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By BOB KEYES, Staff Writer Sunday, February 18, 2007

Bob Greenlaw is teaching his 10-year-old son about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, just as Greenlaw's parents had taught him.

Greenlaw, a land surveyor who lives in Portland, knows the history and all the local landmarks related to the great poet's life and has several poems committed to memory.

His son Robby attends Longfellow School on Stevens Avenue. The Greenlaws attend Sunday services at First Parish Church, where the Longfellows were members in good standing and where the sanctuary still has a pew with the family's name on it.

The church is a block away from Longfellow Books, just down the street from the Longfellow House and a short walk from Longfellow Square, with its hulking statue of a seated Longfellow. At times, bars and restaurants that flank the square serve full-bodied Longfellow Winter Ale from Shipyard Brewing Co.

"He's touched the whole world, and that's really something for a poet to do," said Greenlaw, a 43-year-old Portland native and ninth-generation Mainer. "It's unimaginable that a poet could have that kind of influence today."

Born 200 years ago this month in Portland, Longfellow became the most consequential poet of his time, and some would argue that he remains America's foremost literary figure. He was a national hero whose birthday was celebrated as a holiday while he was still living. He dined with presidents and was received by queens.

Longfellow coined phrases that we treat today as cliché (think "ships that pass in the night") and helped shape an image of an emerging America for readers domestic and abroad.

Today, he still has clout.

His poems inspire musicians, playwrights, teachers and writers, poets and novelists alike. His work continues to bind together communities, such as the Acadian French of northern Maine, eastern Canada and Louisiana. His life experiences spawn popular fiction, including the 2003 murder-mystery novel "The Dante Club," which talks about Longfellow as the linguist who completed the first American translation of Dante Alighieri's "The Divine Comedy."

At First Parish, music director Charles "Chip" Kaufman peppers the Sunday services with Longfellow poems set to music. Portland Stage Company has commissioned a play based on Longfellow's correspondences. And in schools, teachers use Longfellow to ignite their students' imaginations.

Beginning this month and continuing all year, America and the world celebrate the bicentennial of his birth with festivals, plays, concerts and an array of literary and cultural events. Local events get into full swing this week. In March, the U.S. Postal Service will issue a commemorative Longfellow stamp, the second time the Postal Service has so honored him.

Longfellow, the second son of Stephen and Zilpah Longfellow, was born in Portland on Feb. 27, 1807, in a house at Fore and Hancock streets that has long since been torn down. Within months of Henry's birth, the family moved into a brick house that still stands on Congress Street.

It's easy to imagine a youthful Longfellow after a Sunday church service at First Parish, his mind overflowing with ideas.

Longfellow's early forays into the realm of religion and philosophy took root here in the weekly sermons of the Rev. Ichabod Nichols, who led First Parish from its Congregational roots toward a more open, liberal and Unitarian perspective.

Longfellow, who lived just a short walk from the church's welcoming doors, soaked up the words.

It was in Portland, then a bustling seaport, that Longfellow first thought he could make a life as a writer and began imagining himself as a man of letters.

Though he traveled the world and eventually settled in Cambridge, Mass., Longfellow never left Portland far behind. His family remained here, and Longfellow returned regularly to celebrate momentous moments, for respite from his work at Harvard and, sometimes, to write.

Robert Lynn, a Scarborough resident, remembers his parents reading Longfellow's poems to him as he was growing up in rural Wyoming. When Lynn came to live in Maine full time in 1993, he decided to do more than offer occasional salutes "to old Henry" as he passed his statue in Longfellow Square.

He learned Longfellow's story and explored his influence with a discussion group and small exhibition at Piper Shores, where he lives.

"When I kept passing that statue on Congress Street, I was reminded of the person whose poetry I read in a small country school out in Wyoming," said Lynn. "He's more than a statue. He was, and remains, a powerful figure, well-admired still and admired by most Americans during his day."

Justine E. Marks, who lives in central Maine, recently printed a copy of Longfellow's poem "The Village Blacksmith" off the Internet, to share with a friend.

"I read it all the way through and got choked up," she said.

The poem reminded Marks of a blacksmith in Burnham who she knew when she was a young girl. The blacksmith in Longfellow's poem -- "a mighty man he is, with large sinewy hands" -- could have been the blacksmith in Marks' youth.

