Who is Claudia Lewis?
The latest M83 album “Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming” was just released this week. It features a couple of songs titled after proper names, such as “Steve McQueen” and “Claudia Lewis”. Surely there’s no need to question who Steve McQueen is, but who is Claudia Lewis? Today, eMusic hosted a Q&A on Twitter where one person asked this very same question. Anthony’s answer was:
“I was surfing the web & found this website with space poems - Claudia Lewis had 3-4 space poems on this site. They were pretty bad space poems but I found it super moving, there was something very innocent about it. She’s probably super young like 12 or 14 but I don’t know her or how she looks or anything about her. I just know that she writes cheesy space poems.” [1] [2] [3]
After the Q&A was over, I immediately fired up the Google engines, as any normal person looking for excuses to procrastinate would do, and I found out a couple of very interesting things:
- Claudia Louise Lewis was born on October 14, 1907 in Corvallis, Oregon. She’s still alive
- She got a bachelor’s degree from Reed College in 1930, a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota in 1943, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1959
- Taught language arts, children’s literature, and writing for children at Bank Street College of Education in New York
- She was interested in space and published the works “When I Go to the Moon” (1961) and “Poems for Earth and Space” (1967) about the subject
- “Poems Of Earth And Space” (1967) was one of the earliest books of verse to highlight space
- Since 1998, Bank Street College has given out the “Claudia Lewis Poetry Award” and they also named their reference research collection after her
Claudia Lewis leaping outside of a log cabin. Knoxville, TN. 1959. By Susan Williams. Via Emory University: The Highlander Folk School Exhibition
Her poems are scarce online but I was able to find this one published as part of the “Poems Of Earth And Space” book.
Earth, Moon, and Sun
By Claudia Lewis
While the earth spins on,
Turning, turning
Toward the sun,
The moon floats by
In its circle
In our sky.
And while it floats,
Earth and moon, two in one,
Rush on
With the bright planets
In a ring
Around the sun.
And as they rush
And swing
And turn
The gases of the sun
Swirl
And burn.
Don’t know about you but I could definitely read that poem while listening to “Lower Your Eyelids to Die with the Sun”.
So there you go, mystery solved!
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