Tegan  00:07

Welcome back to Revere House Radio. I’m Tegan Kehoe, and my guest today is Regie Gibson. In May 2025, he was sworn in as the poet laureate for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And in November, as part of the Paul Revere House’s year long commemoration of the Midnight Ride, we hosted a concert which featured Regie as the emcee, and he also performed an original poem about Revere and his legacy. And at that point, I realized he’d be a great fit for the podcast as well. Welcome to the show, Regie.

 

Regie  00:33

Oh, thank you, Tegan. Glad to be here.

 

Tegan  00:35

Glad to have you here. So to set the stage for our conversation, I’d like to share for the listeners the story of the first time that we very briefly met, which you may or may not remember. But it was one of those hectic days at the Paul Revere House. There was a problem, not in our building, but that was threatening to affect our building, and it was contained, but it was a sewage issue. And it had reached the point — I was talking with several contractors — It reached the point where it was time sensitive, and I needed to give my boss, our executive director, an update. But she was having a Zoom meeting with you. (Laughs)

 

Regie  01:06

Oh, ok. (Laughs)

 

Tegan  01:07

And so I was in the position of…I had to knock upstairs and say, you know, “I’m sorry to interrupt. This is time sensitive.” And we hadn’t met before, and I think this was one of your early conversations with people at the Paul Revere House. And so I was, you know, just feeling a little worried. It’s not like interrupting an internal meeting. You know, we had a quick chat. She got the update she needed, and, you know, I apologized again. And you said, “oh, I always like to be here when shit gets real.”

 

Regie  01:32

(Laughs) I remember that.

 

Tegan  01:34

And I thought, you know…yeah! You completely rolled with it. And thankfully, the shit didn’t get any more real than that update.

 

Regie  01:40

(Laughs)

 

Tegan  01:41

That…the situation stayed contained. But, you know, I think that’s, I imagine, an attitude that really serves you well in your role as a poet and as someone who’s doing poetry very much in public. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself as a poet and about your career so far?

 

Regie  01:56

Sure. Well, I’m…I was born in Mississippi in the 1960s and we moved to Chicago. My family, my mom and dad, moved to Chicago to eke out a better life, and they left me with my grandmother in Mississippi for a little about a year or so. And then they brought me up in 1968 or so. And it’s funny, my family was just getting there at the time when the cities were burning down. And this was right after King had gotten, you know, assassinated. And so it was, it was a tough time, I would imagine, you know, for my parents. But the streets of Chicago is, is home to me, and it nurtured me. And I think it was also mitigated — the toughness of it — by the fact that we went back and forth to Mississippi several times a year. My earliest memory with connecting to poetry came through my great grandfather, Robert Jordan, who was a railway worker. And he was what you would call the caller. The caller is the individual who would sing out the songs while the other men would hit the, you know, the spike on the head. And…I didn’t realize until later on that he was illiterate. And so what he did was he spent a lot of time creating poems and songs, verse and stories, as not only ways of entertaining, but as mnemonic devices, gateways for him to remember and have access to his experience. And once I understood that — you know, I always was enthralled by it, because he would tell us these stories — but I was in…when I really understood that he could not write, and that he had to memorize, and that he had to create strictly from his imagination and order what his life had had become, I think that was the moment that it really hit me of what words can do and and how they’re said can be a way of passing on feeling and intensity and and history as well. History of the voice as well. And so that’s where it started for me. And I kept on with it throughout school and, and began to mix in all sorts of other musical influences, as well as reading a lot. I was a big Shakespeare geek even when I was younger. And I’d come through it because, you know, it was a certain point at my…when I was a young man, I found myself in love with this part of the universe that tends to express itself as female, and I could not figure out how to make that part of the universe express anything toward me. And then my mother brought home a box of books, one of which contained the complete works of William Shakespeare. And being the horny 13 year old I was, I went to Romeo and Juliet, and that was the only thing I really knew. But I didn’t know it. So I started reading it, and I found this passage, whereas Romeo sees Juliet and he, he goes, “O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright/It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night/ like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear/Beauty too rich for use for Earth too dear.” And he goes on, and later it hit me: this, this urging that he has — this thing he cannot explain, this reaching out — has to find its way in language, and that language was poetry.

 

Tegan  05:06

Yeah, yeah.

 

Regie  05:07

Right? And it began, and I think that’s when it solidified, for me, this way of…if you can’t make the the unseen seen immediately, you can make the unseen heard. And if you make the unseen heard and in a way that is evocative, it can become seen. Right? And so I think that, for me, is what started me along this trajectory toward this scribblers road, you know, we walk down.

 

Tegan  05:34

Yeah, that’s wonderful. Yeah, that’s that’s an amazing couple of stories there. And can you tell us a little bit more about the poet laureate role?

 

Regie  05:42

Sure.

 

Tegan  05:42

Since you’re the first one for Massachusetts, have you been a part of shaping what that role looks like here? Or, because there are so many you know, other poet laureates, is it kind of defined?

 

Regie  05:51

Sure. (Laughs) It’s a good question. I mean, I’m doing my best to contribute as much as I can and support. If any of my fellow poets laureate need something of me from Massachusetts, I try to do my best to support that, because they’ve been doing the work before we had a state poet laureate, and so those are folks who’ve had their ear to the ground in their various communities. And many of them have gone through multiple poets laureate so, so hearing what experience that they’ve had passed on, and what they might ask of me, is something that I’m trying to keep my ear open to. And as far as contribution, yes, one doesn’t really know that til it’s done.

 

Tegan  06:31

Right.

 

Regie  06:32

You know, I didn’t want to come in with with anything that was prescribed, you know. I wanted to have, and I have a space of listening and hearing from other people what is, what is necessary in their particular areas. You know, for instance, what is needed in Billerica is not what’s needed in Cambridge.

 

Tegan  06:49

Right.

 

Regie  06:49

You know. So one doesn’t want to come in and go “haikus for all!” You know? (Laughs)

 

Tegan  06:53

Right.

 

Regie  06:53

It’s just…it doesn’t work that way. One place might need something that deals more with with immigration, and poetry around that, and help with that. And others might, might have communities in which they have a fair amount of elders, you know, who are suffering from this, this epidemic of loneliness. And so listening to what those concerns are better helps me to help, or contribute as much as I can, to whatever the poets on the ground tell me is, is needed in their community.

 

Tegan  07:22

Yeah, yeah, that’s great. And can you speak a little bit more about kind of the…what the, the work looks like.

 

Regie  07:26

Sure.

 

Tegan  07:28

Are you performing poetry at events? Are you teaching poetry workshops? Are you, you know, what…how are you interacting with, with people?

