The Gospel of Beauty in the Progressive Age: Reforming American Verse and Values (Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History)

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL HISTORY Editor Anthony J. La Vopa, North Carolina State University. Suzanne Marchand, Louisiana State University. Javed Majeed, Queen Mary, University of London. The Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History series has three main aims: to close the gap between intellectual and cultural approaches and to bring them into mutually enriching interactions; Promoting interdisciplinarity in intellectual and cultural history; and to globalize the field, both geographically and in terms of disciplines and methods. This series is open to work in a variety of intellectual inquiry modes, including social theory and social science; natural Sciences; economic thinking; Literature; Religion; gender and sexuality; Philosophy; political and legal thinking; Psychology; and music and art. It includes not only North America but also Africa, Asia, Eurasia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. It includes nationally oriented studies and studies of intellectual and cultural exchanges between different nations and regions of the world, and includes research monographs, synthetic studies, edited collections, and extensive works of reinterpretation. Regardless of methodology or geography, all books in the series are historical in the basic sense of conducting rigorous contextual analysis. Edited by Palgrave Macmillan: Indian Mobilities in the West, 1900-1947: Gender, Performance, Embodiment By Shompa Lahiri The Shelley-Byron Circle and the Idea of Europe By Paul Stock Culture and Hegemony in the Colonial Middle East By Yaseen Noorani Reclaiming Bishop Berkeley: Virtue and Society in the Anglo-Irish Context by Scott Breuninger, Reading Russian Literature in China: A Moral Example and Handbook of Practice by Mark Gamsa Rammohun Roy and The Making of Victorian Britain by Lynn Zastoupil

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Carl Gustav Jung: Vanguard Conservative by Jay Sherry Law and Politics in British Colonial Thought: Transpositions of Empire by Shaunnagh Dorsett and Ian Hunter, eds. Sir John Malcolm and the Creation of British India By Jack Harrington The American Bourgeoisie: Distinction and Identity in the Nineteenth Century By Sven Beckert and Julia Rosenbaum, eds. Benjamin Constant and the Birth of French Liberalism By K. Steven Vincent The Rise of Russian Liberalism: Alexander Kunitsyn in Context, 1783–1840 By Julia Berest The Gospel of Beauty in the Progressive Age: Reforming American Verses and Values By Lisa Szefel Knowledge Production, Pedagogy, and Institutions in Colonial India (in press) By Indra Sengupta and Daud Ali, eds. Character, Self and Sociability in the Scottish Enlightenment (in press) By Thomas Ahnert and Susan Manning, eds Nature Engaged: Science in Practice from the Renaissance to the Present (in press) By Jessic a Riskin and Mario Biagioli, eds.

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The Gospel of Beauty in the Progressive Era Reforming American Verses and Values Lisa Szefel

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THE GOSPEL OF BEAUTY IN THE PROGRESSIVE AGE

Copyright © Lisa Szefel, 2011. All rights reserved. First published in 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States – a division of St. Martin's Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world it comes from Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, a company registered in England number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic brand of the above companies and has companies and agents around the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the US, UK, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978-0-230-11284-1 Cataloging data in Library of Congress publication Szefel, Lisa, 1965-, Author The Gospel of Beauty in the Progressive Age: Reforming American Verse and Values / Lisa Szefel. p. cm. - (Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History) ISBN 978-0-230-11284-1 (hardcover) 1. American Poetry - 20th Century - History and Criticism. 2. Progressivism (US politics) 3. Progressivism in literature. 4. Social action in literature. 5. Modern (literature) – United States. 6. United States - History - 1865-1921. I. Title. PS324.S94 2011 8119.52093581 – dc22

2010045448

A catalog entry of the book is available from the British Library. Designed by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First Edition: May 2011 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

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Table of contents of the illustrations

vii

A note on the text

Thanks

List of abbreviations

Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6

Sophisticated designs, modern renovations: poetics and poetic community from home to dynamo

Reforming Verse, Building Society: The Labor Theory of Poetic Value

Healing a Community, Shaping a Renaissance: A New Infrastructure for the "New Beauty"

Rewriting genre codes, redrawing the color line: anthologies and the dream of aesthetic universalism

127

Cutting words, creating images: The economy of authorship on the literary market

161

Romantic Individualism, Radical Politics: Lyrical Solidarity in Peace and War

187

Epilogue

217

Nuts

225

Index

271

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Illustrations Book cover: Edwin Markham recites "Lincoln, the man of the people" at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial, 1922. Photo courtesy of the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. Reproduction number: LC-USZ62-64974. 2.1

3.1

3.2

3.3

4.1

Edwin Markham, 1899, the year he wrote The Man with the Hoe. Photo courtesy Library of Congress George Sylvester Viereck, circa 1904, the year he published his first volume of poetry. Photo courtesy University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa Carlo de Fornaro Drawing by members of the Poetry Society of America at the third annual dinner, January 28, 1913, featuring George Sylvester Viereck front and center. Originally published in the New York Sun on February 2, 1913, As I Imagine Harriet Monroe Editing Poetry, 1917, William Rose Benét shows the editor on a stack of manuscripts balancing the competing dictates of gentle tradition and modernity. Reproduced with permission from the Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library William Stanley Braithwaite, frontispiece to his self-published lyrics, "Lyrics of Life and Love", 1904. Braithwaite noted that his light skin raises questions about his ethnicity. He was sometimes mistaken for Italian or Mexican instead of African American.

110

118

139

vii

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Text Note The ellipses (. . .) are used to indicate that I have omitted some words.

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Acknowledgments Joseph Brodsky may have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but he taught one of Mount Holyoke College's least attended courses, Modern Lyric Poetry. Few students bothered to meet the requirement of memorizing more than a thousand verses. Brodsky demonstrated the value of this practice. Leaning against the blackboard, smoking a cigarette, he recited verse after verse, and then recalled the life of a friend, Nadezdha Mandelstam. She memorized thousands of verses written by her husband Osip, whose epigram mocking Stalin landed him in prison; after visits she wrote them down on paper to smuggle them out of the country. Brodsky himself served nearly two years in a labor camp for writing poetry that celebrated individual human dignity rather than collective life under communism. In other courses, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and historian Peter Viereck modeled a spiritual life that inspired me to pursue graduate school. Once, in a doctorate, thinking, recognizing values and ultimately living, that led to more self-knowledge and a fairer society. It's no wonder, then, that I've spent so many years writing a book about the moral inquiry of individuals dedicated to finding meaning, authenticity, and justice by advancing the cause of poetry. Dana Gioia's 1991 essay "Can Poetry Matter?" sparked the idea for this project and made me think of a time in American history when poetry mattered. The studies of Wendy Steiner, Elaine Scarry, and Martha Nussbaum further influenced my thinking on the subject. Independent study with Daniel Albright deepened my understanding of modernist poetry, as well as my appreciation for its brilliance, which he combined with kindness and generosity. Many files and drafts later, Rochester friends and professors read and commented on several chapters: Tara McCarthy, Mary Henold, Jeffrey Tucker, John Michael, and Henry Sommerville. Wayne Ripley, Joy Davis, and Mara Kozelsky generously and graciously provided spot-on reviews and on-demand advice. XI

