviewers have praised my sympathetic treatment of Bates’ work and personal life. In addition, I have given many talks and interviews surrounding the life of Katharine, including on the A&E Network, Monitor Radio, BNN News, as well as for the Falmouth Historical Society with panelist Lynn Sherr.
In addition to my fascination with Katharine Lee Bates, I am also a Nathaniel Hawthorne scholar and have published two books on this subject: Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition as well as Hawthorne's Early Narrative Art: Its Origins in Eighteenth-Century Anglo-Scottish Aesthetics. My essays and articles on Nathaniel Hawthorne and other American and British authors have appeared in Genre, The Chicago Tribune, The Essex Institute Historical Collections, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review.
I was born in Indianapolis, traveled East to pursue my academic career, and my home is now in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I am now Professor Emerita of English at Pine Manor College.
Melinda Ponder
Professor, English
Haldan Hall 115
617-731-7139
ponderme@pmc.edu
www.melindaponder.com
Education
Ph.D., English and American Literature, Boston College
M.A., American Studies, Boston College
M.Ed., Salem State College
B.A., Wellesley College
Current Position
Professor of English, Pine Manor College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts
Coordinator, English B.A. Program
Positions Held
Professor of English and Josephine Abercrombie Professor of Writing, Coordinator of Women's Studies, Director of College Composition, Pine Manor College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts
Courses Taught
Pine Manor College, 1987-present
American Literary Traditions, American Literature I and II, Images of Twentieth-Century America: Innovation in Literature from Hemingway to Morrison, American Girls and New Women: American Literature 1870-1930, African-American and Caribbean Literature, Female Voices of Diversity: Studies in Contemporary Literature, New England Literature: A Sense of Place (Includes tours of Boston area authors' homes and haunts), Shorter American Fiction, Writing Their Stories: Women Immigrants to the United States, British Literary Traditions, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Women in Shakespeare, Shakespeare II, Interpreting Shakespeare, Drama and Theatre in London (An on-site course in London exploring the historical development of British drama and its current theatre life), Theatre in Boston, Plays Past and Present: Images of Women in Drama, Modern Plays: British and American, Modern Plays: European, Mythology and Literature, Experience of Literature, The Art of Advanced Prose Writing, College Composition I and II, Methods and Curriculum in English Instruction, Defining Women: Introduction to Women's Studies, Director of Senior Essays: Post-Civil War American women writers; Virginia Woolf’s early novels, Director of Independent Studies: Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance; Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty, Oral culture and folklore in Caribbean literature; Women and Religion; Women writers and nineteenth-century periodicals, Director of Internship which created a Women's Center and produced The Women's Studies Newsletter
Boston College Evening and Summer School, 1984-l987
Survivals: Themes in American Literature, The Short Story, Introduction to College Composition
Boston College, l983-l984
Major American Writers I, Critical Reading and Writing
Academic Honors
Wean Fellowship, Pine Manor College, 2005-2006
An award given annually to one senior faculty member for outstanding work of one semester’s leave from teaching to use for scholarly research
Josephine Abercrombie Chair in Writing, l999-2002
North East Modern Language Association Summer Fellowship, l999
Wean Fellowship, Pine Manor College, l998-1999
Kellogg Fellowship, Pine Manor College, 1993-1994, for outstanding service to the College
Lindsey Professorship, Pine Manor College, l991-l992 (An award given annually to one junior faculty member for outstanding academic performance and scholarly promise, of one semester's leave from teaching)
Wellesley College Horton-Hallowell Fellowship, l986-l987
Faculty Development Grants from Pine Manor College: l988, l989, l990, 1993, 1994-1995, l997, l998-1999, Summer 1999, 2003-2005
Alpha Chi Honor Society, Honorary Membership, Pine Manor College
Alpha Sigma Nu Honor Society, Boston College
Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, Salem State College
Current Research
Katharine Lee Bates: From Sea to Shining Sea
This biography describes how the young graduate of Wellesley College’s second class (1880) developed into the poet of the beloved “America the Beautiful,” and then continued to define her nation’s possibilities in her career as both an educator and as a writer of fiction, poetry, essays. With interwoven selected excerpts from Miss Bates's out-of-print but lively fiction, poetry, travel essays, literary criticism and feminist writings, my narrative gives its readers a sense of an extraordinary woman’s life of letters and the classroom in turn-of-the-century Boston, New England, and America.