 

Regie  07:36

Yes. There’s a lot of events that tend to happen. Some of them state, some of them private, some of them have to do with whoever would call me up from whatever organization they might be working with. Sometimes the idea is — usually is — to be the ambassador for poetry. To come there, maybe say a few words about poetry and its ability to connect us as as people. Just the last couple of weeks, there was a lot of the MLK programming that went on, and I probably had anywhere from eight to ten events. Most of them had different aspects of what King’s legacy was that they would have wanted some, some focus on. And so it involves, you know, looking up poems, also maybe writing poems, thinking about how to contextualize poems, to deal with whatever those themes are. There is showing up at other artistic events as well to see about how poetry can also be there, or what inroads there may be between poetry and those other artistic events; meeting with with various members of, of business councils to talk about how we might use poetry and other arts to help also boost the bottom line; There are other things that…some of the things I’m really connected to, is how to use — what I like to call — how can poets become “secular priests” involved in the creation of spaces where we can exercise sacred citizenship.

 

Tegan  09:00

Mmm…yeah!

 

Regie  09:01

And, and at this point in, in our nation’s history, I’m thinking that we need to recommit ourselves to the better aspects of what citizenship is, and maybe think about that in more spiritual ways than individualistic ways, as we’ve often tended to do.

 

Tegan  09:17

Yeah, yeah, that’s great. And we’re recording this in February, and just last week, I went to the official stamp unveiling for Phyllis Wheatley’s postage stamp-

 

Regie  09:28

Ah, yes. Great, yes.

 

Tegan  09:29

-which was held at Old South Meeting House, which was both a civic space and a literal religious space during the revolution-

 

Regie  09:36

Right, yes.

 

Tegan  09:36

-and is now part of Revolutionary Spaces, another history nonprofit. And I was struck at the time by the ways in which, kind of, civic religion was being…was playing out there in…I’d never been to a stamp unveiling before, so I didn’t know to expect-

 

Regie  09:53

Yes, right. I think we might have two photos…two paintings of her, I think, right?

 

Tegan  09:53

Sure.

 

Tegan  09:53

-you know, a color guard. And there was, you know, a little moment where they literally unveiled a large depiction of this stamp, which was not the first time any of us had seen it, because it was also on our programs. And it was, it was a very ceremonial unveiling, because it wasn’t new visual information.

 

Tegan  10:14

Yeah. And so this one was modeled on one of the ones from her lifetime.

 

Regie  10:18

Sure.

 

Tegan  10:18

And I thought it was very cool, because the one from her lifetime, she’s not looking at the viewer. But the modern rendering of it that the stamp was based on, by Carrie James Marshall, has her looking straight out at the viewer. But because this particular element of civic religion, or civic spirituality, was about a poet — because Phyllis Wheatley is a poet — poetry was a part of that event as well.

 

Regie  10:39

Absolutely.

 

Tegan  10:39

And I thought that it was especially poignant. So I think it’s cool that you, you brought that up, because that’s something, kind of, that I’ve been mulling over since that event.

 

Regie  10:50

Right. Yeah, great. Thank you for sharing that.

 

Tegan  10:51

Yeah. And so you mentioned bringing poetry into other types of events. And, of course, that was one of your roles in the concert that I mentioned at the beginning.

 

Regie  11:01

Sure.

 

Tegan  11:01

So for our listeners, we called this event “A Revolutionary Concert,” and it had a number of featured musicians playing both music that was popular in Paul Revere’s time and music that’s been written in the past 250 years inspired by Paul Revere’s ride. You wove those different performances by different musicians together with some historical context about the pieces, and about Paul Revere as a person, and as a part of American myth.

 

Regie  11:26

Yes.

 

Tegan  11:26

Can you talk about how you prepared for hosting this concert and how much you felt that you knew about Paul Revere going into this project?

 

Regie  11:34

Sure. Well, for me, I felt that the concert, for — no pun intended –was historic. In the sense it was happening at the Tremont Temple, which is also an historic place, which is where, I believe that, one of the places Frederick Douglas wrote about once the Emancipation Proclamation was read, and he spoke about what was happening there at Tremont Temple. And to be in, again, another religious space-

 

Tegan  11:56

Right.

 

Regie  11:56

-in which, in which civic action has taken place, that was not lost on me: the history of that moment. To prepare for it, I only felt that I knew slightly more than the average person, perhaps, about Paul Revere going in. I of course read the Longfellow poem. And, living in Boston, near Boston, and having seen depictions, and going and looking at history, I knew that there were some things about it that, that were not completely correct.

 

Tegan  12:23

Right.

 

Regie  12:23

It was more legend than it actually was history. But we accept that! And so to prepare for that, I had to…I typically go into…I have a tripartite way of preparation. And it is either “head, heart, hands” or “heart, head, hands.” And let me explain what that is. If I’m coming into something and I have to do a bunch of research for it in order for me to access it, then I do that research. I take my notes. And after I’ve collected — that would be the head part, the cerebral thinking par — and after I’ve done all that, then I try to relate: “What would a person feel in this situation? Who…how is an individual responding to these facts? What is it that I myself can identify with that, that can give me some sort of empathy with, with the individual expressed?” And so that becomes the hard part.

 

Tegan  13:19

Yeah.

 

Regie  13:19

And sometimes those are switched! If it’s something that hits me directly in the heart, and I begin to go from an experiential space, I have to go about informing those feelings with facts.

 

Tegan  13:28

Right.

 

Tegan  13:28

Right.

 

Regie  13:28

And other times, have to inform those facts with feelings. Once I’ve done that, and I’ve sat with it a while, and I’ve looked through it and gone back over it, then it begins to become “okay, so what is going to be the hands part?” But by that, that’s a metaphor for the form-making ability: “What…how is this going to be forged into something that is going to be able to be rendered and given back to people in a way that is intelligible?” So I knew after, after that, that this evening needed to have both feel and fact. It had to take several elements. Music was a “feel” part of it. But the “feel” part of it, which was musical, also had to be informed by the factual part of it-

 

Regie  13:29

-which is where this music comes from and, you know, what it, what it meant to people at the time. But at the same time, we can’t just make it strictly about the music. It also had to be a narrative that was connected to human beings, and, and human emotion, and human urging.

 

Tegan  14:00

Right.

 

Regie  14:01

And so weaving the music with narrative, and then music with narrative, and then breaking into the poem — which also went through those, those “head, heart, hands.” And then bringing it…connecting that…finding the text, the interstitial text, to connect that to the gentleman who was going to be personifying Paul Revere, and then bringing it back toward a conclusion…I had to see it as sort of, almost like itself sort of musical composition: a linguistic musical composition. So, a thing I tend to look at myself as is a literary musician. And with literary musician, it’s, “how do I go about taking the language and finding the right words to put in the right order to deliver the right experience?” Arrange that in such a way that there is ups and downs, and that there is moments of poignancy, moments of jubilation, leading to a conclusion which is hopefully, healing and hopeful.