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xiii

Thanks

A postdoctoral fellowship at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences provided valuable time for the revision of the dissertation. Chris Klemek, Hsuan Hsu, Asif Siddiqi, Matt Lindsay and the rest of my group as well as James Carroll, Kate Lane and Michael Boudin helped make this year so special. An NEH Summer Fellowship offered by the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard broadened my understanding of African-American history while funding the American Antiquarian Society to attend a seminar with two of the most verbally dynamic scholars in book history, Jay Fliegelman and Leah Price, who had a clearer concept provided the focus of my research. Grants from the University of Rochester, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas-Austin, and the Pacific University Faculty Development Award have enabled visits to archives and libraries across the country. The Friedrich Ebert Foundation made research in Europe possible. Through another grant from the Dean's Office at Pacific, I attended a Wye faculty seminar sponsored by the Aspen Institute. I am grateful to David Townsend, Guy Hubbs and other attendees for a week that renewed my confidence in the liberal arts enterprise. I have had the privilege of working with inspiring students and colleagues at Harvard University of History and Literature. I am indebted to Steve Biel, Jeanne Follansbee and Homi Bhabha for sponsoring such an academically rigorous but entertaining department. My colleagues at Pacific University took the leap of faith and hired me for a full-time job, a rare opportunity these days. For that reason, and to share perspectives on pedagogy, hear thoughtful readings of the (unjustifiably cancelled) soap opera Guiding Light (Long Live Otalia!), York in the 1970s, thanks to Larry Lipin, Martha Rampton, Rick Jobs, Jeff Barlow, Jeff Seward and other members of the Pacific community. Palgrave Macmillan saw promise in my manuscript. I would like to thank the editors Chris Chappell and Anthony LaVopa, editorial assistant Sarah Whalen, and the anonymous reviewers. Strengthening the various chapters of this book are scholars who provided helpful comments at various stages of the preliminary process: Michael Thurston, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, Honor Moore, Casey Blake, Bob Lockhart, Ed Blum, Jonathan Holloway, and Joseph Parisi. A former actor and famous MHC professor Michael Burns deserves an Oscar for his star

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Thanks

xiii

again as my senior supervisor for bachelor theses. Thanks also go to George Nash, Harold Wechsler, Bruce Schulman, Joe Kett, Erik Midelfort, Steve Schuker, Alon Confino, Lenard Berlanstein, Ann Marie Mikkelsen, Raphael Allison, James Longenbach, Kim Reily, Amy Kittelstrom, and the Viereck family. Tom Beck and Nickie Augustine provided sustenance in the form of home cooked meals, vast wisdom, and safe haven. Poets of the progressive era liked to use the words "good," "vital," and "sincere" to describe the poetry they admired. These adjectives certainly apply to someone I look up to, Lynn Gordon, who has offered me advice and friendship for over a decade. While most people know Robert Westbrook for his groundbreaking study of John Dewey, I know him as the man who takes the “medical” part of the Doctor of Philosophy seriously: he is the best diagnostician of academic writing, and he is the supervisor of the dissertation processed with professional care. This project could not have been written without Daniel Borus, the Dissertation Associate Supervisor. In addition to three-page replies and line-by-line criticism, usually within 48 hours of receiving a chapter draft, he offered valuable book suggestions, rich intellectual discussion, solid career advice, and right vision. Karen, Ben, and Sarah also provided doctoral training in caring and friendship through shared meals, books, baseball, stories, and songs. For trying to lure myself into, uh, "poetry readings" at downtown bars when I'd rather spend an evening reading, myself with updates on the NFL draft and the Sabers' Stanley Cup bid and promised to pay back my student loan if you win the lottery thanks to my brothers Jay, Debi and Rik. With Terry and Jerry Szefel as parents, I hit the jackpot. I dedicate this book to them for their unending love and support.

Permissions Several sections of Chapter 4 previously appeared in the New England Quarterly and Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters. I would like to thank these publications, particularly Linda Smith Rhoads, for permission to reproduce this material. I would like to thank the following libraries, archives and

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xiii Acknowledgments

Individuals for permission to reproduce copyrighted material contained in this book: Letter from George Sylvester Viereck Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, reprinted with permission from copyright owner Stephanie A. Viereck Gibbs Kamath; Amy Lowell Papers, bMA Lowell 19.1, William S. Braithwaite Papers, bMS AM 1444, Witter Bynner Papers, bMS AM 1891, Houghton Library, Harvard University; The trustees under Amy Lowell's will; Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Alain Locke Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University; Elmer Gertz Papers and Florence Hamilton Papers, Division of Manuscripts, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; H.L. Mencken Papers and James Oppenheim Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; MSS 111, Louis Untermeyer Papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware and the Louis Untermeyer Estate, Norma Anchin Untermeyer; Poetry: A Magazine Records, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago; Personal records of Harriet Monroe, MS 169, Newberry Library and Ann Monroe, Harriet Monroe Estate; Alice Corbin Henderson Papers, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin; William Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite Papers, 1904–1932, (1958), Accession #8990, William Vaughn Moody Papers, #8045, Shaemus O'Sheel Papers, Sara Teasdale Papers, Accession #8170-d, Jessie B. Rittenhouse Papers, Accession # 8449, Harriet Monroe Papers, Accession #6998-a, Robert Frost Papers, #6261, Conrad Aiken Papers, #6180-d, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Special Collections, University of Virginia; Edwin Markham Archive, Horrmann Library, Wagner College; William Stanley Braithwaite Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

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Abbreviations AHUT ALHH ALHU BET BR BYHH CAVA

CL CO EGLC EMWC FHLC GVHH HMNY HMUC JONY JRVA

BONE MFBY NOW OHCU

Dokumente von Alice Corbin Henderson, Harry Ransom Center, Universidade do Texas in Austin Dokumente von Amy Lowell, Houghton Library, Harvard University Alain Locke Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University Boston Evening Transcript The William S. Braithwaite Reader Dokumente von Witter Bynner , Houghton Library , Harvard University Conrad Aiken Papers, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Special Collections, University of Virginia Current Literature Opinion Elmer Gertz Manuscript Collection, Library of Congress Edwin Markham Archive, Horrmann Library, Wagner College Florence Hamilton Collection Relating to Edwin Markham, Biblioteca do Congresso George Viereck Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University H.L. Mencken Papers, New York Public Library Literature, Special Collections, University of Virginia Personal Papers of Harriet Monroe, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library James Oppenheim Papers, New York Public Bibli oteca Jessie B. Rittenh Ouse Papers, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Special Collections, University of Virginia Louis Untermeyer Papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware Diverse Files, Beinecke Library, Yale University The New York Times William Braithwaite Oral History, Columbia Universidade XV

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XVI

abbreviations

PMUC-PSA-RFVA

DING

SSVA

WBHH WBVA

Poesia: A Magazine of Verse Records, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library Poetry Society of America Robert Frost Papers, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Special Collections, University of Virginia Sara Teasdale Papers, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature , Sondersammlungen, Shaemus O'Sheel-Papiere der University of Virginia, Clifton Waller Barrett American Literature Library, Sondersammlungen, William S. Braithwaite-Papiere der University of Virginia, Houghton Library, William S. Braithwaite-Papiere der Harvard University, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature , Sondersammlungen, University of Virginia

