.
When Helen Keller Met Mark Twain
—a poem about America
Date: November 2, 1934, Place: New York City: Madison
Square Garden after Helen Keller delivers a speech
honoring the Salvation Army. An old reporter recognizes
one of the attendees.
You flatter me! It’s rare I’m asked to speak.
I’m no one known to history and yet
One of the few attendees still alive
Who saw and heard that special introduction.
My memory, I fear, is somewhat faded
But helped by sections of Miss Keller’s book.
So let me tell you all I can recall
About that consequential date and place
When two great icons first met face to face.
At that point Helen was still rather young
While Twain was one of our most famous sons.
It was quite cold—a rather gusty day
In early March of 1895.
We met at Laurence Hutton’s New York house—
A nice Manhattan brownstone—long since gone.
Imagine! That was forty years ago!
It was a different world—the Gilded Age.
A time which was more elegant and sage.
In those days Laurence was still occupied
As editor of Harper’s Magazine.
This was, I think, nine years before he died.
He had a nose for talent and keen minds
And hosted friends who glittered in the arts.
He liked me though I never found real fame.
I’d had some literary aspirations
But not enough for notoriety.
This lunch was meant for titans, not for me.
When Helen entered it was with her teacher,
Anne Sullivan, who one day Twain would say
Worked miracles. And as for Helen she
Was just 14 and rather plain. I fretted.
When meeting this poor girl, how should I act?
I walked on eggshells—but there was no need.
Her smile was bright and she was full of life!
Remarkably, her soul seemed much her own.
Of course, at this point she was not well-known.
Well, fame would come. This child was deaf and blind
From scarlet fever when she was a babe
In rural Alabama. From that time
Her eyes saw nothing and she had no words
Nor manners till Miss Sullivan was hired—
A teacher who could tug at Helen’s mind;
Who somehow pierced the silence and the dark
To teach this broken girl unmatched resilience,
And somehow tap her unexpected brilliance.
Throughout the luncheon those two sat as one.
Miss Sullivan did not leave Helen’s side
But used her hands and touch to translate all
As Helen’s fingers felt her lips and throat.
She “read” vibrations as if she could hear!
I was impressed at how alive she seemed,
How pleased that an adventure was at hand!
She showed such promise—such respect for knowledge—
One felt somehow she might yet manage college.
I vividly recall when he arrived—
It’s Mr. Clemens that I’m speaking of—
Mark Twain, our nation’s literary father!
To meet him was like meeting Uncle Sam!
A friend to presidents and financiers
Yet bruised by bankruptcy and shifting tastes.
At sixty he remained the well-loved writer
Who penned Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn,
And more. A wit with a sardonic grin.
How grand the way young Helen’s face lit up
When introduced to Twain! And what a joy
To see Twain soften. In fact he seemed smitten
With this young girl who’d pushed back at misfortune.
That day they somehow ended up good friends.
Twain raved about her to his wealthy patrons
And said her tale must edify the world!
When lunch was done she gave him an embrace
And I could see a tear roll down his face.
The years passed. Helen grew by leaps and bounds
And made enormous academic strides
As Twain worked as her advocate to get
Her schooling paid. He fundraised with this thought:
If any tale should have a happy ending
Then Helen Keller’s ought to top the list.
With Twain’s support, she graduated Radcliffe.
The first blind-deaf girl with an earned degree—
A most unique, acclaimed celebrity!
Her progress warmed Twain’s heart in his last years
As he received awards and final cheers
While giving aid to charitable works.
I heard he met Miss Keller two times more;
But no, I wasn’t there. And then of course
Twain died in 1910 just as he planned:
The sage was born when Halley’s comet came
In 1835. And, as Fate steered,
Twain died when Halley’s comet reappeared.
And as for Helen, she soon found her fame:
An activist, a zealous suffragette;
A heroine for people blind or deaf.
But she has said she never will forget
America’s great writer—that good man—
Her benefactor. More than that: her friend.
How strange that two such very different souls
From different backgrounds, each with ardent pride,
Should yet turn out to be so warmly tied.
But then I think: America! This land
Where anything at all can come to pass.
Where it’s not how you’re born, it’s what you do.
Where friends can gather, friends of every ilk
And kindle greatness in each other’s work!
