But fellows, I was brought up on the bays
and in the woods near Tillamook —and fate's
recalled me, drawn me to my rightful mates,
the hemlock rafts, the woods and waterways.
The wind is fresh out where the logs are tied;
the river's like a springy, swishy mat.
My punch that used to knock the heavies out
now takes the forest champions for a ride.
I swing a wicked peavey, spit for spat,
and challenge hemlock giants to a bout.
25
EDWIN T. REED
Edwin T. Reed is editor of publications at Oregon State College. He was born in River Falls, Wisconsin, on September 15, 1872, and was class poet of his high school graduating class in 1891. At the University of Minnesota, where he was graduated in 1895, he was literary editor of the Minnesota Magazine and author of the senior class play, Olympia Up to Date, printed and produced by the class at the Metropolitan Opera House in Minneapolis. He attended Harvard University from 1895 to 1896, taking work with such well-known English professors as Barrett Wendell and G. L. Kittredge. He was a reporter on the Minneapolis Tribune and associate editor of the River Falls Journal before taking up teaching as a profession. He was superintendent of schools at Rushford and Cloquet in Minnesota from 1898 to 1902 and head of the English department of Minnesota State Teachers College at Moorhead from 1902 to 1912, coming that year to Corvallis to join the faculty of Oregon State College. He is the author of a large number of bulletins, including Uses of Literary Masterpieces in the Study of History, The Trail Blazers, Occupations for the Agriculturally Trained, and A Liberal and Practical Education. From 1921 to 1928 he was associate editor of American Educational Digest, later the School Executives' Magazine, and from 1927 to 1928 was associate editor of Oregon, The State Magazine. He has contributed to numerous periodicals and is the author of three books of verse: Inland Windfalls, 1898; Lyrics, 1900; and The Open Hearth, Oregon and western poems, 1927. He has about 100 additional Oregon poems which he is grouping for publication under the general title The Promised Land.