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introduction

They helped me keep reality and justice in a vision. —William Butler Yeats In August 1912, Robert Frost boarded the steamer SS Parisian bound for Britain. Like Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot before him, Frost sought audiences and outlets for his verse, as well as a sympathetic community of other poets. For twenty years he had submitted poetry to major monthly newspapers including The Century, Scribner's, Atlantic, Harper's Weekly and The Youth's Companion with little but dismay to show his efforts. "If there was anything I ran away from when I went to England, it was the American publisher," he wrote.1 Frost's move abroad thus represented a profound disillusionment with the state of the modern American literary market. Frost was not alone in his self-proclaimed "protest against poets and magazine poetry." Between 1898 and 1910, articles and letters to the editor in major newspapers such as The New York Times and The Boston Globe, and popular magazines such as The Saturday Review and Harper's Monthly, regularly debated whether poetry was a dead business. from Pony Express. A 1905 symposium on "The Slump of Poetry" in The Critic concluded that the public ignored poets both because they used antiquated forms on irrelevant subjects and because the fast-paced, materialistic, and scientific nature of modern life Americans opposed an appreciation of poetry immunized . . . Benefits.2 When the 41-year-old poet returned to America three years later, in February 1915, the cultural landscape of literature had changed dramatically. Shortly after his arrival, Frost came across a review of his book North of Boston, originally published in England and just off the press in the United States. writing 1

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The gospel of beauty in the progressive age

In The New Republic, critic and poet Amy Lowell praised the book's "unusual power and sincerity" and declared it "certainly the most American volume of poetry to appear in some time". "America kindly shook hands with him" to welcome him home.4 Then William Stanley Braithwaite published two articles in the Boston Evening Transcript, complete with photographs and excerpts, while Jessie B. Rittenhouse's positive note appeared in the New York Times Book Review appeared .5 In August, the Chicago Evening Post featured a rave endorsement from Louis Untermeyer.6 Within months, North of Boston and A Boy's Will had multiple issues to become bestsellers, and Frost's career as a "bluntly spoken" poet was on the rise College campuses in high demand, the lecture circuit and the book trade had begun. What appeared first to Frost and later to historians as a sudden break in American cultural life was actually the product of gradual changes beginning at the turn of the century. A new cultural infrastructure emerged that encouraged a more welcoming reception for poetry that departed from refined norms. Frost's experiences—both his frustrations and his eventual success—shed light on the situation of many turn-of-the-century American poets in this transitional period. Between 1910 and 1920, America experienced a "renaissance" in poetry, thanks in large part to the new poetic communities that Frost popularized. The Poetry: A Magazine of Verse based in Chicago, founded in 1912 by Harriet Monroe, best-selling articles and anthologies by William Stanley Braithwaite (1913-1929), editorial guidelines of Current Literature, and some of the short-lived "little magazines". how The Masses and Seven Arts, along with the Poetry Society of America, founded in 1910, provided much-needed forums for new poetry. These individuals and institutions picked up where the gentle poetic community that preceded them left off and laid the groundwork for a thriving modern literary tradition. Perhaps at no other time in the country's history did poetry become more urgent as Americans wrote verse, entered competitions, bought volumes, attended lectures, and created poetry awards, grants, and institutions. Beginning in 1912, “an epidemic of poetry” (as the poet Clement Wood called it) swept the country, with the Year of the Letter competition attracting over 10,000 entries and significant works by Amy Lowell, Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stevens and Others have been published. 7 As John Butler Yeats (father of W.B. Yeats)

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Introduction 3

remarked (perhaps with some disdain): "Violins are tuning all over America."8 While acknowledging this phenomenon, historians of the progressive era relegate it to a footnote. Poetry has been ignored for so long in part because it seems so irrelevant and precious. Instead, historians of the time focused on unearthing the origins of a reformist ethos that sought to address the ills of unregulated industrial capitalism. As evidenced by the titles of representative historical monographs—The Age of Reform, Pivotal Decades, A Very Different Age, The Tyranny of Change, A Fierce Discontent—the main story of the first two decades of the 20th century revolves around understanding how Americans massively negotiated change through urbanization, immigration, and industrialization amidst an emerging new woman, rising waves of racial violence, and the gathering storm of world war.9 However, the social reform movement and the creation of modern poetic communities evolved along with a belief that more empathy was needed to build social harmony and amplify the impact of massive changes. Poetry played a crucial role in this transformation, as it marked a dramatic reshaping of the contours and functions of imagination, combining creativity with a moral obligation – an awareness of the plague and suffering inherent in modern life. One of these poets, Vachel Lindsay, believed that grumpy, commercial times called for poetry that spoke to the soul and spoke to socialism. When Frost left for England, Lindsay made a two-month tour of New Mexico from his hometown of Springfield, Illinois, preaching what he called "the gospel of beauty." His one-sided description of this "new religious idea" explained its intention: to encourage Americans to work "without reward or honor" to make their "neighborhood and home more beautiful, more democratic, and more holy through their special art". Business tycoon Andrew Carnegie, who two decades earlier published The Gospel of Wealth and taught philanthropy to the highest echelons of American society, Lindsay lived simply and destitutely as she roamed the country spreading her message. In exchange for a night in a barn or a home-cooked meal, he traded copies of a booklet he printed, Rhymes To Be Trade For Bread. In chronicling this peripatetic experience, Adventures while Preaching the Gospel of Beauty, first published in American Magazine in

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The gospel of beauty in the progressive age

Published in book form two years later in 1912, Lindsay outlined a new religious denomination, "the Church of Beauty," which preached "the love of beauty and the love of God." Parishioners were to travel the country in search of "the secret of democratic beauty" while filling their hearts to the brim with the righteousness of God. His purpose in life "must be the joy of beauty, which no wound can take away, and the joy of the love of God, which no crucifixion can take away". and societal beliefs. He lauded Lincoln, the governor who pardoned anarchists John Peter Altgeld convicted of the Haymarket bombings, and in The Kallyope Yell outlined an egalitarian agrarian utopia shadowed by both Barnum and Bailey and the Holy Spirit. He demanded that instead of lying sullenly in rococo splendor, the beauty must take up a cross or a sword and lead. Lindsay prophesied a renaissance in art with the rallying cry "Religion, Equality, and Beauty!"12 Lindsay conceived this plan at a time when a generation of reformers was clamoring for the social gospel movement of Protestant Christian intellectuals. With origins dating back to the 1880s and a key articulation suggested by the Rochester-born Walter Rauschenbusch in Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), this blend of religion and politics inspired churchgoers in the progressive era to embrace their faith to reorient. Rauschenbusch preached on the need for good Christians to approach religion not as a quiet refuge but as a call to alleviate the inequalities and conflicts of modern life. Similarly, a panel of writers, editors, critics, and readers welcomed the new gospel of beauty, which linked the verse to values of community, justice, and democracy. Not everyone shared Lindsay's defense of temperance, farm labor, Christianity, and poverty; in fact, some liked gin, neon lights, Nietzsche, and savings accounts. But the belief that modern American life must be about more than money and materialism, industry and individualism, and that poetic beauty can play a dramatic role in the development of subjectivity and the betterment of society united them all. Of course, claims to the moral and didactic power of poetry have been articulated over the centuries. From Aristotle and Horace to Renaissance humanists and Enlightenment philosophers, poetry was embraced as a means of self-cultivation, civilization, catharsis, and

