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January 17, 2009
February 16, 2009
One reason I might not be up on the
early 20th century Greenwich IMPROPER_BOHEMIANS
Village poetry scene is that the
poetry just wasn't all that good. As I set out reading "The Improper
Bohemians" I remembered that I
It seems that everyone owned an old volume titled
who writes about this "Modern Poetry" that was of the
scene also quotes the right vintage to include a
apparently godawful sampling of some of their work.
volume "The Day in
Bohemia" by Jack Reed-- ('Twas edited by Louis Untermeyer,
just because it was and as it happens, this book
written by Jack Reed. itself is mentioned in "Improper
Bohemians".)
Churchil quotes: My copy of "Modern Poetry"
is the fourth edition from
"In winter the water is frigid, 1930.
In summer the water is hot;
And we're forming a club "Molly Goodell" wrote her
for controlling the tub name inside the front cover,
For there's only one bath to on "2 February 1935" using a
the lot." blue-green ink. It has a pair
of four-leaf clovers pressed
And so on. into the pages, along with a
red ribbon.
"O life is a joy to a broth of a boy
At Forty-two Washington Square!"
Anna Alice Chapin quotes:
"Yet we are free who live in Washington Square,
We dare to think as uptown wouldn't dare,
Blazing our nights with arguments uproarious;
What care we for a dull old world censorious,
When each is sure he'll fashion something glorious?"
And consider Harry Kemp, a man
with something of a wild man
image, and who probably needed ... a ruddy, stout-chested
it to get anyone to read his man named Harry Kemp,
stuff: known to newspaper readers
as the Vagabond Poet, the
Villon of America, the
"There is battle here, there is Hobo Poet, or the Tramp
clean and vigorous war, Poet. Unkempt Harry Kemp
There are bivouacs visited by ... rode the rails with a
night's every star, volume of Keats between
There are long, barren slopes his belt and his naked
of encampment burned clean belly. He began writing
by the sun, his own poetry ("All night
And ramparts of strange new I've crouched in empty
dreams to be stormed and won. cars/That rode into the
Here the five-petaled wild rose dawn") ... Kemp was the
blossoms more sweet stuff of which
Because the earth is barren contemporary news features
and the heat were made-- a gaunt,
Intolerable for lush, Lincolnesque youth who
domestic grass; loved the out-of-doors,
The ocean shines like many wrote sincere poetry, and
disks of brass, never wore a necktie or a
Or between white hollows it hat. --p.31-32, Allen
lapses, great and green Churchill, "The Improper
Where solitude sifts slowly Bohemians"
in between
The hills of sparkling waste According to Untermeyer,
and rise and fall-- Kemp began publishing
Hills whose one music is the in 1910 (a play) but didn't
sea bird's call!... start living up to his image
And here is all space that until 1920 with "Chanteys
every eye can see: and Ballads" and the
The ocean completing all autobiography "Tramping on
immensity, Life" (1922)
And the sky, mother of infinity--
Yet greatness on smallness jostles
till both are one
And a grain of sand stands
doorkeeper to the sun."
That is "Cape's End", presumably one
of Kemp's best, since it's the only
one Louis Untermeyer chose to run
in his "Modern American Poetry"
(p. 377-8 of the 4th ed, published 1930,
1st ed was published 1919)
Rigidly rhyming couplets,
with a really uneven, This is like the first poem
lurching meter... of a teenager that likes
the idea of writing poetry,
The closing couplet but hasn't read very much
isn't too bad-- but of it -- excessively aware
"jostles"? of the most obvious aspects,
with no feel for detail or
And the ocean waves subtlety.
considered as
"hills of sparkling
waste"?
It appears that this was a period where
experimental verse was in transition.
They're not sure what rules, if
any, they're going to follow. E.g. is it okay to rhyme
if you don't scan?
They may have been
odd, unconventional Can you use formal structure
folks downtown in the if you address an
boho of the 1910s, but unconventional topic?
to our ear their idea
of poetry seems
relatively conventional.
Edna St. Vincent Villay, the
star of the Village scene-- a
case where the best and the
best known appear to coincide--
has a very formal structure to
much of her poetry, however
unusual the sentiment.
MALAISE
On the other hand Alfred Kreymborg's
work strikes me as very good... "Advertisement"
seems much like
And the magazine that Kreymborg something one
started sounds like an interesting might hear read
project (Allen Churchill, "Improper" at the 3300
p.120-121): Club today:
"... Alfred Kreymborg, a modest, "We want a man of forty
bespectacled man from New York's for the job.
East Side who saw poetry in such One who has enjoyed his
modern terms that he was too little fill of romance.
modern for contemporary moderns." And suffered intermittent
indigestion ever since.
"... the trail-blazing Harriet One whose memories are
Monroe of Chicago, would have sufficiently cold
nothing to do with his She founded successfully to resist
too-modern-for-the-moderns "Poetry", the embraces of
verse. There seemed to be in 1912, truancy."
nothing to do but start his own and it is
magazine in Greenwich Village." still going
strong to
this day.
And that was:
_Others: A Magazine of New Verse_,
According to Churchill, the title of the
magazine derived from one of Kreymborg's Churchill seems
'Mushrooms' (small poems): under the impression
that "mushrooms" were
"The old expressions are with us always, one-liners, but
and there are always others." Kreymborg's collection
of that title
contradicts that.
Churchill claimed "the contemporary
press discovered a source of endless
delight. ... in high glee printed And in "Improper Bohemians",
such excerpts as Mina Toy's": that was the one and only
mention of Mina Toy, a really
"Spawn of fantasies impressive poet that deserves
Sitting the appraisable to be better known.
Pig Cupid his rosy snout
Rooting erotic garbage" She was not included
in Untermeyer's
anthology, either.
So we may rest easy
that the mainstream
poetry establishment
did not call everything
right.
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