Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931), American "folk" poet, is best known for his poems about Johnny Appleseed and for "The Congo," which uses syncopated jazz rhythms.

Vachel Lindsay was born in Springfield, Ill. He studied at Hiram College in Ohio, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the New York School of Art. He lived as a modern-day troubadour, selling poems and drawings as he traveled. His Swedenborgian religious background was strengthened by his personal rediscovery of the 18th-century Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. Many of Lindsay's poems echo the work of the English poet William Blake, in diction and theme, particularly the poems about children, poor people, and the immanence of divinity. Lindsay's literary "litany of heroes" included American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman.

Lindsay's poetry exuded patriotic and democratic exuberance and optimism. He was hailed by many contemporary poets, particularly Edgar Lee Masters and Amy Lowell, and contemporary...