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Introduction 5

Fun. With the development of Romanticism in the 19th century, evidence of poetry's civic function reached its greatest articulation, notably in William Wordsworth's Preface to Lyric Ballads (1800) and Percy Bhysse Shelley's Defense of Poetry (1819). In a famous passage, Shelley referred to poets as "the unrecognized legislators of the world" and regarded their work as vital to the making of a just society: a man, to be very good, must introduce himself intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and joys of your kind must become yours. The great instrument of the moral good is the imagination; and poetry manages the effect by acting on the cause. . . Poetry strengthens that faculty which is the organ of man's moral nature as exercise strengthens a limb.13 In the same year John Keats composed Ode to a Grecian Urn, which equated beauty with truth and worshiped art as the embodiment of idealistic virtues . Beauty was a concern of European writers and thinkers in the 19th century. In Russia, Dostoyevsky's hero in The Idiot (1868) believes that "beauty will save the world" from materialism and greed, while in Germany Nietzsche attempted to turn the tide of aesthetics and free beauty from divine connections, arguing: "Man believes that the world itself is created by beauty - he forgets that he created it."14 Progressive poets, in considering Nietzsche, followed his references to Platonic ideas along with pre-war historical appeals from transcendentalists who, in the early nineteenth century, demanded a “tough beauty” reacted to the first wave of industrialism not by inciting rebellion, but by developing an image of man that was geared to market conditions. As Jeffrey Sklansky has shown, the romantic idealists—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Horace Bushnell—reimagined the ideas of possessive individualism. They insisted that autonomy must depend not on property but on spiritual self-sufficiency, and that epistemology, moving from Enlightenment belief in logic to Romantic respect for inspiration, was a means of combating the intrusions into society brought about by the market revolution provide social relationships. Inspired by the English and German Romantics, the Transcendentalists

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The gospel of beauty in the progressive age

privileged the spiritual over material wealth, intuition over intellect, and harmony with nature over mastery of it.15 In the essay The Poet, Emerson criticized the disconnect between aesthetic beauty and the individual soul. While Plato acknowledges the importance of beauty in individual behavior, separating it from philosophy, Emerson recombines the two, arguing that poetry offers a way of thinking about life because it is in nature for individuals to experience glimpses of self-transparency; Poetry helped capture and trigger these fleeting moments of revelation. He outlined a role for "the poet or man of beauty" to remain apart from society but liberate his fellow citizens by penning messages of instruction and inspiration from the universe (created by beauty).16 In the early 20th century, The Poets Progressives also worked to infuse individuality with non-market spiritual values on which they believed true freedom and democracy depended. This train of thought intersected with discussions about the role of art and ethics in American political and social life. To understand this change, one must not only analyze the reform texts; it requires studying works of the imagination that have shaped narratives about responsibility and community. The correspondence, criticism, activism, and compositions of progressive poets show how and why values—in which rebuilding a tenement society in industrial capitalism required rebuilding community—changed in the early 20th century. Just as whistleblowers like Jacob Riis blamed poverty on human depravity, progressive poets blamed poetic decay on a climate of inattention; By improving literary institutions, they believed they could reclaim the social power of poetry, thus giving a new value to outdated cadres. Reclaiming not only human subjectivity, but also emotion, even passion, as a force against objectification and standardization was crucial for the leaders who ushered in this cultural shift. Poems published in newspapers, magazines, diaries, anthologies and monographs, together with the practices of interpretation developed to analyze artistic expression, offer an access to the cognitive and emotional life of the individual and show the advantages that the vision of modernism brings inherent in writers' experiences, and readers alike.17 Readers were alternately moved to express sympathy, joy, indignation, and joy. Individuals read, write and discuss poetry as a means of making sense of everyday life in the modern world. The language they use to describe theirs

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Introduction 7

Responding to specific poems provides an entry point to understand their values and feelings. Instead of turning to poetry for moral lessons, for hazy moments of sentimentality, or to encounter the beautiful mind of a sensitive writer, these readers found an opportunity in verse to create practical meaning in their lives. The new poetry they discovered often reflected their own feelings of apprehension and alienation along with hope. Sensitivity and good taste, like the manifestos and denunciations, therefore reflected and refracted the main currents of thought and culture in the age of reform. In dozens of memoirs and personal correspondence, readers have repeatedly described the moment they decided to write or promote poetry as an "epiphany" that changed the course of their lives and brought great comfort. For many, the moment was not so much a conversion to a cause as a realization that poetry can be used as a vehicle for self-discovery. The historian of print culture, Robert Darnton, wrote that reading is “unlike carpentry or embroidery. . . it's not just a skill; it is an active construction of meaning within a communication system.”18 Studying the richly imagined environment created by the practice and process of reading helps to rediscover what texts and authors have meant to individuals in the past.19 Jonathan Rose's study of the work-class self-taught people who became Labor Party members or MPs in Victorian and Edwardian England shows how a history of reading reception can shed light on the impact of books on political consciousness. Far from being oppressively elitist and misogynist, Rose claims that literature considered part of high culture provided "deeply emancipatory reading experiences" and "critical empowerment" for both working-class and female readers.20 The reading practices of this historical moments increased and shaped contemporary notions of gender. Changes in reading, in turn, reflected and influenced a broader cultural system of female identity and power relations. As women increasingly moved into the public eye, they challenged medical and scientific discourses that restricted female roles to reproductive dictates. The culture of reading around poetry offered women space to inscribe their lives outside of the private sphere and expected norms. The books the women read helped shape their sense of possibility. As the memoirs and letters of poets at the beginning of the 20th century show, young women appropriated models

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Daring and heroism in books in which men are the main actors in remaking themselves.21 The reading practices of women in the progressive era shaped notions of selfhood, which in turn transformed the broader cultural system of gender identity. Women “read” stories by and about men, thereby escaping a far greater share of established power relations.22 Amy Lowell, Harriet Monroe, Jessie Rittenhouse and salon hostess Mabel Dodge have read British authors such as Thomas Carlyle, Matthew Arnold and the Pre-Raphaelites and male American writers, and testified to the fact that reading provided fertile ground for the cultivation of an adventurous and imaginative life - an ambition otherwise denied. Like their Victorian predecessors, modern readers participated in a literary culture of sensibility in which writers appealed to readers' sympathies. passions constructive. In this shared literary context, language sought to heighten sensitivity, sympathy, subjectivity, and the spontaneous inundation of emotions. Reading helped clarify desire and stimulated a sense of vocation, which stimulated participation in social and political reform movements. Reading practices also changed notions of race. The progressive-era catchphrase, "uplift," was part of a Victorian vocabulary that valued self-help, self-restraint, and thrift, but it had a different meaning among African Americans; Control over self and body, as part of Victorian culture of expression, often meant almost absolute white control over the black body. What possible role could an uplifting literary culture play among African Americans living in the turmoil and violence of Jim Crow? African American men and women sought reading as a social activity and as a technology to support and promote a sense of community. They organized reading groups across the country that served as interpretative communities. Named after America's first black poet, the Phyllis Wheatley Clubs met in cities across the country under the motto "Rise as we go up." Members believed that the intensely intimate experience of reading, far from being a passive or escapist experience, helped reorganize racial identities and empowered ambitions and actions beyond physical labor.24 At a time when women couldn't vote, these clubs also offered them a place to make an impact and effect change. The women of the Buffalo club, for example, stimulated discussions about it