 

Regie  15:20

And so there…so it starts in little small parts and expands. And then there are five things. I go back over to see if there are at least points where these five things are there. And those five things are: Does this engage — Does it get attention? Does it entertain — Does it keep attention? Does it affect — Does it make someone want to feel, act, or do? Does it educate — Will someone know something they may not have known had they not walked in? And then, does it elevate — Does it somehow, some way, open up a space for us to imagine ourselves better?

 

Tegan  15:20

Yeah.

 

Tegan  15:57

Yeah.

 

Regie  15:58

And so if I can at least get three of those…(Laughs) If I can get three of those in a presentation, I feel like my…I’ve made a positive contribution.

 

Tegan  16:08

Yeah, that’s great. You briefly mentioned someone portraying Paul Revere in that concert. And I neglected to mention that, but that was Mike LePage, who we’ve worked with many times, and he’s a past podcast guest as well. So-

 

Regie  16:21

Ah, yeah! He was so great. He was he was great with the histor. He so apprehended it, right? And he could just be on the fly with it. And him and I, we had a bit of an exchange, just a great exchange. Not anything, just to see what happens. And he was just wow, just on it, you know.

 

Tegan  16:21

Yeah.

 

Regie  16:23

So I really enjoyed meeting him and seeing what he does. And I think he, he, he represents, at least as far as I can tell, he represents Paul Revere well.

 

Tegan  16:43

Yeah, yeah. And I think that that, while it’s a pretty unusual kind of performance genre, this — you know, historical reenacting — for us in the history museum world, that’s, in some ways, a more familiar, more comfortable one. And I think bringing that…juxtaposing it with poetry — which is probably more familiar to the general public, but not necessarily how we normally teach history — I think it was a really cool moment.

 

Regie  17:07

Oh, thank you!

 

Tegan  17:08

Yeah, so I think that this is a great time to actually listen to the poem itself.

 

Regie  17:11

Sure!

 

Regie  17:12

You exist in our collective national imagination forever on horseback—
as if you were born atop a steed galloping at a speed at which you could never dismount. As if we’d allow that eternal, ever-image of you to disappear. (It would appear to be one we cannot do without)

 

But, please, climb down— if only for a moment, that you might be briefly seen
not only as elevated legend— but, as a human-being.
Seen simply as a silver-smith’s son apprenticed to your French immigrant father— with whom you physically fought over which church to join to best serve God.
Seen as a 19yr-old— grief-stricken after his death—bereft— left to be the man
of the house. Left to finish learning his trade:

 

To assess and take the measure of metal—to Forge, Shape, Shine— Forge, Shape, Shine— Forge, Shape, Shine it into something useful—something precious that will last.

 

To support your family you learned all he taught— poured the molten metal of yourself into making useful things that could be bought: Kettles, mugs, forks, spoons— tea sets wealthy women would use in late afternoons. And, like the true craftsman you were— You took pride in your work and did it well.

 

I wonder, Paul, how did the call to service first find you?

 

In that shop, did you watch a handful of silver melt in an ingot and… had not so much a thought… but a sense…that if not caught would disappear… fast

 

Oh! This is like my country
A precious metal I can help forge, shape, shine
into a cherished thing that will last!

                   

Warren must have sensed that you and he shared an idea of what could be…
So, he approached you to join the Sons of Liberty and help end British tyranny
over the colonies.

I can almost see the two of you speaking, planning, plotting over drinks at the Green Dragon Tavern or Saint Andrew’s Masonic Lodge— you, tipping a tankard of ale or rum—
Warren sipping a glass of sherry, madeira, or some expensive port wine.
I imagine that, when he introduced you to the gentlemen, the elite, the refined: (The “powdered-wig” kind) they must have thought you inferior—a “lesser sort”.
You had to have sensed them making sport of you. Looking down their noses at you. You, who could never be a gentleman like them. You, who had none of their oratory, social polish, education or trust fund who had to work to earn every cent. They could smell “Common” coming from you like stable stench.

 

I imagine them slightly sneering at your hands— rough hewn and calloused, the cracked knuckle-skin, how the nape of your neck had been rubbed smooth by the leather strap of an artisans apron.

 

Thankfully, men like you were not born to be gentlemen like them, at all—
because, men like you, Paul, are not bred!— No, instead, men like you are self-made. Men like you are Forged, Shaped, Shined by the times in which they live.

 

Men like you take what fate has given, make something of it— and give.
Give their sweat and heart and blood. Give their devotion to the slow, day by day,
inglorious labor liberty demands: The work that cracks knuckle-skin, the work that callouses hands!

 

Men like you understand that bringing freedom into being requires the kind of work no one will ever see. It’s not the kind of work you BOAST about— but the kind of work you BE about:
Forge, Shape, Shine—Forge, Shape, Shine—Forge, Shape, Shine!

 

And, no doubt— your life was about the work, Paul.
Even through all the non-acknowledgements and constant denials from those who thought themselves your betters. Through all life’s trials. Through the death of wife and child after child after child after child after child— you still worked. You still gave.

 

And after the war— when Boston was battered and beleaguered—you gave and worked to rebuild her— returned to your shop and to the making of useful, needed things: Copper sheeting. Church-tower bells. Munitions and Cannons. Carpenter nails: Those often overlooked things we hardly notice them at all. Yet, without which many a great house falls. And for 250 years, Paul, extraordinarily-ordinary folks like you have been the nails holding this precious house together.

 

Well, now we need that spirit of yours more than ever!
We need the spirit of work and give YOU will forever be.
Need you to help us reshape the precious metal of our country—
To help us remove the tarnish darkening its shine.
To help us reforge ourselves (while there is still time) into something useful that will work
and give, sacrifice and fight for the soul of this nation in-spite of how spectered we are by grief and fear.

 

We need the spirit of you, Paul Revere— showing us how to get back on that horse and brave these benighted times.

 

No, do NOT ride FOR us anymore, but may WE ride with YOU! Ride through the night, cry out and alarm every American village and farm—Cry out in defiance and demand that each of us be the voice in the darkness— be the knock at the door, be the word that echoes forevermore—borne on the night-wind of the past, through all our history, to the last— for in this hour of darkness and peril and need let us all waken and listen and hear above the hurrying hoof-beats of steeds, the midnight message ringing and seeking to cling to each ear:*

 

That every American who forges, shapes, and shines
in their own way to insure tyranny in this country
will never again hold sway—Is and will be:

Paul Revere.