Publications
Books
Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition. (Co-Editor). Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, l999.
This book brings to light the many women reviewers, critics, and writers who played a part in establishing Nathaniel Hawthorne's career and creating the ongoing Hawthorne tradition. It includes early reviews by women and essays about women writers and critics whose work responds to and revises Hawthorne’s work.
Hawthorne's Early Narrative Art: Its Origins in Eighteenth-Century Anglo-Scottish Aesthetics. Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, l990.
This book explores the roles which various 18th-century theorists played in shaping Hawthorne's first theories of art, his conception of himself as a writer, and his formal creation of short narratives, culminating in the l837 edition of Twice-told Tales.
Articles and Reviews
“On Sabbatical in Egypt: ‘I Long to be an Egyptologist’” in The Pine Manor College Bulletin, Summer, 2007 (Vol. LVI, No. 1), 16-17.
“Spain: ‘A Garden of Delight’: Researching the Life of Katharine Lee Bates in Spain” in The Pine Manor College Bulletin, Summer, 2004 (Vol. LIV, No. 2), 14-15.
“Oh, To Be in London, Now that Theatre Time is Here!: Teaching EN/TH 272: Drama and Theatre in London” in The Pine Manor College Bulletin, Winter, 2001 (Vol. LI, No. 1), 12-13.
“Katharine Lee Bates: Hawthorne Student, Teacher, Critic, and Respondent” in Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition, edited by John L. Idol and Melinda M. Ponder. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, l999, 204-216.
"Gender and the Religious Vision: Katharine Lee Bates and Poetic Elegy," in Seeing Into the Life of Things: Essays on Religion and Literature, edited by John L. Mahoney. New York: Fordham University Press, 1998, 171-194.
“The Thrill of the Chase: From Basement Archives to Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House,” in The Pine Manor College Bulletin, Winter, l999.
“How Are We Revitalizing the College Classroom for the 21st Century?” in The Pine Manor College Bulletin, Winter, l996-97.
"Hawthorne Student, Teacher, Critic, and Respondent: Katharine Lee Bates" in Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, l999, 204-216.
"Majestic Lyrics," Chicago Tribune, July 4, l993.
"From Cover to Cover: Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance," The Essex Institute Historical Collections, Vol. 127, 1 (l990), 50-68.
"Katharine Lee Bates as Hawthorne Critic and Scholar," The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, XVI, 1 (l990), 6-11.
"Drama Comes Alive in London," Pine Manor College Bulletin, XXXI, 2 (l990), 13-15.
"Echoing Poetry with History: Wordsworth's Duddon Sonnets and Their Notes," Genre, XXI (l988), 157-178.
"Hawthorne and Raymond, Maine," The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, XII, 2 (l986), 4- 10.
"A Walking Tour Through Hawthorne's Boston," The Nathaniel Hawthorne Society Newsletter, XI, 1 (1885), 8-10.
Review of The Literary Pilgrimage of Nathaniel Hawthorne by Noburu Saito in The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Fall, l997), 17-18.
Review of New Essays on Hawthorne's Major Tales edited by Millicent Bell in The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring, l994), 36-40.
Review of Aesthetic Headaches: Women and a Masculine Poetics in Poe, Melville and Hawthorne by Leland S. Person, Jr., in The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, XV, 1 (l989), 28-29.
Review of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tales: Norton Critical Edition in The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, XIII, 2 (1987), 20-21.
Review of Farewell, Dresden by Henri Coulanges in The Christian Science Monitor, April 5, l989.
Review of Balm in Gilead by Sara Lawrence Lightfoot in The Christian Science Monitor, January 23, l989.
Media Interviews
Boston Community Network channel, March 29, 2006, on “Literary Limelight”: a half- hour interview about writing the biography of Katharine Lee Bates.
Monitor Radio (International short-wave station), July 22, l993, "Origins of 'America the Beautiful."
Arts and Entertainment National Cable channel, July 4, l993, "Composing 'America the Beautiful."
Presentations
"Katharine Lee Bates and the Woman Question" at the Falmouth Historical Society 150th Birthday Celebration in Falmouth, Massachusetts, August, 2009.
“Nathaniel Hawthorne and Robert Browning in Florence” at the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society Meeting, American Literature Association Conference in Boston, May, 2009.
“Katharine Lee Bates and her Inspirations for ‘America the Beautiful’: Its Roots in Falmouth, in Chicago, in Colorado and Beyond” at the Woods Hole Women’s History Month Lecture, March, 2009.
“Hawthorne and the Woman Question” at the Bicentennial Celebration of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Birth at Salem State College, March, 2004.
“Hawthorne and Women” at the Essex-Peabody Institute in Salem, Massachusetts, 2004, for the "Hawthorne in Salem" ("http./www.hawthorneinslaem.org") web-site.
“Popularizing the Poet: The Boston Poetry Scene of 1915-1925 at Its Transformation of the Poetry Marketplace” at the North East Modern Language Association Conference, April, 2002.
“Women Writers and their Publishers” at the North East Modern Language Association Conference, April, 2001.
“Walking Through Hawthorne’s Boston” at the Nathaniel Hawthorne Conference, Boston, 2000.
“The Environment as Catalyst in the Writing of Biography” at the North East Modern Language Association Conference, April, 2000.
“Visions of America: Katharine Lee Bates in Colorado Springs” at the National Trails Day dedication of the “America the Beautiful” Trails System in Colorado Springs, Colorado, June 5, l999.
“Women’s Literature in the 19th Century” Roundtable at the North East Modern Language Association Conference, 1999.
“Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition—Changing the Literary Landscape” at the Essex-Peabody Institute, l999.
“Katharine Lee Bates: The Bates Legacy and ‘America the Beautiful’” at the Bates Family Association, l998.
“‘Broad-minded, pure-hearted, and thoroughly wide awake’: Louisa May Alcott & the Publishing World of Family Periodicals” at the Summer Conversational Series, Orchard House, Home of the Alcott Family, l998.
“Katharine Lee Bates: From Village Scribbler to the Nation’s Poet” at the Falmouth Historical Society, Falmouth, Massachusetts, l998.
“Networked Women: Shaping the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Family Periodicals” at the North East Modern Language Association Conference, l998.
“Re-forming the Nation: ‘America the Beautiful,’ Regional Fiction, the Settlement House Movement and Community” at the North East Modern Language Association Conference, l997.
“Revitalizing the College Classroom: Organizing Faculty Seminars” at Conference on New Ways of Learning and Leading, l997.
"Encircling Death: Katharine Lee Bates's Revisionary Sonnet Corona 'In Bohemia'" at the North East Modern Language Association Conference, l994.
"Armchair Traveling in England: Nathaniel Hawthorne's Our Old Home and Katharine Lee Bates' From Gretna Green to Land's End" at the American Popular Culture Conference, York, England, l993.
"Katharine Lee Bates: Imagining 'America the Beautiful'" at the Wellesley Historical Society and Friends of the Margaret Clapp Library, Wellesley College, l993.
"The 'Alabaster Cities': The 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago and 'America the Beautiful'" at the New England Popular Culture Association, l992.
"Katharine Lee Bates and Hawthorne: Enlarging Our Old Home" at the Philological Association of the Carolinas, 1992.
"Challenging 'Manly' Imperialism: Katharine Lee Bates in Spain" at the New England American Studies Association, l991.
"Authoring Hawthorne's Early Narrative Art" at the Boston Authors Club, l990.
"'Magnetic Idealism' and 'Flamboyant Sexuality'": Marketing Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance" at the North East Popular Culture Association, l988.
"Flannery O'Connor and Hawthornean Romance: 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find' and 'Young Goodman Brown' at the North East Modern Language Association, l988.
"The First and Last Words on Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance" at the Philological Association of the Carolinas, l988.
"Edmund Burke's 'Sublime' and Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown'" at the North East Modern Language Association, l987.
"Hawthorne and Raymond, Maine" at the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society Conference, Bowdoin College, l986.
"Walking Through Hawthorne's Boston" at the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society Conference, Boston, l984.
"Wordsworth as Biographer: The River Duddon Sonnets and Their Notes" at the Wordsworth Summer Conference, Grasmere, England, l984.
Presentations to Pine Manor College Alumnae
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, 2008.
"Family Ties, Knots and Bridges: Women and Their Quest for Home and Self in The Wedding by Dorothy West and The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, l995.
"Women and the West: O Pioneers!: Willa Cather's reply to Walt Whitman," l993.
"Mothers, Daughters and Literary Patterns: Sarah Orne Jewett's Country of the Pointed Firs," l992.
Other Professional Activities
Member, Pine Manor Trustees Committee on Enrollment, 2009-present
Member, Pine Manor Planning Committee, 2009-present
Member, Trustees’ Education and Community Affairs Committee of the Boston Athenaeum, 2008-2011
Member, Pine Manor Faculty Committee on Reappointment, Promotion, and Tenure, 2007-10.
Member, Boston Browning Society, 2005-present
Chair, “Hawthorne and Biography,” and “Hawthorne and Nature,” at the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society Conference, Bowdoin College, June, 2008
Chair, “Perspectives on The Marble Faun: Quests and Identities” and Chair, “Perspectives on The Marble Faun: Evil and Existence” at the Conference on Trans-Atlanticism in American Literature: Emerson, Hawthorne and Poe, Oxford, England, July, 2006
Chair, “Hawthorne and Philosophical Perspectives,” at the Bicentennial Conference of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society, Salem, Massachusetts, July, 2004
Advisory Board Member, the “Nathaniel Hawthorne and Salem” Website of the National
Endowment for the Humanities (“http:www.hawthorneinsalem.org”), 1999-2004
Board of Directors, New England Foundation for the Humanities, l993-1995
Council member, New England American Studies Association, l991-l995
Chair, Teaching the Fourth Genre of Non-Fiction Prose, North East Modern Language Association, l999-2000
Chair, Maximizing the Use of Literature and Writing in Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Studies, North East Modern Language Association, l998-1999
Chair, Future Directions of the College English Department, North East Modern Language Association, l997-1998
Chair, New Pedagogies in the College Literature Classroom, North East Modern Language Association, l996-1997
Chair, Literary Perspectives on Aging Section, North East Modern Language Association, l995-1996
Chair, "Rap, Fans and Universities: Cultural Extremes," Popular Culture: American Culture, Northeast Conference, l995
Secretary, Literary Perspectives on Aging Section, North East Modern Language Association, 1994-1995
Chair, American Romanticism Section, North East Modern Language Association, l993- 1994
Secretary, American Romanticism, North East Modern Language Association, l992-1993
Chair, Literature and Architecture Section, North East Modern Language Association, l992-1993
Secretary, Literature and Architecture Section, North East Modern Language Association, l992
Chair, Flannery O'Connor Section, North East Modern Language Association, l990
Secretary, Flannery O'Connor Section, North East Modern Language Association l989
Chair, Hawthorne Section, North East Modern Language Association, l989
Secretary, Hawthorne Section, North East Modern Language Association, l988
Chair, "Formative Friendships: Margaret Fuller, Lydia Maria Child, and Nathaniel Hawthorne," New England American Studies Association Conference, l995
Chair, "New Women, New Worlds," New England American Studies Association Conference, l994
Chair, "Literary Border Clashes," New England American Studies Association Conference, l992
Editorial Board, The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, l988-l991
Executive Board, Nathaniel Hawthorne Society, l985-l988
Boston Authors Club, 1989-1991
Consultant to Downtown Productions for their film version of Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance
Quoted in Sidelights: "Ponder, a lucid writer, is particularly effective at showing how Bates' tumultuous environment, as America transitioned from a largely rural to an industrial society, inspired her poetry and novels,"
"a biography that skillfully sets Bates' work against the backdrop of the times in which she lived."
Ponder, Melinda M.: KATHARINE LEE BATES
Kirkus Reviews. (Nov. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Ponder, Melinda M. KATHARINE LEE BATES Windy City Publishers (Indie Nonfiction) $39.95 8, 8 ISBN: 978-1-941478-48-6
A biography of the multitalented woman who wrote the words to "America the Beautiful."
Katharine Lee Bates carved herself a place in America's cultural history by penning the majestic poem, first published in 1895, that later became the lyrics to the iconic anthem "America the Beautiful." But as author Ponder (Hawthorne's Early Narrative Art, 1991) convincingly shows in her similarly majestic account of Bates' life, this poem was just one of many achievements of its creator--a woman who, through her work as a writer, teacher, and social activist, set an example of female independence in late-19th-century America. Bates was raised by her mother, as her father died within weeks of her birth in 1859. She first experienced "women's collective power" when the widows of her hometown on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, mourned the slaying of President Abraham Lincoln by draping their black shawls around the local church to make up for an insufficient supply of mourning cloth. She took advantage of opportunities afforded women after the Civil War, graduating from Wellesley College and going on to teach literature there after studying at Oxford University in England. But she still faced blatant prejudice, as personified by a Harvard president who, at an 1899 Wellesley event, questionedwhy women should go to college when, in his opinion, they weren't as intelligent as men. Ponder, a lucid writer, is particularly effective at showing how Bates' tumultuous environment, as America transitioned from a largely rural to an industrial society, inspired her poetry and novels. She points out that the words to "America the Beautiful," for example, percolated in Bates' mind amid the depression of 1893 and a visit to see the glories of the Colorado Rockies. For Bates, the famous phrase "sea to shining sea" expressed the "ideal of brotherhood" that she believed would see America through the crisis. As Ponder writes, "Knowing what it was like to be marginalized and silenced, she wrote for those who had no voice, and she gave Americans a fresh and inspiring ideal of their country as an inclusive community."
A biography that skillfully sets Bates' work against the backdrop of the times in which she lived.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Ponder, Melinda M.: KATHARINE LEE BATES." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A514267646/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7c0ca60f. Accessed 20 Feb. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A514267646
Quoted in Sidelights: "I think that it completely empowered her, that summer out here. I think it transformed her into feeling that she could do this, and her voice was necessary. I think that especially seeing the women out here but also even in Cripple Creek, the independence and the idea that anybody could strike it rich, including the women who have who did there. She admired that."
"It was a prayer for God to 'shed his grace on thee' to help this country that needed help. It was a celebration in a sense but it was a reminder to people of what they had in common."
America The Beautiful: How Colorado Springs Shaped A Patriotic Anthem
By JAKE BROWNELL • NOV 20, 2017
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Listen Listening...5:55 An Interview with Melinda M. Ponder, author of "Katherine Lee Bates: From Sea To Shining Sea."
Katherine Lee Bates
CREDIT WIKIMEDIA COMMONS - PUBLIC DOMAIN
Of all the works of art that have been inspired by or created in Colorado Springs, perhaps none is more famous than the song, "America the Beautiful." It's a patriotic song nearly as recognizable and beloved as the National Anthem itself.
But despite the song’s popularity, the woman behind those famous lyrics is less well known. A new book called Katharine Lee Bates: From Sea to Shining Sea, by author Melinda M. Ponder, examines the life of poet Katharine Lee Bates, who wrote the first draft of "America the Beautiful" while teaching in Colorado Springs in the summer of 1893. Ponder spoke with 91.5 KRCC about how Bates' experience in Colorado Springs shaped her patriotism.
91.5 KRCC: I want to jump right into a period of time in the life of Katharine Lee Bates that you dub, “the enchanted summer” -- the summer of 1893. Who was Katharine Lee Bates at this moment in her life?
"I think that it completely empowered her, that summer out here. I think it transformed her into feeling that she could do this, and her voice was necessary."
Melinda Ponder: She had been born in 1859 on the eve of the Civil War and grown up in Falmouth, a small village on Cape Cod. She went to Wellesley, graduating in its second class. She became a teacher and eventually came back and was a professor there. Her Wellesley colleague and dear friend Katharine Coman suggested that they come teach summer school in Colorado Springs at a Colorado College sponsored summer school. That is why she came.
91.5 KRCC: Colorado Springs at that time was a little oasis of sophistication an east coast sensibility in the West…
Melinda Ponder: East Coast and British sensibility. There was a Tuesday Club where the British women helped the local women with their pronunciation of English words, polo was played on the prairie, you know, afternoon teas. But luckily while she was here she also went over to Cripple Creek so she saw this gold mining boom town. So she said she saw two Wests when she was here.
91.5 KRCC: And she was also quite taken with the landscape.
Melinda Ponder: Loved the landscape. I mean I can imagine how it was to see these wonderful mountains when she got here. And then she had this wonderful trip up to the top of Pikes Peak and she'd never seen anything like that.
91.5 KRCC: And that's kind of a fateful moment.
Melinda Ponder
CREDIT COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
Melinda Ponder: Yes
91.5 KRCC: Paint a picture, if you would, of that trip up Pikes Peak.
Melinda Ponder: First, this group took the train to Cascade and there they got into a wagon that was pulled by horses, which said “Pikes Peak or Bust” on it. Then at the halfway house they changed and mules took over the ride up. I think as she looked out on the 360-degree view from up there, you know, you see the purple mountain majesty, the ridges stretching out in all directions and you don't see territories or boundaries -- of course the kind of thing that causes conflict. This was at a time when the silver mines were closing and people were arguing about the silver or the gold standard. And there were jobless men homeless on the streets of Colorado Springs. So there she was up above all this where she could have kind of a transcendent experience, and think of trying to bring the country together.
91.5 KRCC: So in her attempt to write a poem that somehow expresses something essential about America and American identity there's a kind of urgency to that mission, it seems, a need to respond to a kind of crisis taking place in the country.
Melinda Ponder: That’s right. She really wrote this I think as a prayer for the country. It was a prayer for God to “shed his grace on thee” to help this country that needed help. It was a celebration in a sense but it was a reminder to people of what they had in common.
"She used her writing to educate her readers to understand other people and to lift their values."
91.5 KRCC: So much of the song and imagery in the song is rooted in the landscape. What do you make of that? Do you think that's significant?
Melinda Ponder: Yes. I think she could see that that was something we all loved. It didn't matter what political party you were in. So I think that was common ground and there's common ground in the history that she mentions, the “patriot dream” that she talks about in the song. “America the Beautiful” is really about creating a national community -- I think that's its hope. She said later that people love the song because she felt Americans were really idealists at heart.
91.5 KRCC: So the fact that Katharine Lee Bates writes this song that does symbolize idealism and a certain dream for America -- and the fact that it was inspired by her experiences out here in the West -- was it her experience out here that gave her some hope for the country?
Melinda Ponder: Yes. Yes. I think that it completely empowered her, that summer out here. I think it transformed her into feeling that she could do this, and her voice was necessary. I think that especially seeing the women out here but also even in Cripple Creek, the independence and the idea that anybody could strike it rich, including the women who have who did there. She admired that.
91.5 KRCC: Why do you think Katharine Lee Bates, after all these years, remains an important figure, someone who is worth dedicating a book to?
Melinda Ponder: Because I think she was a trailblazer in her life. She was friends with all these colleagues at Wellesley who were social reformers out on the ramparts and she used her writing in various ways. Her textbook on American literature included women and, God forbid, Walt Whitman and Thoreau. She used her writing to educate her readers to understand other people and to lift their values.