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volunteer books, feed the homeless, start a retirement home, teach children to read, distribute books by African American authors to local libraries, mediate between police and black neighborhoods, organize a protest to include a Black exhibition in the city at the 1901 Pan American Exposition, and Raising funds to support Harriet Tubman, head of the Underground Railroad, in her later years. In the home of Mary Talbert, one of the founding members of the chapter, W.E.B. Du Bois, John Hope, Monroe Trotter, and others met in secret to found the Niagara Movement, the forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. for the advancement of people of color). NAACP).25 Du Bois himself translated the democratic implications of reading in a famous passage from his 1903 study Souls of Black Folk: I'm sitting with Shakespeare and he doesn't shudder. In the color line I walk arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in golden halls. . . I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and any soul I want, and they all come graciously, without mockery or condescension. So I dwell, married to truth, above the veil.26 While “the veil” refers to the skin color that separates blacks from whites and also functions as a veil that distorts understandings of race and self, the phrase “I Dwell Above the Veil" is rich in resonances from Shelley and Tennyson, where truth resided behind the veil of sensory illusions. Tennyson's "In Memoriam" includes the lines "Behind the universals below."27 Even the most radical activist, Claude McKay, refuted notions of racial essentialism by intellectually claiming the Western literary tradition as a natural right. When McKay visited the offices of The Seven Arts magazine, editor James Oppenheim recalled, "I told him at the time that he had an incredible opportunity with his talent - to produce poetry with a black rhythm. To my surprise he was offended and said he was as entitled to the inheritance of Shakespeare, Keats, Wordsworth and Milton as I was. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth,

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Keats, Shelley, Swinburne, Browning, Longfellow, Poe and Lowell.” As a teenager, Braithwaite embarked on a self-improvement program by reading the sacred texts of Eastern religions, Latin, Greek and Roman literature, and European classics. Literary exploration imposed no racial or class barriers. As a result, he "mentally and emotionally journeyed through these golden realms of the human spirit and its experiences and its pursuit of truth and beauty, belief and ideals". He read Ruskin's Modern Painters "as if under a spell." In certain literature, such as The Gospel of Christ, he could sidestep fanaticism: "I believed that beauty and art erase all differences." Du Bois evidently understood that he and Braithwaite shared a philosophical point of view, as well as a strategy for its implementation, for he chose Braithwaite to serve as the first literary editor of Crisis, the monthly journal that Du Bois founded in 1910. This study is the reception – a word perhaps too passive – of new poetry mediated by a new community of publishers, anthologists, critics and speakers. "Structures of feelings" - as well as ideology.31 He reveals strategies of individuals working to create a new kind of moral agency amid uncertainty, and reveals the affective dimension of people whose intellectual and emotional world is largely lost to historians has gone.32 Surprisingly, the appeal of poetry at the turn of the 20th century was in part a matter of scope—an affirmation of the worth of man and the individual. Duo in the midst of skyscrapers, national, even global trade and perspectives that equip the reader as well as Alfred Stieglitz' "direct photography", Gertrude Stein's stream of consciousness prose and Picasso's cubism gave new perspectives for navigating through modern life . Poetry gave voice to a tiny self in a limitless world and nurtured a moral vision that replaced a sense of diminishment with agency. At this time, poetry appeared to a significant number of Americans as a primary endeavor that helped make the complexity and disorientation of modern life surmountable. In times of industrialization, urbanization and enormous technological growth, finding a poem - reading it alone and aloud or in public, owning a volume as a material object,

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or to take possession by learning it "by heart" - contributing to an inviolable sense of individuality, the integrity of the individual human voice and conscience.33 Materialism, technology, secularism and mass culture. This study of the incisive connections between aesthetics, ethics, and American society contributes to an interdisciplinary discussion among cognitive scientists, psychologists, philosophers, and literary scholars who argue that moral judgments have as much to do with aesthetic sensibility as they do with logic have . Argumentation. Scholars such as Martha Nussbaum, Elaine Scarry, and Alexander Nehamas draw on a philosophical tradition that sees beauty as the first step in a process leading to greater individual fulfillment and moral ability.34 The promotion of responsible citizens and just societies, Nussbaum argues, cultivation requires sympathy. One way to achieve this ability is to develop “narrative imagination”—seeing the world in terms of someone else's inner workings. For the philosopher Richard Rorty, the greatest novelists foster empathy through their "imaginative ability to see strangers as fellow sufferers," leading to a broader notion of human connectedness. This is accomplished, Rorty emphasized, not through mere reflection but through active attempts to increase "our sensitivity to the particular details of the pain and humiliation of other types of unknown people." public action in favor of those in need. Just as historians have largely ignored American poetic culture between the heyday of refined aesthetics and the rise of high modernity, so literary scholars have ignored the verses of this era that do not meet the standards of the new criticism. Conceived in the 1930s and institutionalized in the 1940s, the New Critics established works of ambiguity, paradox, originality, and difficulty as the standard of performance, a movement that eclipsed dozens of poetic productions of the progressive era. Beginning with Cary Nelson's seminal Repression and Recovery, scholars have worked to identify and correct this omission. Tradition, a genre and gender belittled in the Neo-Critical emphasis on masculinity and the avant-garde.37

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Marshall Berman's definition of the highly controversial term modernism goes beyond the New Critical's limited usage: “I define modernism as any attempt by modern men and women to become both subjects and objects of modernization in order to gain control over the world they feel himself at home in it. . . To be modern means to experience personal and social life as a whirlpool, to find the world and oneself in constant dissolution and renewal, disruption and fear, ambiguity and contradiction; To be part of a universe where 'all that is solid melts into thin air.'” pre-war.39 As Lawrence Rainey demonstrated in his study of the sociology of modernists in England, he shifted the argument to communities, institutionalization, and multiples Modernisms that bring to light the various tendencies, sensibilities, and relationships involved in the construction of literary traditions.40 Far from symbolizing the "end of American innocence," as Henry May would say, those of this one did Community stakeholders continue to value sincerity and multiple modernisms of "practical idealism."41 The development of literary modernism in the United States can be broadly attributed to a generation of individuals who participated in a transatlantic movement that included artists, intellectuals, architects, writers, and musicians belonged. With origins dating back to 1820s France, Baudelaire's distorted beauty, Wild art-for-art aestheticism, Seurat's Pointillism, Proust's nostalgia and Braque's Fauvism, this art movement responded to intellectual, political and cultural changes economically. forged by modernizing forces.42 While European modernism emphasized departure and discontinuity, the American brand had a less pronounced sense of fracture and a quieter connection between art and politics.43 These individuals fell between two major strands in the history of American culture—the Victorian gentleness Late 19th-century tradition and 20th-century modernism.44 The philosopher and poet George Santayana noted this gap in The Genteel Tradition, where he diagnosed the two dominant schools of thought that separated an older generation as “somewhat quiet”— which he adapted with "American Intellect" and "Colonial Mansion"—and a younger generation whose "aggressive enterprise" he represented as "American Will" and "Skyscraper." Progressive poets filled this gap. They recognized the potential of poetry to bring about personal transformation and social change,