 

 

Tegan  24:52

So, thank you for that. When this was performed at the Revolutionary Concert, you know, the audience gave you a standing ovation. I was among the first to my feet. But can you tell us a little bit about your emotional relationship to this poem?

 

Tegan  25:06

Sure.

 

Tegan  25:07

You know, are there parts that are the most resonant for you, and…either in the text itself, or in the writing process?

 

Regie  25:14

I would say, yes, there…you know, it’s…I think it’s all relevant to me. It’s just a question of, like you said, more, and what gets me, right? The part about thinking of Paul Revere as just a human being, right? Who was as subject to all of the capriciousness and machinations of living in a society as any of us are. An individual who…whose life was contextualized by loss, you know, as is the case of any of us who are brave enough to love anything.

 

Tegan  25:56

Right, right.

 

Regie  25:57

(Laughs) You know? It’s the idea that, that one must lose. And the fact that he, from what we can see, did not allow himself to be debilitated by the despair that he must have, he must have have  experienced. This was an individual who wanted better for himself and his family. And in many ways, he was kept from getting it. Because even though our country was breaking away from monarchy, it certainly was not breaking away from aristocracy.

 

Tegan  26:34

Right, right.

 

Regie  26:35

Okay? And he was not a member of the aristocracy.

 

Regie  26:40

So he had to be consigned to working within the field, that he was allowed to pick. But still, he gave. And I think the metaphor that got me was, in this poem, when I’m talking about Paul Revere doing his work. And was it that moment — this is a totally imagined moment of me trying to inhabit how a metaphor can bring itself together into something that’s illuminating — is the idea that here he is working with silver, and he’s, he’s forging it, he’s shaping it, he’s shining it. And, and he doesn’t know if…I can imagine how many times each of those steps might have failed.

 

Tegan  26:40

Yeah.

 

Tegan  27:25

MMmm. Yeah.

 

Regie  27:26

You know?

 

Tegan  27:27

Yeah.

 

Regie  27:27

If it’s not forged, you don’t get to shape it. If you can’t shape it, you don’t shine it, right? And at any step along…and I’m sure it failed, often. And here is this man laboring in the heat, right, to create, to bring an idea of something into fruition. I imagined…my poet’s imagination made him go, think: “this is my country.” Right? “How do I…What can I do to forge? What can I do to shape? What can I do to help this to shine?”

 

Tegan  27:56

Yeah.

 

Regie  27:57

That resonates with me. Because even with all of the disappointments my country has visited upon people who look like me, I am resilient in the idea that this is, this is where humanity, in some degrees, makes its last stand right. This is an experiment to see if we actually can get this “human” thing right. And we’re gonna have to reforge, we’re gonna have to reshape. And sometimes we’re gonna shine, and then we’re gonna tarnish, and then we’re gonna have to reforge and reshape and reshine again. And we need to be committed to the idea of the work it takes to bring something beautiful into a world. And so I resonated so much with, with what I took to be Paul Revere’s ideas that were probably running through, and the things he probably had no language for. And the…the thing of again being contextualized by loss.

 

Tegan  28:58

Yeah.

 

Regie  28:59

And having to do what Rudyard Kipling says in the poem, if — you know, I’m going to paraphrase — if you can stoop down and rebuild with your worn out tools. And I think about him as a laborer, and how we needed an individual who’s a laborer. But not just a laborer, an artisan.

 

Tegan  29:17

Yeah.

 

Regie  29:18

Right? An artisan. Which meant that, yes, you can make something which is practical. But what is that extra thing it’s going to take to make the thing which is practical beautiful? And what is the disappointments? And he stooped down with his worn out tools after Boston was destroyed. And he could not move forward with the aristocracy in his way. And he just rolled up his sleeves and got to work.

 

Tegan  29:43

Yeah.

 

Regie  29:44

You know? And I understand what that means. Roll up your sleeves and get to work. My grandmother had a saying. She said, “not having is a piss poor excuse for not getting.”

 

Tegan  29:55

Hmm! Yeah.

 

Regie  29:57

And so that’s what I think he did.

 

Tegan  30:00

Yeah.

 

Regie  30:01

He would not accept an excuse.

 

Tegan  30:02

Yeah, that’s great. And I’m thinking right now, you know, you mentioned thinking about what Paul Revere was like as a person, and what his experiences were like as a person. And here at the Paul Revere House, that’s part of our job. So we think about it a lot more than most people, and-

 

Regie  30:18

To personalize him! Not to depersonalize. Right?

 

Tegan  30:18

Yeah! And try to communicate — exactly — to share that with other people. So right now, we’re thinking a lot about the 250th anniversary, not just of the country. But right now, it’s the 250th anniversary of the Siege of Boston, and the Siege of Boston ending. So Patriots had the city surrounded, trying to starve out the British forces. Revere and his family were displaced from their home. Many, many families were displaced from their homes. They chose it. They were getting out of the city because it was safer to be out of the city. But that’s one of the many ways that he did have to reforge, and his whole family had to. And you know, you alluded to loss. He lost his father when he was 19. He lost five of his children in early childhood. And he had a good, long life, but that also meant that-

 

Regie  31:06

He lost a wife.

 

Tegan  31:06

He did Yes. So his, his first wife died young. She was in her late 30s. And his second wife lived to her 70s, but, but he survived her.

 

Regie  31:16

Yeah.

 

Tegan  31:17

And he survived all but five of his children.

 

Regie  31:19

Right.

 

Tegan  31:19

And so…yeah, just thinking about those losses. And in the this moment, 250 years ago, he’s already experienced some of those losses. Has more to come and, and he just kind of keeps going. And I think that, that poetry can be a really great way to to access some of that, yes.

 

Regie  31:41

Yes! I think so! In fact, he wrote poems.

 

Tegan  31:43

He did! Yeah.

 

Regie  31:44

(Laughs) So I would imagine that that gave him some degree of healing. To actually sit down, and again, try to create something that’s practical and a thing of beauty as well-

 

Tegan  31:53

Yeah.

 

Regie  31:54

-was healing for him.

 

Tegan  31:55

Yeah, absolutely.

 

Regie  31:56

He didn’t know how to not do that.

 

Tegan  31:58

Yeah, yeah. I actually grabbed a stanza of one of his poems-

 

Regie  32:01

Sure.

 

Tegan  32:01

-that we like here, just because I like it, and it’s, it’s very much of its era. But this is late in life. He had a country home in Canton, Massachusetts by his copper rolling mill. So this is a point at which he has achieved some level of material comfort, some vision of what his legacy is going to be for his family. Some of his sons are involved in his copper rolling business. And so he has this, you know, expectation that they’re gonna, they’re gonna do okay, that they’re not going to be kind of starting from scratch.

