La Poesia: "The Pumpkin" by John Whittier

Born in 1807, John Greenleaf Whittier was an American Quaker poet who is especially remembered for his abolitionist activities. He was greatly influenced by the Scottish poet, Robert Burns, and is considered a member of the Fireside Poets group. Along with other American poets, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., the Fireside Poets were the first American poets whose popularity rivaled that of British poets, both at home and abroad. Their works centered around themes of ordinary, daily life and domesticity as well as messages of morality, all topics that could be read together and discussed around the family fireplace in the evening. Sometimes referred to as the “schoolroom” or “household” poets, this collection of 19th-century American men was especially associated with New England.(1) Ralph Waldo Emerson is also sometimes included in this group.

Whittier’s five stanza poem, “The Pumpkin,” is a good example of the type of content that interested the Fireside Poets and is the perfect poem to turn to around Thanksgiving time. In it, Whittier contemplates the pumpkin, that humble, orange gourd of fall. Using it as a symbol for feasting and fraternity, Whittier remarks on how people from different cultures and parts of the world, like Spain, Cuba, and New England, all come together to share a meal with the pumpkin at the center. He uses the pumpkin not just to dwell on the fruitfulness and abundance of the natural world, but also on the real dependence of humans to the fruit of the fields and our interconnectedness.

But it’s not just the people who come from all four corners of the world that Whittier says come to the feast. It’s also all parts of ourselves, our complete person from childhood to old age. We bring our memories of the past, starting with our earliest recollections, through to who we are today. In the present, we notice the loving hands that transform the pumpkin into something cut up and shared, into the ubiquitous pie of the Thanksgiving table. And at this table, “the broken links of affection are restored.” Old hurts are forgiven, old injuries forgotten. Those seated around the table have hearts filled with gratitude and mouths too full of the fruits of the earth to even utter the prayers that they feel. The Thanksgiving feast, orchestrated by the humble pumpkin, becomes a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, the Supper of the Lamb.

The poem ends with a heartfelt wish for those who prepared the meal and who are enjoying it together. It’s a simple prayer, lovingly offered, for a life as sweet and an ending as happy as the “golden-tinted and fair” pumpkin pie. Beautiful words for a beautiful holiday. Happy Thanksgiving!

Footnotes:

Information on Whittier and the Fireside Poets comes from America’s Fireside Poets — Excellence in Literature by Janice Campbell