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They lamented the profusion of new patterns of thought and writing that were accumulating and being ignored, and they enabled the poetic richness of the second decade of the twentieth century by conducting critical campaigns to explain the new writing to the general public. This is a story of intent, but also one steeped in irony and coincidence, as some of these intermediaries consciously and sometimes unconsciously functioned as midwives of a much more radical and anti-bourgeois modernity than they intended. The history of literary history in this age is not a triumphant march of progress from sterile Victorian verse to vigorous modernist high culture. It's a much more complicated story. The emergence of modern poetry was a complex result of the opportunities created by a union of writers, editors, publishers, and readers. As historian George Cotkin has argued, for the period 1880-1900, individuals in art and science sought a synthesis of old and new, reluctant to let go of the secure past or fully embrace the fluid present.45 The poet and activist Joseph Freeman, who As a Columbia student wrote an article on "temperance as beauty," considering him the ideal type of a "doer of deeds and a maker of beauty," he described the frontier his generation occupied: "If you studied philosophy or thought about marriage, you became Trained in wearing the uniform of the US Army or writing Elizabethan sonnets, wandering through Paris, working in New York or attending events in Moscow, one was caught in the conflict between old and new.” The aesthetic idealism in the gentle Victorianism to the thunderous However, rebellion in high modernity continues to influence popular and critical verse dändnis and thus obscures the equally convincing story of the intrigue. never interaction of personalities and ins. Institutions that have created a new social space in which change can take place. Although the deep continuities between Romanticism and Modernism have been recognized since at least the 1950s, little attention has been paid, even in academic circles, to the role of institutions, petty poets, and non-poets.47 Work by scholars of print culture and the history of the book contributes to to illuminate this story.48 While we recognize that individual inspiration and genius may account for the genesis of some books, the literary community and publishing climate strongly determine who writes, receives commissions, and attracts audiences, and how a community emerges to revitalize poetic ideals in new social circumstances is often overlooked. In an important work, Joan Rubin

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provides a comprehensive overview of the period from 1880 to 1950, examining the use of poetry in elementary schools, nature studies, religious and civic institutions. Rather, my work focuses on the emergence of a web of institutions and texts between 1910 and 1920, paying particular attention to the ways in which poetry influenced political consciousness. I examine how textual encounters enhanced readers' understanding of the modern world and modernism.50 While stories of Greenwich Village bohemians and avant-garde poets who challenged bourgeois conventions and the history of literary modernity are well known, the stories of writers are more traditional attentive readers, writers, editors, and institution-builders remain countless. Scattered throughout the memoirs, unpublished letters, and biographies of minor poets are details of those individuals who influenced cultural production by creating new forums, engaging general readers, and mediating between old and new. I'm readjusting the historical lens to capture these previously overlooked players; those that were only in the footnotes of literary history now take center stage. And I select responses from another largely overlooked historical agent: spectators. An examination of fan letters to poets, letters to the editor, autobiographies, and diaries allows me to shed light on readers' reception of authors' texts and ideas.51 Rooted in gentile tradition, all agreed that poetry should play a greater role in life . Americana and that poetics needed to become more relevant, but they approached the problem in different ways and needed to reconcile competing imperatives. The many poets and popularizers who gradually built a cultural apparatus that reinvigorated verse and served as mediators between gentle and modern readers formed distinct but overlapping communities that knew each other and felt bound by a common enterprise. They combined cultural advancement with scientific practices, and in a world where ideas about Darwinian evolution, closed borders, and corporate industrialism seemed to replace imagination with instrumentalism, they extolled the virtues of a more austere beauty grappling with the new culture of skyscrapers as well as tears and sunsets. Following Vachel Lindsay, George Sylvester Viereck formulated his goal: “What the world really needs from our poets, now as ever, is the gospel of beauty presented in convincing words. Otherwise poetry is bankrupt and the world will pass without it or return to the poets who have seen the beauty of life and who let us see it.”52 Although members of these various communities may have disagreed,

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passionately, they sometimes saw it as their task to transcend gentle standards of poetic beauty and renew poetry to make it relevant to modern life. The first chapter examines this dilemma and outlines the fin desiècle literary scene faced by aspiring poets as it was ruled by cultural arbiters opposed to the reform of verse. Rejected by the dominant literary culture of soft idealism, they found inspiration in the democratic idealism of Walt Whitman. They formed a poetics that portrayed modern life in all its glory and difficulties and that offered a tool for self-understanding and political reform. To ward off the notion that poetry lacked the necessary power, they appropriated discourses of masculinity and began bringing verse to a nation focused on science, technology, economics, and efficiency. The economic depression that gripped the country in the 1890s greatly influenced his attitude, changing his attitudes toward economic arrangements, commitment to those left out in the advance of industrial and business capitalism, and the abandonment of poets. The decade began with the release of How The Other Half Lives, which exposed the dark side of American society. Van Wyck Brooks recalled the impact of Jacob Riis' photographs of urban squalor, impoverished immigrants and abandoned children: "What do we do with these people? The imaginative minds of the decade were obsessed with this question.”53 The second chapter looks at the use of poetry as a major social and political force, symbolized by the career of Edwin Markham, author of the famous Man with the Hoe. . It represents a move towards modernity, both in the figure of the poet - Markham became a celebrity known for both his verse and his cowboy attire - and in the function of poetry. His openly socialist poem became an important literary and cultural event because it intersected with a converging progressive project that appealed to moral sensibilities to improve the lives of the poor, immigrants, workers, women and African Americans. Markham toured the country as one of the first poets to earn a living through lectures and anthologies of his poetry. Significantly, Markham himself, while perhaps more concerned with reform than poetry, helped establish poetry-writing as a serious and respectable profession. While Markham contributed to the poet's transformation, other progressive poets created a web of institutions to support new works, including periodicals, mass magazines,