For all with ears to hear and eyes to see,
This is the land of opportunity.
A place of miracles few can explain
So well as Helen Keller and Mark Twain!
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Poet’s Note
In March of 1895, fourteen-year-old Helen Keller met Samuel Clemens for the first time at a gathering at Laurence Hutton’s New York home. Hutton was the literary editor of Harper’s Magazine at the time. After being introduced to Clemens, Helen sat on a couch beside him while he began to recount some of his humorous tales. She listened by pressing her fingers across his lips.
From his autobiography, Twain’s own words about that first encounter: “I told her a long story, which she interrupted all along and in the right places, with cackles, chuckles and care-free bursts of laughter,” he recalled. “Then Miss Sullivan put one of Helen’s hands against her lips and spoke against it the question, ‘What is Mr. Clemens distinguished for?’ Helen answered, in her crippled speech, ‘For his humor.’ I spoke up modestly and said, ‘And for his wisdom.’ Helen said the same words instantly—‘and for his wisdom.’ I suppose it was mental telegraphy for there was no way for her to know what I had said.” From that initial encounter, an unlikely friendship began between an aging author and a brilliant young woman that would last beyond the years that Clemens would remain on this earth.
More on the friendship between Helen Keller and Mark Twain can be found here: https://www.openculture.com/2024/08/mark-twain-and-helen-kellers-special-friendship.html
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Brian Yapko is a retired lawyer whose poetry has appeared in over fifty journals. He is the winner of the 2023 SCP International Poetry Competition. Brian is also the author of several short stories, the science fiction novel El Nuevo Mundo and the gothic archaeological novel Bleeding Stone. He lives in Wimauma, Florida.
Well-researched and balanced. Appreciate the effort behind this.
Thank you very much, Nikhil. The research here was a labor of love since I’ve long admired Helen Keller and had hoped someday to write a poem about her. However, she is not a subject one would normally think of as “poetic” — particularly since imagery and sound are a loaded subject when writing of someone who was blind and deaf. The discovery of her friendship with Mark Twain gave me a situational “hook” into being able to write about her poetically. Without him, I don’t think the poem could work.
Brian, I love the twelve blank-verse stanzas with the closure of rhyming couplets. They present the narrative material in perfect sections. each marked off by that small touch of rhyme.
This is a dramatic monologue of pure narration, and you present a “silent interlocutor” in the epigraph, thus allowing the speaker to give his story fully and clearly, and we the readers then become the silent interlocutor, quietly listening to this old man’s reminiscences about Keller and Twain. It’s a perfect structure for the presentation of an account of the relationship between the young girl and the older writer, in the words of a third party,
A lot of wonderful atmosphere and tone pervade the poem — New York City in the Gilded Age, a world of elegance and high literacy, the delicacy and uncertainty of the speaker’s first encounter with Keller, the aura of great celebrity around Twain, the immediacy of how Keller and Twain took to each other, and how this linkage lasted for years with Keller’s deep respect for the man, and his energetic support for her. All of it flows smoothly and fluently in this piece — never boring, never slack, never repetitive. I read the poem straight through once, without any desire to stop, and then re-read it slowly, to savor every perfect line.
This is a very welcome piece of work — a poem that takes a small and perhaps forgotten bit of American history and brings it to vivid life again. Putting the whole thing in the voice of an unnamed and presumably unknown writer who had attended the 1895 meeting is a fine creative stroke. It suggests that while we are well aware of famous persons and their acts, they can be much more real and intense for us when we hear about them from third parties who are NOT historically remembered. That is part of the magic of the dramatic monologue as a form.
Thank you very much, Joe. I’m thrilled that you like this piece – it’s a bit of tonal departure for me. I usually aim for more emotional expression whereas this piece is almost purely historical and somewhat emotionally detached due to the journalistic third-person point of view.
You are correct – the speaker is purely fictional but seemed essential to making this poem work. I had set myself the task of writing a poem about Helen Keller some time ago but could not figure out how to make it work. A pure narration without any personal emotion at all would have been detached and boring. Add to that the really problematic question of how do you write about someone who is deaf and blind without having the poem lapse into either terrible taste or absurdity? As someone who favors dramatic monologues, I sadly had to immediately rule out a monologue in Helen Keller’s voice. It could have been presented as a fantasy space, I suppose, but I think it would have been eye-rollingly weird. Then I considered Anne Sullivan as speaker and that might have worked better. But I didn’t want her calling herself “the miracle worker.” That was Mark Twain’s moniker for her and it stuck (as we all know from the 1962 eponymous movie.) And Twain in fact was the solution. I read about her relationship with Twain and was fascinated by the idea of these two icons meeting face to face. They represent such different aspects of American history and society. And that was the key. This wasn’t a poem about Helen Keller; it was a poem about America.
I still had to figure out the speaker and finally decided not to do Mark Twain (too distinctive a voice and who died too early) or Laurence Hutton (who also died too young to see the story through) so I invented the old luncheon attendee who could give the story some emotional heft as well as the objectivity of being a third party and who could place the events looking backwards in their historic Gilded Age milieu from the much more familiar setting of the Great Depression. I am so very, very pleased that you approved my choice of speaker since I did not know how else to make this piece work without it really lapsing into bathos or drama. Your take on the voice being more powerful from a character who is NOT remembered strikes me as intensely perceptive. “Magic…?” I hope so. But a lot more sweat and anxious starting-over-from-the-drawing-board than magic.
As for the form of the poem, much of what I say above is relevant. Again, how poeticize a subject who is deaf and blind? Clearly, rigorous rhyme would be absurd – perhaps even an affront. It helped that the unnamed speaker has a literary background because that at least allows the poem to be written in iambic pentameter as blank verse. Those rhyming couplets were intended as a nod to the literary background of the poem – Harpers Magazine, Mark Twain, the elegance of the Gilded Age. And they did allow for a punchy end to each stanza. Blank verse can sometimes be quite dull without the eye having rhymed lines to look forward to.
Once again, Joe, thank you so much for this appreciative and insightful comment! (I am hopeful this reply gets through on the website since it seems that comments are randomly defying getting posted. Hopefully, those bugs will get worked out!)
Brian, what an interesting and well-executed poem, both in form and subject matter! I love the concept of a stanza of blank verse concluded by a rhyming couplet— haven’t seen that before, and you made it work so well! I have always been a fan of Helen Keller— I read her autobiography many times, and I remember seeing a broadcast of her talking on my little bedroom black and white TV when I was a little girl in the 1960s. I have watched “The Miracle Worker” many times throughout my life and within the last year I read “The World I Live In” and “Optimism.” As with the Founding Fathers, there was a convergence of incredible intelligence when Helen Keller met both Mark Twain and Thomas Edison. Fortuitous kismet! I sometimes feel that the great among us always find each other out, like a unseen resonance, an alignment of mutual force of fate or destiny. I truly enjoyed your take on this unique piece of American history and appreciated being able to read it very much!!!
Dear Theresa, I’m absolutely delighted that you enjoyed my piece on Helen Keller. You obviously know far more about her than I do, so I’m especially glad that you feel I’ve done her justice. My interest in her started as a child when I first saw the film “The Miracle Worker” with Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke. (I was especially intrigued to learn that it was Mark Twain who first dubbed Miss Sullivan “Miracle Worker.”)
I had no idea that Helen Keller knew Thomas Edison so I’ve just looked it up and there it is! He apparently felt a connect with her by virtue of his increasing deafness. By the 1920s, Helen had become a very famous person. She espoused causes I don’t especially cotton to (socialism, for one) but I don’t think it meant the same thing in those days as it does now with the benefit of 20th Century tragedy behind us. I agree about your idea the great will seek each other out. Helen was much sought after because of her remarkable achievements. And this, in turn, allowed for all kinds of unexpected blessings. I know, for example, that Helen was invited to Japan in the 1930s and was gifted a pair of Akita dogs. It is a strange bit of trivia to learn that Helen Keller is credited with introducing (or at least popularizing) this dog breed in America.
Because of your obvious love for the subject, Theresa, I thought I’d share with you a video I came across from 1928 (a talkie) in which the Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller describe how Helen learned to speak. It’s an incredible slice of history! https://youtu.be/KLqyKeMQfmY?si=j9xE0slLx6HlUMpz
It is equally intriguing to think of the history that Helen was part of. She knew Mark Twain in the 1890s, yet here is a video of her meeting President John F. Kennedy in 1961. What an amazing woman! https://youtu.be/KLqyKeMQfmY?si=j9xE0slLx6HlUMpz
Thank you Brian for sharing the video of Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller! I had seen in before in the past but it was lovely to see it again!! We really should add Annie Sullivan to the “convergence of brilliance”– she was a genius and highly gifted in her own right. Unfortunately you posted the same video twice, but I think this might be the video of Helen meeting President Kennedy that you were thinking about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqHdEPaUP6w
Thanks again for your poem!!