 

Regie  32:31

Yeah.

 

Tegan  32:31

It’s a long poem.

 

Regie  32:32

(Laughs.)

 

Tegan  32:33

I just grabbed a small, small bit of it here. But:

 

“My cot, though small, my mind’s at ease.
My better half takes pains to please,
content sits lolling in her chair,
and all my friends find welcome there.
When they get home, they never fail
to praise the charms of Cantondale.”

 

Which…I think it’s very sweet.

 

Regie  32:51

Yes.

 

Tegan  32:51

It’s, you know, a loving poem: loving Rachel, his wife, loving his home. He’s the only one who called it “Cantondale.” Nobody else called it that. You know, as far as I know, he, he didn’t write any poetry about his role in the revolution.

 

Regie  33:04

Right.

 

Tegan  33:05

He was someone who wrote…he wrote some love poems for his wife. He wrote, you know, this, this love poem to a place.

 

Regie  33:10

Sure.

 

Tegan  33:10

But it is fun to see him expressing himself in that way. As someone who had a writing school education — the equivalent of a seventh or eighth grade education — and then his trade education, he didn’t feel that you had to have that pedigree to be allowed to participate, you know, in this.

 

Regie  33:30

Right.

 

Tegan  33:30

And I think that’s, that’s great.

 

Regie  33:32

You know, I agree. I agree. And I’m hearing, even in his work and what you were speaking about, how so much of it is, it’s incidentally, autobiographical. But even in this, this short piece you just read — the eight lines, I believe it is — he mentions Rachel, well, his better half. He personifies content, right? And though he speaks about Cantondale, he talks about how his friends, right, his friends find comfort there.

 

Tegan  34:03

Yeah.

 

Regie  34:03

Not, not just himself-

 

Tegan  34:05

Right.

 

Regie  34:05

-but that his friends find comfort there. And the reason they find comfort there is because of him.

 

Tegan  34:13

Right. Yeah!

 

Regie  34:13

It’s because of the world that he created at Cantondale. And, and so you look at that, and it’s like, even at the end of his life, there’s a poem where he’s speaking about that a place that he has created is for other people. Right? That other people can also find themselves comfort, which is another word for healing, in many ways.

 

Tegan  34:32

Yeah, yeah.

 

Regie  34:32

And so, even at the end of his life, he shows us that.

 

Tegan  34:34

Yeah. So yeah. I think it’s great that Revere is able to share some of his own context through poetry. And you talked about the…this throughline, this “forge, shape, shine” in his life, and in your poem. Is there anything about Revere or his historical context that you wanted to include in the poem, but didn’t manage to fit in, because of the, kind of, the other constraints of the story you were telling?

 

Regie  34:35

It was really difficult to not put him back on the horse.

 

Tegan  34:35

(Laughs)

 

Regie  34:35

Because everything from my childhood is like, “put the man back on the horse, put the man back on the horse!”

 

Tegan  34:35

Right, right, how will we know it’s Paul Revere if he’s not on the horse?

 

Regie  34:35

Exactly! If he’s not on the horse, you know? And so, so that was difficult. It was also difficult to not use the echo of the Longfellow poem. And it was a question for myself of when to include that.

 

Tegan  34:35

Right.

 

Regie  34:35

Right. Because I believe in my heart of hearts, that poetry is…part of what poetry is, is sustained dialog between witnesses of an event and — or what we think an event was like — but it’s a sustained dialog between bards. And so I definitely wanted to include echoes of the Longfellow, though not quite everything that the Longfellow includes.

 

Tegan  34:35

Right.

 

Regie  34:50

So that was it. It was difficult to, to not do the listing of of his children who died, and his wife. And difficult not, you know, to, to not name them.

 

Tegan  36:10

Because they’re in there, but you use a light touch. You’re not listing their names.

 

Regie  36:14

Right. Right. They’re there. But yes, the decision to not name them was a difficult one, because, again, each one represents a grief. You know? So yes, to not say that. To also not go too deeply into, sort of, the background of what maybe happened with his mom, what was going on between him and his father. But to give enough of the, you know, the idea that there was at least some tension between him and his father, but that he got so many things from his dad. But to not say that, you know, so, so much.

 

Regie  36:47

So yeah, there were, there were a few things, if I’m recalling correctly, that I had to make the…either edit out at the end, or make the decision to not include.

 

Tegan  36:47

Right.

 

Tegan  36:55

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And it’s hard, because there’s so much we don’t know about Revere that we want to know. You know, one could write many poems about what we what we don’t know there?

 

Regie  37:05

Yeah, yes.

 

Tegan  37:06

But I’m glad you you brought up the Longfellow poe. Because of course we have to talk about the Longfellow poem when we’re talking about poetry and Paul Revere.

 

Regie  37:07

Sure. Of course.

 

Tegan  37:13

So you know, listeners, even if you don’t know which poem we’re talking about, you have probably heard at least part of it. It’s the one that starts: “Listen, children and you shall hear/of the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.” So it was published by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in the January 1861 edition of The Atlantic Monthly. Longfellow was an extremely popular poet of his day. And this is a time when poets had a bigger slice of the celebrity pie than I think they do today. So he was, he was absolutely a household name, and he was very much a people’s poet. I think critics of his day didn’t love him as much as, kind of, the general public. But at the Revere House, we really credit him with making Paul Revere a household name. Revere had been, kind of, small time famous before that.

 

Regie  38:03

Right.

 

Tegan  38:04

But the other context for this poem is that Longfellow is writing, creating a Revere who is absolutely on the horse. It’s about the Midnight Ride, but creating a version who is kind of acting alone.

 

Regie  38:17

Yes.

 

Tegan  38:17

Somebody’s hanging lanterns. But for the most part, this is about a lone hero on horseback.

 

Regie  38:22

Yes.

 

Tegan  38:22

The historical reality, which you talked about at the concert and that we talk about here, Revere was part of a network. He was a very important part of this network. But that network was very a big part of this story.

 

Regie  38:37

Yes.

 

Tegan  38:37

He’s actually not looking back at the lantern signals, because he’s the one who told another piece of that network to go hang those signals. They’re a backup so that if he’s arrested, someone else is able to take the message. But Longfellow had this idea, and he is using poetic license.

 

Regie  38:53

(Laughs)

 

Tegan  38:53

Who, who can use poetic license, if not poets? And the other piece of context here is that it is the eve of the US Civil War when Longfellow is writing. And so we know historically that Longfellow was, you know…he’s from Cambridge, Massachusetts. He’s very much on the Northern side. But that he was also himself abolitionist. And not all Northerners were.

 

Regie  39:14

No.

 

Tegan  39:14

There were plenty who had, you know, economic, political reasons…

 

Regie  39:18

Yep. They had business interest in the South.

 

Tegan  39:20

Right. But he was an abolitionist, and…you know, the poem is, is often read today as trying to encourage people to take decisive action.

 

Regie  39:31

Yes.

 

Tegan  39:32

And I think that’s a big part of how Paul Revere’s story gets used today.

 

Regie  39:38

Yes.

 

Tegan  39:39

And you mentioned trying to avoid putting him back on the horse.

 

Regie  39:43

In the end, I do put him back on the horse, but slightly differently, right? And it’s like, “get back on the horse, but don’t ride for us. Let us ride with you,” right?

 

Tegan  39:54

Right.

 

Regie  39:54

And so it becomes an “us” thing. Not that you’re going out there to do that, but let the myth, the legend, the spirit of what you brought show us what to do. Let us also be the ones who go out and do the cry. And let us be the ones that try to forge, shape, and shine our country and…and with him as a sort of ancestor who helps us, you know, one of those burning lights that go before us that helps us to better illuminate the darkness. And so yes, he goes back on the horse, but, but as a rider, and not a rider for us. But we also are riders with him.

 

Tegan  40:23

Yeah, yeah. And I mean that being the ending of the poem, I think, is part of what makes the poem so, so moving. Because you are, you are doing that, you know,what you were…you were listening to five things you try to do, and that engaging and, and feeling like this is not a poem about history, it’s a poem about engaging with the problems of our day. And his day and our day are related, but different problems.

 

Regie  40:52

Yes.

 

Tegan  40:52

I’m also thinking about an item that we have in our collection that is sheet music from World War I. I looked up the lyricist for this piece called “Paul Revere, Won’t You Ride For Us Again?” And he was…his probably most famous song was he co-wrote “When You’re Smiling, The Whole World Smiles With You,” which was covered by a number of jazz greats.

 

Regie  41:12

Yes.

 

Tegan  41:14

But this poem, this song, is saying: “Won’t you ride for us again? / They heard you those Minute Men / Liberty’s call was not denied.” And it’s this idea of trying to get people stirred to action again. It’s people standing up, but that choice was not to have people riding with him, but to hear his call. So I wanted to ask you know…Joe Goodwin’s saying this in World War I. Longfellow is also more indirectly, but he’s talking about Revere as a messenger to try to speak to the ideas of today, or of his day. Why do you think that this idea of invoking Paul Revere in calls to action has reverberated through the centuries? Do you think that’s Longfellow? Do you think it’s something specific to Revere’s story, or something else?

 

Regie  42:02

Yeah, I think it has reverberated throughout history. And Paul Revere is, is an American, you know, who did this, but an American at the beginning of what it was becoming, what America was becoming.

 

Tegan  42:18

Right.

 

Regie  42:18

So very early on, he shows us, us this. I think we also are connected to the idea that the American Revolution was not inevitably a win, that it was fraught with with all kinds of danger, and that there were a lot of people who died as a result of it, and it was…no one of any sense would have bet-

 

Tegan  42:42

(Laughs) Yeah.

 

Regie  42:42

-on this.

 

Tegan  42:43

Right.

 

Regie  42:44

But Revere did. Revere did. And people who have that sense of personal sacrifice — people with something to lose, who says, “I’m gonna risk it, I’m gonna go for it,” — I think, you know, being a human being, it’s very difficult to not respect that, you know, that individual who says, “okay, I’m going to grab this sword and go fight the dragon.”

 

Tegan  43:06

Right.

 

Regie  43:06

You know?

 

Regie  43:07

I think it just pulls toward us. And it pulls toward, toward that sense of not only empathetic, but, but the idea of altruism — again, self sacrifice. And I think he represents that. And especially now, I think we need more and more figures…we need to bring these figures out of their patriotic tarnish.

 

Tegan  43:07

Yeah.

 

Regie  43:27

And what do I mean by that? Is that, very often these figures have been co-opted by, by groups who only believe…who have a narrow view of what patriotism is. Right? And sometimes it’s more of a showy patriotism. So, it’s like “we acknowledge a Paul Revere, because how can we not acknowledge a Paul Revere? It would be unpatriotic to not acknowledge a Paul Revere!” But when we look deeply at Paul Revere and say, you know, there was a person of virtue and — had virtues, I’m sure he also had his vices — but, but the virtues of Paul Revere? What does that look like in our body politic? You know, if we’re talking about an individual, who, were he to take an oath, he would have taken the oath that he would protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Right? And I think sometimes we forget that “and domestic” part, which means we can have domestic enemies of our Constitution. And in times when we do see that there are domestic enemies of our Constitution, even if some of them are at our dinner tables at Christmas, we need to be able to invoke the spirit of someone that, that, that they will also understand. You know, a figure that speaks, that can go between multiple worlds, multiple sides of this.

 

Tegan  43:27

Mhmmm….

 

Tegan  44:53

Yeah.

 

Regie  44:54

And we can use a Paul Revere as a way to examine who we are as a nation, right?

 

Tegan  44:59

Yeah.

 

Regie  45:00

And I think we need more of those figures, who we can say, “who are we? Well, let’s examine who we were and who we could be, based upon what these figures have shown us.”

 

Tegan  45:09

Yeah. Yeah, very well said. I want to speak a little bit more before we wrap up about political uses of poetry.

 

Regie  45:16

Sure.

 

Tegan  45:16

Because we’ve been, we’ve been talking about that a little bit more.

 

Regie  45:19

Sure.

 

Tegan  45:20

But I think in Revere’s day, very explicitly political uses of poetry were a very popular form of poetry. Kind of, the “occasional” poem, which was either commissioned or otherwise written to be performed or spoken at a particular event-

 

Regie  45:35

Sure.

 

Tegan  45:36

-or just inspired by an event, and was very explicitly inspired by. And the title might be “on the occasion of this or that,” or it might be, you know, “to so and so, on their birthday-“

 

Regie  45:46

Yes.

 

Tegan  45:47

-or “on the loss of their child,” or something like that.

 

Regie  45:49

Yes.

 

Tegan  45:50

And I think that that is absolutely present in modern American poetry, but we don’t necessarily talk about it that way. But in your role as, you know, as a government poet, in some senses, you know, you’re, you’re grappling with that. And so I wanted to know if you had any thoughts on, kind of, the role of poetry in civic life?

 

Regie  46:09

Ah…yes! A few. I mentioned earlier about the idea of being secular priests attempting to create spaces of sacred citizenship. And for me, I’m working out more and more what that means. I hark to the poetry and essays of the transcendentalists, and the writings of the transcendentalists who were calling us to bring together both, you know, the light of spirituality and the light of reason, and asking us to…what I take from them is to, when we go into the public space, to, to have a heightened sense of who we could be. And that means that we speak to each other in ways which ennoble, instead of ways that tear down. I think poetry can do that, can can speak in ways that ennoble. I think poetry has a way of having us to hear a tough truth in a beautiful way, in ways that we cannot ignore. We can ignore, and tend to push away graphs and spreadsheets and charts and statistics and footnotes. But if someone puts something in a way that is musically and linguistically connected to, to what you felt but could not say, we can’t so easily get rid of that. And I think it asks us to wrestle with what it is that, that’s brought to us. Because poetry has a way of getting past our defenses. Right? There’s a rhythm. There’s a music. There’s, there’s sometimes a rhyme. There is an insistence. There is a beautiful thing, that is…it’s difficult to fight the beautiful. You know?

 

Tegan  47:44

Yeah.

 

Regie  47:44

It’s difficult to not be affected by something which calls to the deepest, most human part of you. And many times we can do that because our culture has taught us not to. But if we can find ways to get, get around those cultural defenses, which poetry can because language is a thing most of us share-

 

Tegan  47:59

Right.

 

Regie  48:00

-then it has the best chance, or one of the best chances, of getting, you know, someone connected. You know, and the speaking of it, I think, right, is because those of us who are hearing, we respond to the human voice. And the human voice does more for us than just convey information. It also conveys feeling. It conveys, conveys urgency. It conveys actually what someone is…is more like what someone is thinking, more than what they’ve said. You know, how they say it. And so if we can use language in a way that calls to us and then calls us to be better, I think, I think that, that we’re bettered from that. I think that’s what poetry has the power to be able to do: to bring us into a civic space and say, “look at your fellow human being, look at your fellow American, your fellow citizen,” right? “Think about what it is that you owe them and what they owe you. What does it really mean to be here as an American?” As I’ve often said, I think poetry asks us to really examine what it means to be Americans, and to ask ourselves, are we a people, or are we three-hundred-and-some odd million individual fiefdoms, or…you know, that just depend upon a centralized government to keep people off our lawns. Right? Are we actually a people, or are we just these three-hundred-and-some odd million little Declarations of Independence. Right?

 

Tegan  49:22

Yeah.

 

Regie  49:22

And so I think poetry says we can be more than that.

 

Regie  49:27

And we’re called to be more than that, and we have to do what Paul Revere did, which is answer the call.

 

Tegan  49:27

Yeah.

 

Tegan  49:33

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So to continue these ideas-

 

Regie  49:37

Sure.

 

Tegan  49:37

-because I think these can…these ideas are something that people can grapple with. I mean, many people spend their whole careers and their whole lives grappling with this.

 

Regie  49:45

Sure.

 

Tegan  49:46

I’m sure that asking someone who does poetry professionally, “do you have a favorite poet?” is too big, too big a question.

 

Regie  49:53

(Laughs) Sure.

 

Tegan  49:54

Do you have a favorite poet to recommend to people? Is there one that you like when people say, “who should I read? Who should I listen to?”

 

Regie  50:00

Oh…wow. Well, that will always depend on my mood, and it also depends upon what they’re trying to understand.

 

Tegan  50:06

Yeah, yeah.

 

Regie  50:07

I always say, go back to Whitman, Walt Whitman, who is…has influenced so many American poets who’ve come after him, including Langston Hughes, including others, you know. But Whitman…I take Whitman to be the first poet of American democracy. But he had a big, bardic voice that was calling. In his better voice, he was calling to everyone, in a way that’s…I loved what he said, you know, basically “I would not accept that which no one else can have,” right? And so he was speaking about the love of comrades. And I take that to mean the love of individuals who are, who are willing to muscle their way toward a greater democracy.

 

Tegan  50:45

Yeah.

 

Regie  50:45

So I always say, reach back to Whitman and see what Whitman has to say. And look at his anaphora and his repeated lines, and who he’s trying to include in that. So I think if we’re trying to understand American poetry, I think we have to grapple with what Whitman brought to us.

 

Tegan  51:01

Yeah, that’s great. That’s great.

 

Regie  51:03

Sure.

 

Tegan  51:03

And do you have a favorite prose resource about American history? Or even just a favorite prose writer from American history who’s kind of grappling with these ideas?

 

Regie  51:12

Well, I always loved Dolores, Kearns Goodwin, you know, and what it is that she gives us. David McCullough, also, going back to that…to his work as well. Because they do have, I think that they have —  wonderful writers — but also a deeply engaged way of looking at who we were and what was being grappled with. And also the storytelling aspect of it that they tend to employ in their work, you know, helps me to better access what folks must have been going through. And of course, I’m always looking for the human part: What does it mean for a small human being to be grappling with large, you know, geopolitical ideas? And how do we handle that throughout history? So those are two writers who I’d recommend if we’re talking about looking at what it has meant, and how we got here, as far as an American ideal, right, and what that means. I love Dan Rather’s What Unites Us. And he goes back through language and idea and history to show that…ways in which we’ve been more connected than we’ve been torn apart, and allows us to look at that through a more modern, modern lens and help to address some of the partisan divide that we see.

 

Tegan  52:25

Yeah.

 

Regie  52:25

So those are, are three folks who I would recommend right now.

 

Tegan  52:28

Yeah, thank you.

 

Regie  52:29

Sure.

 

Tegan  52:29

And if listeners want to hear more of your work, or know more about your work as a poet laureate, what’s the best way for them to do that?

 

Regie  52:36

Ah! Well, there are various things on YouTube. I’m currently creating a website with the state to put some things on there. There’s also, there’s my website, regiegibson.com, which also is frequently now going through updates. So, so if it’s down, don’t worry, it’ll go back up.

 

Tegan  52:51

(Laughs)

 

Regie  52:52

But yes, and of course, you can always hear the Paul Revere poem here.

 

Tegan  52:55

Yep!

 

Regie  52:55

And there are also other, other websites. I would say that when I was going filling out the application. The way that the application for Poet Laureate came through is that the governor had issued an, an executive order to create the post. And then the call went out, and I wasn’t sure I was going to, to fill it out. I wanted to, but I wasn’t sure. And then a poet, a fellow poet, said to me, she said, “Regie, you know, if we’re being asked to somehow serve, we cannot say no to this.” And so she said, “any of us that feel like we may want to serve, you know, the Commonwealth, we need to maybe think about that.” And so that pushed me in the space of saying, “okay.” But as I was filling out the application, I began to notice how I was using words like, “it would be an honor,” and “honor,” and “honor” right? And that rang kind of hollow for me, because it’s like, “okay, well, that’s obvious.” But that word “honor” began to be replaced by “responsibility,” right? It began to be replaced by the idea of what is this going to call, what is this going to mean? And I stopped filling out the application, because I needed to speak to my partner. Needed to speak to Katie. And I was like, “babe, I need to talk to you about this.” And so we sat down, and it was a two-day talk, and I said, “because this is going to require something of me, it’s going to require me to be out of the house. It’s going to require me to do this and do this.” And she thought, and she says, “you got to do it.”