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Newspapers, commercial and vanity publishers, associations and clubs, colleges and universities. Chapter three examines two of the most important strands of this network. The Poetry Society of America (PSA) has brought together a wide range of poetic styles, themes, forms, and poses. Founded in 1910, the PSA provides a forum for established and emerging poets to meet, share their work and discuss the state of their craft. Although ridiculed by the avant-garde as conservative-minded and overly broad-based constituency - H. L. Mencken referred to the group as "dehydrated ladies of both sexes" - PSA members in these early years debated three questions of particular interest54: What should the intellect and emotions play in its formation of poetry matter? By what standards should the value of a literary work be determined? What are the duties of an American poet, especially in time of war? The two people who spearheaded the formation of the PSA and dealt with these issues, Viereck and Jessie B. Rittenhouse, have made careers in both journalism and poetry. From there they both recognized the importance of mobilizing poets to cope with changes in print production and pooling their resources to interact with the market, publishers, booksellers and readers. The PSA's eclectic mix of conservatives, innovators, and fanatics demonstrates the inadequacy of the analysis that categorizes participants as intellectual, vulgar, or even average, or their products into the strict categories of sentimental or modern. The effort to popularize poetry depended to a large extent on the sensible balance of editors and publishers. Chief among them was Harriet Monroe, who founded Poetry: A Magazine in Verse in 1912 in Chicago, the country's burgeoning industrial center, home of the most radical faction of the labor movement, and home of the City Beautiful Movement, which saw city beautification as a means to empower the citizens to inculcate civic and moral virtue.55 Monroe welcomed advances in technology, industry, and financial institutions, and saw poetry as a vehicle for exploring the resulting changes in modern life. Until recently, scholars viewed her contributions to the poetic community in derivative terms, seeing her as the handmaid of the more intelligent and critical Ezra Pound, or mediocre mediocrity who only inadvertently published what would become the canonical poems of the high modern age. Important work by feminist scholars has begun to recapture the ingenuity and skills that Monroe used to nurture new voices.

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alienated a generation of readers; Instead, in her role as editor of Poetry and Popular Anthologies, she published innovative work alongside more traditional fare, making the literary shift more palatable to her average followers and lay readers. Monroe's career shows how the old kept pace with the new, how the gatekeepers of modernist culture as often applied conservative criteria as avant-garde aesthetics, and how the reception and rejection of modern literature was a piecemeal process sifted by gentle hands. Gentleness and exaltation hold danger and promise for African Americans in an era of lynching spate. Chapter Four examines the efforts of Black poet and critic William Stanley Braithwaite, who attempted to redraw the color line by appealing to aesthetic universalism, the Arnoldian notion that art transcends all barriers and difference, and offers all the hope of equality and enrichment offers. Braithwaite's vision of an American community founded on devotion to beauty and creativity rather than fanaticism and color fueled his determination to promote poetry through every possible channel. He published reviews and anthologies, compiled bibliographies of verse for educational use, corresponded with established poets and unskilled enthusiasts, and organized the first National Poetry Week, which received widespread support from clergy, politicians, publishers, literary scholars, university professors, and librarians. , and ordinary citizens. His active patronage helped reshape American literature. Even the short-tempered Pound had to admit his influence. The "Roaster of Modernity" lamented in 1915, observing events from London: "It's Braithwaite's country, not mine. Why shouldn't he have it. If she likes him.'57 Braithwaite, like Pound, was not an undisputed figure. As a member of Boston's elite interracial literary community, Braithwaite found himself at the crossroads (or, more accurately, in the crosshairs) of two important movements: black activism and literary modernism. His conservative strategy for promoting civil rights has been criticized by those who have accused him of being a conciliator, while his indiscriminate efforts on behalf of writers have been criticized for servility. An examination of the racial stereotypes used by other editors and poets in private correspondence reveals the limitations of Braithwaite's ethereal, idealized philosophy of beauty, particularly his inability to create a disembodied spiritual democracy. The use of juxtapositions, this time of concrete imagery, played a key role in the dramatic turn poetry took in the 1910s.

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From the anthologies of Braithwaite and Poetry magazine, in the aisles of poetry societies and college campuses, and in letters between verse writers and readers, the arrival of Imagism brought about one of the most controversial debates of the decade. Informed by haiku and Japanese tanka, it began with discussions at the Poets' Club in London, traveled to America on poetry, and was popularized by Amy Lowell. Considered the fundamental gateway to modernist poetry, Imagism removed excessive emotion, unnecessary adjectives, and discursive ideas, and placed what Pound called "luminous details" at the heart of a poem, those selected facts which, placed in the proper order, produce insight stimulate. and understanding.58 Chapter Five looks at Lowell's role in igniting this movement by tapping into average audiences. Arrogant and thin-skinned, a baron among bohemians and a gay woman among conservative Brahmins, she traveled to London to examine new literary movements, toured America, lectured to sold-out audiences on verse libre and Imagism, wrote a best-selling book on literary criticism and declared new ones Poems in simple, clear language, and generally took advantage of his considerable wealth, family name, and perseverance at every opportunity. Lowell also created a professional image of the poet, resembling a accomplished businessman in a smart suit, to counter the popular notion of a starving artist in an attic. During these years, another unusual pairing of romantic individualism and radical politics occurred in the socialist monthly The Masses. Running from 1911 until its closure by government officials in 1917, it received much attention from historians, but while it explained the magazine's progressive policies, few knew what to make of its lack of attention to radical movements in the arts. Marinetti's collage poems celebrating arms and declarations of the beauty of war ('belle guerre') and Dadaist pronouncements on the death of art are conspicuously absent from The Masses; Despite radical political beliefs, they adhered to conventional aesthetic norms. Modern, wanting their writing to emerge not from encounters with dead authors but from contemporary experiences, they rarely deviated from standard verse protocols.59 Their adherence to conventional forms and themes need not be viewed as an unfortunate and subliterary anomaly; can be seen as a worthwhile effort. Editor Max Eastman is perhaps the most famous example, but his collaborators Louis Untermeyer and James Oppenheim were also influential at some pivotal moments. This "feeling

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mental rebels” (to use Eastman's term) struggled to reconcile the dictates of socialist solidarity and romantic individualism, instinct and ideology, art and propaganda. The letters, lectures and literary-critical value concepts that appear again and again in his letters, lectures and verses point to the value model that also enlivened the reformist impulses of the time: "genuine" (not learned from books), "sincere" (spontaneous and honest) , "strong" (bold rather than restrained language), "vital" (about contemporary issues or experiences), and most importantly, a word ubiquitous in his early 20th-century literary writings, "beauty". . Together they created an infrastructure that supported poets who adhered to multiple poetic codes, who wanted to be taken seriously as professionals, and who sought a more complex and revealing beauty that transcended the Anglo-American notions of the sublime found in Romanticism, to provoke by relieving both discomfort and comfort, rather than calming and provoking.60 As new cultural gatekeepers, these individuals cultivated an audience and expounded what constitutes beautiful poetry and what poetry is, with a shared sense of mutual effort and aesthetics should do . As these chapters show, regular recalibrations of tradition and innovation, rather than an aggressively silent focus on the new, have shaped the contours and practice of change. Americans bound to traditional notions of truth, beauty, and goodness who, in the face of sweeping political, social, and economic changes, or as a place for cultivating the imagination and negotiating the complexes, have now turned to verse for solace or understanding They had trusted advisors who assured them that the new guy in different incarnations could really suit both their tastes and their lives. In Peace and War, poetry played an important role in cultivating a reformist ethos during the progressive era. Smoothing the transition from Victorianism to modernism, these gentle and modern writers were instrumental in transforming American values and sensibilities, as were the radicals who rose to fame and the writers who became canonized.