What a great story that you somehow retrieved out of the mists of time. I can only imagine the depth of your knowledge and what you have been reading to bring this to light!
Thank you very much indeed, Roy. I would love to claim a “depth of knowledge” about the subjects of this poem but, alas, mine is the knowledge of a dilettante at best, gleaned from the film “The Miracle Worker”, a few YouTube videos about Helen Keller and several articles that I read about her and Mark Twain. I do actually know more about Mark Twain, since I’ve read biographies of him and most of his books. He seems to be the more controversial of the two these days, largely because of the politically incorrect language he used in “Huckleberry Finn” (especially the “N” word) but which was frank and accurate for the period. Was he supposed to prognosticate 21st Century liberal sensitivities while writing about 1840’s antebellum Missouri from his home in 1880’s Hartford, Connecticut? It is an impossible standard. I believe if one is writing about a period of history, it is ridiculous to graft modern sensibilities and sensitivities onto historical figures and periods. It is a mistake to try to judge Mark Twain by the sensitive liberal standards of Stephen King.
This is a beautiful, layered, tale in verse. I am very moved by it. Thank you for sharing it and expressing that wonderful sentiment expressed in the last three lines.
Thank you so much, Rohini! I’m so glad you found it moving — especially the manifest — and heartfelt — patriotism presented in those final lines. America is a great country and has never stopped being a great country, despite what the haters say, especially the haters who seem desperate to stay here despite all of this country’s supposed failings.
Another fascinating piece of history that I knew nothing about. I was taught about Keller’s heroism when I was young. If her story is taught today, it is probably one of the oppressive evils of our country rather than being about this being “a place of miracles few can explain, so well as Helen Keller and Mark Twain”
Well done.
Thank you very much, Warren! Helen Keller was considered a heroine and then an institution for most of her life (she died in 1968.) In some ways — and if the modern world actually studied history — it would seem like Helen Keller was a poster child for progressive causes — disabled, a suffragette feminist, a socialist. And yet there is an entire generation of young people who don’t know who she was. I think they’d have a hard time figuring out a reason to cancel her, though.
On the other hand, as I mentioned in a comment above, Mark Twain is routinely reviled by the Progressive Left even though he spoke for the common man in so many ways. “Huckleberry Finn” is often put on forbidden book lists because of the “N” word (which is what they would have used linguistically in 1840s Missouri, so it doesn’t make any sense. It’s historically accurate.) But Mark Twain was a highly progressive figure in the late 19th Century. That the left keeps cancelling their greatest potential historical symbols never fails to surprise me. “Never mind that Lincoln freed the slaves. He was a Republican and he treated the Indians badly. Therefore, cancel him!” Idiotic, moronic and so short-sighted.
Brian, your gift for narrative poetic magic continues to flow as smoothly and deliciously as butter melting on a hot griddle cake! And what an insightful and inspiring story you have woven for us. It has been a long time since I have given thought to the glory that was Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan. How sad that her (their) story has been so neglected in these less gilded times. Even Sam Clemens’ genius has suffered from the slings and arrows of outrageous wokedom, and it delights me that you have chosen to so elegantly remind (or enlighten) us that these two (three) great minds were so symbiotically intertwined.
Thank you very much indeed, James! I appreciate the compliment of “narrative poetic magic.” You’d be surprised if you knew how much elbow grease, false-starts, anxious editing and constant neurotic rewriting went into this piece. It takes a lot of work to make something look effortless! I’m very pleased that I was able to remind you and others of Helen Keller’s amazing story along with that of her “miracle worker” teacher. I agree fully — it is indeed sad that they are not nearly as remembered and honored as they should be. At least Mark Twain has a secure place as the “father of American literature.”
And now I’m obsessing on your mention of butter melting on a hot griddle cake. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a compliment so much! I think I must be hungry. Thank you again, James!