{"id":63086,"date":"2013-11-29T15:00:22","date_gmt":"2013-11-29T20:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=63086"},"modified":"2013-11-30T10:12:32","modified_gmt":"2013-11-30T15:12:32","slug":"black-friday-the-poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/11\/29\/black-friday-the-poem\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Friday, the Poem"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"black-fri_12901_mdlarge\"<\/a>


“The New York Gold Room on ‘Black Friday,’ September 24, 1869.” —E. Benjamin Andrews 1895<\/p><\/div>\n

While most of us know Black Friday as the nightmarish commerce-fest following Thanksgiving\u2014a term coined in Philadelphia in 1961—in fact the nom de guerre<\/em> dates back to the nineteenth century. In 1869, robber-barons Jay Gould and James Fisk attempted to corner the gold market<\/a>, resulting in financial crisis and scandal.<\/p>\n

E. C. Stedman, a poet and broker (!), wrote the following:<\/p>\n

\n

One Hundred and Sixty! Can\u2019t be true!
What will the bears-at-forty do?
How will the merchants pay their dues?
How will the country stand the news?
What\u2019ll the banks—but listen! hold!
In screwing up the price of gold
To that dangerous, last, particular peg,
They had killed their Goose with the Golden Egg!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I spent too many minutes trying to transform this into a piece of doggerel that incorporated door-buster sales, accidental deaths, Best Buy vigils, and rampant modern consumerism, but it was a losing battle. Some things are beyond parody<\/a>. Not to mention, poetry.<\/p>\n

One more note on Stedman, via Wikipedia<\/a>: \u201cIn 1879, he proposed a rigid airship inspired by the anatomy of a fish, with a framework of steel, brass, or copper tubing and a tractor propeller mounted on the craft’s bow, later changed to an engine with two propellers suspended beneath the framework. The airship never was built, but its design foreshadowed that of the dirigibles of the early decades of the twentieth century.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While most of us know Black Friday as the nightmarish commerce-fest following Thanksgiving\u2014a term coined in Philadelphia in 1961—in fact the nom de guerre dates back to the nineteenth century. In 1869, robber-barons Jay Gould and James Fisk attempted to corner the gold market, resulting in financial crisis and scandal. E. C. Stedman, a poet and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[12284,12283,165],"class_list":["post-63086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-black-friday","tag-e-c-stedman","tag-poetry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBlack Friday, the Poem by Sadie Stein<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"November 29, 2013 \u2013 While most of us know Black Friday as the nightmarish commerce-fest following Thanksgiving\u2014a term coined in Philadelphia in 1961—in fact the nom de\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/11\/29\/black-friday-the-poem\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Black Friday, the Poem by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"November 29, 2013 \u2013 While most of us know Black Friday as the nightmarish commerce-fest following Thanksgiving\u2014a term coined in Philadelphia in 1961—in fact the nom de\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/11\/29\/black-friday-the-poem\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-11-29T20:00:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-11-30T15:12:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/black-fri_12901_mdlarge.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"779\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sadie Stein\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/11\/29\/black-friday-the-poem\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/11\/29\/black-friday-the-poem\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Sadie Stein\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/a1aef49f81bfc540a37e03590f3bb4d9\"},\"headline\":\"Black Friday, the Poem\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-11-29T20:00:22+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-11-30T15:12:32+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/11\/29\/black-friday-the-poem\/\"},\"wordCount\":256,\"commentCount\":1,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/11\/29\/black-friday-the-poem\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/black-fri_12901_mdlarge.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Black Friday\",\"E. 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