The poem touched Marks because it brought her to a time and place long since lost in her life.

"I can smell the blacksmith shop, just talking about it," she said.

Dawn Carrigan, Longfellow School principal, understands why Longfellow's currency remains strong.

"I think he has a level of sophistication and yet a simplicity that helps people easily understand him. People have a personal connection. They have a sense of his presence," Carrigan said.

The poet's picture hangs prominently in a school hallway. Each year during the Longfellow birthday week, a parent dresses as the poet and distributes excerpts of poems to students.

The Longfellow students also study their school namesake as part of the general curriculum, as do all students in Maine.

What made Longfellow unique was the sway he held on people of power, and also on those who had none, said Richard D'Abate, executive director of the Maine Historical Society. His poems reflect 19th-century America and reach across all classes and cultures.

Longfellow was among the first mainstream writers to tackle issues of race in America. He wrote about religious persecution, everyday heroism and personal grief.

"The Song of Hiawatha," one of Longfellow's longer poems, celebrates American Indian traditions and legends.

"Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie" remains a defining cultural landmark for Acadians. It tells the story, through a romantic device, of the eviction of French settlers from Nova Scotia and their ensuing flight and plight.

"Tales of A Wayside Inn" foretold America's melting pot culture.

"Paul Revere's Ride," published in 1861 -- 86 years after Revere's now-famous horse ride from Boston to Lexington -- made a national hero of someone who, at the time of the poem's publication, was remembered mostly as a local person of note. The poem mythologized Revere and turned him into a symbol of American freedom.

Longfellow embraced themes that have been easy for people to relate to, then and now, said Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

"He had a relationship with the American public that no poet has had before or since. And despite all that, he is a great poet -- not merely a popular poet, but a great one," said Gioia, who will speak about Longfellow several times in 2007, including in March when the Postal Service issues its stamp and later this year in Maine.

In today's world, the best comparison Gioia conjures is cultural icon Walt Disney -- not for the quality of Disney's work, but for his myth-making ability and influence across people of diverse cultures and ages.

"What Longfellow did was create the popular myths by which 19th-century America understood itself," said Gioia. "Longfellow created unforgettable literary characters, based on fact, like Hiawatha and Paul Revere, who became icons."

At the Longfellow House in Portland, Allan Levinsky's job is to make Longfellow's story come to life. The tour guide takes people through the rooms that Longfellow's younger sister, Alice, maintained until her death in 1901.

After her death and according to her wishes, the Maine Historical Society acquired the house and preserved it, with Longfellow family artifacts intact.

On his tours, Levinsky shows people the desk where Longfellow wrote the gloomy poem "The Rainy Day" ("Into each life, some rain must fall "), the room where he slept as a child and where he stayed when he visited as an adult. Henry's high chair occupies the corner of one room.

President Theodore Roosevelt was among the first visitors when the house opened to the public soon after Alice Longfellow's death. The house has hosted the famous and unknown ever since.

Lately, Levinsky senses growing interest in Longfellow's story.

"Henry's fame is kind of on the rise again, and that's good. It's time we look again at who he was and what he wrote," Levinsky said.

As is often the case with artists, popularity and influence swing like a pendulum. Clearly, Longfellow's pendulum is swinging back in his favor, Gioia said.

In some quarters, such as the Greenlaw household, his fame has never waned.

Greenlaw said he has special fondness for the poem "The Cross of Snow," which Longfellow wrote in anguish long after the death of his second wife, Fanny, who received fatal burns in a household accident despite Longfellow's efforts to douse the flames.

Longfellow left the poem to be published posthumously.

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,

A gentle face -- the face of one long dead --

The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.

Here in this room she died; and soul more white

Never through martyrdom of fire was led

To its repose; nor can in books be read

The legend of a life more benedight

There is a mountain in the distant West

That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines

Displays a cross of snow upon its side.

Such is the cross I wear upon my breast

These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes

And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

"I use that as inspiration in my life all the time," said Greenlaw, reciting some of the words from memory. "When I hit a rough patch, I think, here was a guy who was able to move on. I just admire what he overcame.

"He lived the words that he wrote."

Staff Writer Bob Keyes can be contacted at 791-6457 or at: