US Poet Edgar Albert Guest 1881 - 1959

Edgar Albert Guest (August 20, 1881, Birmingham, England – August 5, 1959, Detroit, Michigan) (aka Eddie Guest) was a prolific English-born American poet who was popular in the first half of the 20th century and became known as the People's Poet.

In 1891, Guest came with his family to the United States from England. After he began at the Detroit Free Press as a copy boy and then a reporter, his first poem appeared December 11, 1898. He became a naturalized citizen in 1902. For 40 years, Guest was widely read throughout North America, and his sentimental, optimistic poems were in the same vein as the light verse of Nick Kenny, who wrote syndicated columns during the same decades.

From his first published work in the Detroit Free Press until his death in 1959, Guest penned some 11,000 poems which were syndicated in some 300 newspapers and collected in more than 20 books, including A Heap o' Livin' (1916) and Just Folks (1917). Guest was made Poet Laureate of Michigan, the only poet to have been awarded the title.

Radio and television

His popularity led to a weekly Detroit radio show which he hosted from 1931 until 1942, followed by a 1951 NBC television series, A Guest in Your Home.

When Guest died in 1959, he was buried in Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery. His work still occasionally appears in periodicals such as Reader's Digest, and some favorites, such as "Myself" and "Thanksgiving," are still studied today. Guest received a mention in Lemony Snicket's The Grim Grotto, though not in a particularly favorable manner. Dorothy Parker is the reputed author of one of the most quoted appraisals of his work: "I'd rather flunk my Wasserman test/ Than read the poetry of Edgar Guest." His great-niece Judith Guest is a successful novelist who wrote Ordinary People.

Excerpts

Guest's most famous poem is the oft-quoted "Home":

It don't make a difference how rich ye get t' be'

How much yer chairs and tables cost, how great the luxury;

It ain't home t' ye, though it be the palace of a king,

Until somehow yer soul is sort o' wrapped round everything.

Within the walls there's got t' be some babies born an' then...

Right there ye've got t' bring em up t' women good, an' men;

Home ain't a place that gold can buy or get up in a minute;

Afore it's home there's got t' be a heap o' living in it."

--Excerpt from "Home," A Heap o' Livin' (1916)

When you're up against a trouble,

Meet it squarely, face to face,

Lift your chin, and set your shoulders,

Plant your feet and take a brace,

When it's vain to try to dodge it,

Do the best that you can do.

You may fail, but you may conquer--

See it through!

--Excerpt from "See It Through"

Bibliography

• A Dozen New Poems (1920)
• A Heap o' Livin' (1916)
• All That Matters (1922)
• All in a Lifetime (1938)
• Between You and Me: My Philosophy of Life (1938)
• Collected Verse of Edgar Guest (1934)
• Faith (1932)
• Harbor Lights of Home (1928)
• Home Rhymes, from Breakfast Table Chat (1909)
• Just Folks (1917)
• Just Glad Tidings (1916)
• Life's Highway (1933)
• Living the Years (1949)
• Mother (1925)
• Over Here (1918)
• Poems for the Home Folks (1930)
• Rhymes of Childhood (1928)
• Sunny Songs (1920)
• The Friendly Way (1931)
• The Light of Faith (1926)
• The Passing Throng (1923)
• The Path to Home (1919)
• Today and Tomorrow (1942)
• When Day Is Done (1921)
• You (1927)