Guest Author - Linda Sue Grimes

Born in 1813 in Salem, Massachusetts, to Lydia Very and Captain Jones Very, the future poet Jones Very has received little attention for his poetry until recently. His parents were first cousins, who never married. His father, Captain Very, spent little time with his family, but when the younger Very was nine years old, the sea captain did take his son on a voyage to Kronborg Castle, on which Shakespeare modeled the castle of Elsinore in The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. This voyage greatly influenced the young Jones Very, who later in his life would write many sonnets that are obviously inspired by Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Despite growing up in poverty Jones Very was a good student and was accepted by Harvard, from which he graduated second in his class. He decided to become a Unitarian minister/poet and became engrossed in his studies. He read with great interest the poetry of the Romantics both British and German, and he became totally enthralled by the works of that great bard William Shakespeare. He enjoyed Lord Byron but for a short while, later rejecting Byron as he grew deeper in his faith. His mother had embraced atheism, a stance which Very vehemently rejected, and he could not abide even the questioning of a divine force, as he had found happening in the works of Byron.

Before he graduated from Harvard, Very underwent a transformation that has been variously labeled crazy and eccentric, and biographer Edwin Gittleman explains Very’s state of mind this way:

During this period he purchased his ticket to the ascetic train which was to carry him to the end of the line, the eventual obliteration of self and immersion in the will of God.

Very became so entrenched in his claims of holiness that he alienated many of those who had been his admirers. Emerson felt he had taken the basic ideals of Transcendentalism too far, and Reverend Upham had Very committed to McLean Hospital in Charlestown. He was soon released because the hospital administrators realized they could not change him, and they also insisted that he was not dangerous to himself or others.

As did Walt Whitman, Jones Very enlisted the aid of that master Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson recognized in Very a unique talent, and when asked to help Very edit a volume of poems and essays for publication, Emerson agreed to do so, despite that fact that Very was reluctant to follow Emerson’s guidance.

The volume appeared, titled Essays and Poems by Jones Very which included Very’s essays “Shakespeare” and “Hamlet.” Emerson reviewed the volume in the Dial; however, it received little attention.

The following sonnet will give you an example of Very’s style; you will notice that it is a Shakespearean sonnet:

Soul-Sickness

How many of the body's health complain,
When they some deeper malady conceal;
Some unrest of the soul, some secret pain,
Which thus its presence doth to them reveal.
Vain would we seek, by the physician's aid,
A name for this soul-sickness e'er to find;
A remedy for health and strength decayed,
Whose cause and cure are wholly of the mind
To higher nature is the soul allied,
And restless seeks its being's Source to know;
Finding not health nor strength in aught beside;
How often vainly sought in things below,
Whether in sunny clime, or sacred stream,
Or plant of wondrous powers of which we dream!

For more information about the poet:
American Transcendentalism Web
Selected Poetry of Jones Very

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Books by Linda Sue Grimes:
Jiggery-Jee's Eden Valley Stories
Singing in the Silence: Poems of Faith
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