The Magpie Sings the Great Depression:
Selections from DeWitt Clinton High School's Literary Magazine, 1929-1942

Scarcity, by Saul Lishinsky (January 1940)

Lament

By Vernice Wilson

Many people view the Great Depression as a period of economic and social turmoil. However, it is likely that the Great Depression had a different meaning to the people who were affected directly by this awful fate. One can but imagine the feeling of devastation when people were told that their jobs were gone, they were being evicted, or that there was not enough money to support their family. Today we wonder, what was it like to wake up one day with nothing? How did they survive? How could they continue? For these people, no words could ever really express the grim reality known as the Great Depression. We look to the writers of the DeWitt Clinton Magpie for expressions of people's nostalgia for the past.

In his poem Lament, Randolph G. Goodman describes some of the events of the Great Depression. The first two lines of each stanza describe the way people may have viewed life although it was in contrast to reality. Lines one, two, thirteen and fourteen "Sweet the water— / Bitter to taste" and "Fair the breezes— / Harsh to hear" explain the lack of acknowledgement of the approaching disaster. The poem exhibits the sweetness of the economic boom of the 1920's, which in actuality was a house with a foundation built on sinking sand.

The second lines in Goodman's poem reveal the feelings of people once the events of the Great Depression had occurred. Lines three, four, seven, and eight describe the overwhelming despair. "In a world submerged / In a maelstrom of haste" and "From workaday deeps / Depths unhappy, unfree." Through these lines the reader begins to grasp a new concept that is developing. The world was taken by storm because of economic boom of the 1920's. From the depths of the Great Depression people began believed this was a time to truly work for financial prosperity. In this last stanza Goodman to makes a vivid statement. "Sweet this Life— / God! To feel / Held tight to a rack, / Fettered fast to a wheel." Life during the 1920's may have had the illusion of sweetness, but the bleak reality of the 1930's "held tight" to the people.

Poem, by Robert S. Warshaw, uncovers the aftermath of the devastation through the feelings of the people who lived through the events of the Great Depression. His opening line, "I walked one day / In the Garden of Wasted Things" reveals his belief that many people in the 1920's squandered their money, time and devotion to self-gain. In this "garden," Warshow came across "bitter ghosts of all that had been spent unwisely" lamenting the loss of time spent pursuing vanity of the 1920's. He ponders the losses of the working class whose lives were destroyed through "brutal circumstances."

Hand Out, Harold Altman (January 1940)

In lines 7-17, he describes the discoveries of "childhood's unknown youth some man squandered, poets genius unrecognized... ghost of idle words and small talk, smothered hopes, destroyed dreams and laughter that had died for lack of bread." In these lines he describes the wide scale devastation of the Great Depression. He empathizes with the children who had lost their security and protection when their families lost their home. He criticizes the men who had nothing to show for their years of being because they wasted their time with pursuing material gains. He sympathizes with those whose talents were never fully developed or expressed. He looks down upon those who gossiped and spent their time engaged in fashion and other insignificant matters. He mourns the crashed dreams and good times that ended because the Depression had struck and the people went hungry.

In lines 18-22 Warshow "met with all the lives that had been misdirected, and spoke with dreary shades of loves that might have been and songs that never had been sung." In these lines he mourns the lost dreams and aspirations of people who would never achieve them. Through lines 23-27 Warshow "met with all these ghosts and many more; and each of them sat silently in the shadows, brooding over quirks of mad Creation, and puppets dreams." The ghosts in this poem, as some people, blamed God for their fate.

The writers of The Magpie expressed feelings shared by many people of nostalgia for the past and hopes to return to the yesteryears of promise. Warshow's Poem, describes the people's reaction to the downfall after years of prosperity. They wanted to relive the past yet in many ways they blamed God for the Great Depression. Instead of acknowledging the fact that many were responsible for their own downfall, it was easiest to make God the scapegoat. Lament, by Randolph G. Goodman, shows a more realistic perspective. It is true that they would of liked to return to the previous years however, they know that was completely impossible. Instead of brooding over the past they would pick up the pieces and carry on with their lives.

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