1922: “Chinook” and “rebuke” rhyme in this doggerel poem
Do you suppose Philander Johnson was a pen name?
Here’s one of the very few times “Chinook” and “totem pole” went together within a few words of each other.
Only in a culturally inaccurate & insensitive poem from thousands of miles away from the Pacific Northwest would you find this stuff…Seriously, rhyming “Chinook” with “rebuke”!?
SHOOTING STARS.
BY PHILANDER JOHNSON.The Totem Pole.
I chanced to meet an old Chinook.
His diction merited rebuke.
He lifted up a wheezy chant
In an attempt to be gallant.
He cried, “Oh, see the painted face
Of squaw who stands in public place:
All rigid is her vacant stare.
You’d think a sculptor carved the hair
Which hinges just above her ears!
Her pose so angular appears
That various lines, both bad and good,
Seem to be chopped from solid wood:
And yet for me she has such charm,
My beating heart feels new alarm.
I say, ‘Oh, idol of my soul,
You are my human totem pole.””
— from the Washington (DC) Evening Star of November 7, 1922, page 6, column 3
Well, there it is.