 

Regie  54:24

You know? And she’s like, “no matter what it is, you have to fill this out.” And so I went through, and went back in to fill out the rest of the application to do what I need to do, and then I sent it in, and was like, “okay, I’ve done my citizenship duty.” And, and there were other people who, who — I could name names — who I would not have been upset had they been the one who had received the post. And I would have helped them as much as I possibly could, because there are so many great poets in Massachusetts. But not just great poets, really great humans, right, who write poetry. And I know who they are. And I’ve laughed and cajoled and talked and sat down with them. And I’m like “wow, these are great ideas. I would so support that.”

 

Tegan  54:27

Yeah.

 

Tegan  54:50

Yeah.

 

Regie  54:51

So were it not me, I would not be upset (laughs), you know? Because I would believe that poetry would have been in very good hands.

 

Tegan  55:16

Yeah. I think that idea of “when you’re asked to serve” actually really resonates with Paul Revere’s story as well.

 

Regie  55:22

Yeah.

 

Tegan  55:23

Because we talk here about, you know…he was away from home.

 

Regie  55:27

Yup!

 

Tegan  55:27

He was taking on great personal risk. You know, the the likelihood that he would be injured or killed in the course of one of these messenger trips was, you know…

 

Regie  55:36

Highly likely.

 

Tegan  55:37

Yeah. And so, what kind of conversation did he have with Rachel? It was Rachel by this point, and Sarah had died earlier than much of the risk that he was taking on. But marriages were different back then because it was a different society. So what kind of conversations were they having? We really don’t know. But then, even after the revolution, he was asked to serve, and putting himself forward to serve, in some pretty unglamorous roles.

 

Regie  55:59

Right!

 

Tegan  55:59

He was a coroner for a while. He was on the Board of Public Health, and, you know, having conversations about sanitation.

 

Regie  56:06

(Laughs) Yes.

 

Tegan  56:06

…and we’re back to sewage. (Laughs)

 

Regie  56:09

We’re always back to sewage!

 

Tegan  56:12

Yeah. I mean, it’s humans.

 

Regie  56:14

Yeah, exactly.

 

Tegan  56:15

You get a lot of humans together…

 

Regie  56:15

…there’s detritus.

 

Tegan  56:15

Yeah.

 

Regie  56:15

What it means to be us?

 

Tegan  56:16

Yeah. And so I think that that’s a, that’s a really fun resonance that, you know-

 

Regie  56:21

Yes.

 

Tegan  56:22

-he’s he’s thinking about service and right? And you’re describing this as service as well.

 

Regie  56:25

I love that. You’re right, it’s not glorious. It’s…but it is, as I think I put in the poem, the day by day, inglorious work of what it takes. We just got to say “this is, this is what I can do,” or “this needs doing, and I’m the person right now who can do it.” Right?

 

Tegan  56:41

Yeah.

 

Regie  56:41

And you make it happen.

 

Tegan  56:43

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today, Regie.

 

Tegan  56:46

Thank you for having me, Tegan, I appreciate it.

 

Tegan  56:50

In the summer of 2025, the Paul Revere House launched our first ever week-long high school internship program with a cohort of eight interns. And a handful of those interns took me up on my offer to do kind of a micro-interview for the podcast about something they learned while they were here. So I’m going to present two of those interviews right now, and you’ll be hearing the others later on this season.

 

Tegan  57:17

So welcome to the podcast. Can you tell us your name?

 

Arabella  57:20

Hi, I’m Arabella Pelekoudas.

 

Tegan  57:23

Can you tell us one or two things that you learned about history this week?

 

Arabella  57:26

Sure! I think one of my favorite parts of history that I learned about this week was just some of the inaccuracies between the classic Midnight Ride poem and the actual Midnight Ride. I mean, I grew up learning the poem in school, rehearsing it. That was the history that I was taught. But coming here, I got to learn some of the truth, like one of the main differences was that Paul Revere didn’t actually go through the streets shouting, “the British are coming!”

 

Tegan  57:51

Right.

 

Arabella  57:52

Which was a little surprising for me, but also totally makes sense, because he didn’t want to seem like a fool. And they did consider themselves British-

 

Tegan  57:59

Right.

 

Arabella  57:59

-which was another fact that I didn’t fully realize. Another fun thing about the ride is I didn’t realize that there were two riders. I thought Paul Revere was the only one, but apparently there were multiple that night going to go warn their friends.

 

Tegan  58:13

Yeah, absolutely. And I think Longfellow’s poem makes it sound like Revere was the only one, because no one else is mentioned. But two leave from Boston and more joined, so yeah.

 

Arabella  58:22

Absolutely.

 

Tegan  58:23

Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

 

Arabella  58:26

Thank you!

 

Tegan  58:30

Welcome to the podcast. Could you tell us your name?

 

Veronica  58:33

My name is Veronica Kemmett.

 

Tegan  58:35

And can you tell us one or two things you learned about history this week?

 

Veronica  58:38

I think that the thing that I learned the most is really how interesting of a life Paul Revere had, like outside of what you would usually think about him. The amount of jobs that he had, and all of the things that he did. You know, he started all the copper in the United States, like the copper rolling. And the fact that he was pretty high up in the military, all these things that I really did not know! Like he was the head of the Board of Health from Boston. I was like, “I didn’t know!” People in the internship were saying he was Barbie because he had so many jobs. (Laughs)

 

Tegan  59:09

(Laughs) That’s great. Yeah, yeah, that’s something that I think a lot of people don’t know about Paul Revere until they come to the museum.

 

Veronica  59:15

Yeah.

 

Tegan  59:16

Well, thank you for being on the podcast.

 

Veronica  59:17

Thank you!

 

Tegan  59:18

(Harpsicord music fades in) Thank you for tuning in to Revere House Radio. I’m your host, Tegan Kehoe, and I am the Research and Adult Program Director here at the Paul Revere House. Our production team for this season includes Derek Hunter, Mehitabel Glenhaber, and Adrian Turnbull-Riley. Thank you to RP Hale for the use of his performance on the harpsichord as our theme music. If you’re listening online, we encourage you to subscribe in your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. Revere House Radio is a production of the Paul Revere Memorial Association, the nonprofit which operates the Paul Revere House Museum. You can find more information, subscribe to our mailing list or social media, or become a member on our website, at www.paulreverehouse.org. Or, come visit us in Boston!