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1 Demanding projects, modern renovations: poetics and poetic community from home to dynamo

You will remember that we were not far behind Ruskin, Father, Swinburne and Matthew Arnold; our atmosphere was one of poets and people touched by religious enthusiasm or religious sadness. Beauty (not to be mentioned today) was then a living presence or a painful absence, day and night.1 - George Santayana wrote in Rome in 1928, at a time when the stock market, modernism and Mickey Mouse culture were moving towards Santayana appealed to the beauty-soaked poetic, philosophical, and aesthetic milieu of gentle idealism in which his generation grew up. For nearly forty years - from the 1860s to the early 1900s - mild-mannered writers, editors and publishers dominated the country's intellectual life. Amid the upheaval and seeming chaos of post-Civil War industrial life, they formed a web of cultural institutions and critical methods aimed at raising morale and promoting standards. They turned to culture as an antidote to the materialism of capitalism and socialism, believing that it would provide a basis for unity in a conflict-torn society. As idealists, they placed special emphasis on the centrality of the spiritual; Eternal ideas formed an epistemological structure and exercised religious power when they found form in poetry. Far from being alienated in ivory towers or on the fringes of society, these Victorian liberals embraced authoritarian public roles and 21st

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promoted a view of life beyond the mundane and material, and advocated self-culture as a means to improve public life and strengthen American democracy. They went beyond the superficial. As E. L. Godkin observed in his Chromographic Civilization, culture was not gained by a cursory reading or a grand tour of European capitals; it required intense study of words, sustained effort and rigorous thinking. 2 Like progressive reformers, they were inspired by a transatlantic exchange of ideas. The British poet and critic Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) provided eloquent explanations of the powerful role culture plays in transforming individual life, an achievement felt to be particularly necessary in an industrialized nation. In his influential 1869 study Culture and Anarchy, Arnold defended culture against charges of frivolity and protested the worship of machines and materialism. Far from being "moonshine" as critics say, the culture played a practical role in providing models of perfection that would help the human race attain greater wisdom and harmony. Beauty, in turn, exercised a positive ethical force. Grace, serenity, and symmetry marked the great epochs of history that Arnold identified as the Italian Renaissance, Elizabethan England, and most notably Ancient Greece, as art, culture, and democracy (although his ideas tended to be oligarchic and shared by members of the elite). governance) worked together. Men and women of culture served as "true apostles of equality" because they strove to spread the best ideas of their time, "to make current everywhere what was best thought and known in the world" and regardless of " Bringing sweetness and light to all of class, although of course an elite sets the standards. As the perfect embodiment of beauty, poetry is carried, comforted, strengthened and encouraged. 3 At a time when England was suffering under the weight of industrial capitalism, John Ruskin, a radical conservative, championed the regenerative powers of nature, architecture and art. God revealed himself in nature, and recognizing his beauty required moral training. Ruskin realized this one day when the sun came out after a storm cloud had cleared: "And then I learned—something I didn't know before—the true meaning of the word beautiful," he wrote. It was that which “can distract the human soul from contemplating itself . . . and annihilate - even in such a small measure - the thoughts and feelings that have to do with this present world,

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and fix the mind - in all humility - on it. . . BEAUTIFUL.”4 This aesthetic awareness was intertwined with moral acumen; the greater the degree of observation, the greater the degree of sympathy.5 In architecture, as in life, beauty embodied an "ordered balance and order" and came from heaven, far removed from the "violence and disorganization of sin."6 None Contribution Ruskin was not a Darwinian world but believed that art needed to take a more active role in social government and political economy. The organism was central to his view of social life and he championed the craft movement. In his seminal chapter, The Nature of Gothic, from The Stones of Venice, Ruskin painted a picture of an Arcadia where work, faith, and art mingled harmoniously, and conjured up an image that inspired a generation of Victorian readers, both social and economic to correct injustices. .7 Arnold and Walter Pater continued these ideas, emphasizing the reciprocity of beauty and goodness. They claimed that recognizing them required a primitive character, a "crystal clear nature". nothing less than the democratization of beauty.”9 Such principles informed two of the most influential American magazines of the post-Civil War era: The Atlantic Monthly and Scribner's (later The Century Magazine). The editors, editors and contributors wanted to create a shared vision of the societal role of culture. They believed that engaging with ancient values would bring man into contact with the eternal. Such contact would raise the morale of middle-class readers and lead to a more virtuous, harmonious, and gracious society. Although the periodicals contained both fiction and non-fiction on contemporary subjects, publishers regarded poetry as the pinnacle of civilization, "the purest expression of ideality," and as such needed protection.10 1857 in Boston, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Francis Underwood founded The Atlantic Monthly as a vehicle for civilizing and humanizing the country. With Matthew Arnold, they believed that encounters with great literature as well as contemporary authors would foster individual and national progress by elevating individual aspirations, directing behavior, and tempering materialism and greed. For them, culture was an internal condition of moral and intellectual character, not an external set of circumstances; all individuals had the ability to cultivate

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their inner selves.11 To this end they fought, along with their academic peers such as Charles Eliot, President of Harvard, to liberate literature and education from the restrictive hand of religion. The magazine's staff took their role as cultural evangelists seriously and claimed a quasi-religious role for themselves. His goal was to produce a monthly magazine that could rival the best books and serve as a compendium of culture for years to come. high standards. Under the direction of Richard Watson Gilder (1844–1909) it became a general secular journal. The son of a High Church Methodist minister, Gilder preached the Platonic creed that truth equals beauty and goodness. For thirty-five years, first as associate editor from 1874 to 1881, then as editor from 1881 to 1909, he strove to make each issue a work of art.13 Gilder and his circle viewed poets as "guardians of noble thought." "Amid a filthy world they seek to keep alive the flickering, hard-burning flame of the ideal."14 In Gilder's view, certain eternal truths encompassed the universe; it was the poet's duty to incorporate them into his work. By the 1880s, The Century had a circulation of 250,000 and was overtaking competitors in award-winning poetry and prose. These periodicals, along with Harper's and Lippincott's, set moral, intellectual, and aesthetic standards for readers and rendered important services to American writers. They provided a national market for authors, afforded their contributors recognition and respect, and enabled them to earn a modest living. As editor, Gilder treated writers with the same courtesy and dignity that he feared would disappear from public life. During his tenure, the journal raised professional standards by sending acknowledgments upon receipt of manuscripts, making payments for manuscripts upon acceptance, and returning unsolicited submissions. Poets received more money and more publishing opportunities in The Century than in any other magazine.15 This consideration impressed Walt Whitman, who was not a sophisticated poet but contributed to his magazines. Whitman wrote to a friend: 'Gilder accepts without hesitation what I offer and never throws a single word of petty criticism. . . Do you realize that no other magazine editor in America has treated us like this?”16 So did Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907), who later edited The Atlantic

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Monthly he expressed satisfaction at the respect kind editors accorded poets. He wrote to a friend, Bayard Taylor, in 1866: The humblest man of letters has a position here that he does not have in New York. Being known as an able writer means having the best company for you. Just as a naval officer (as long as he is a gentleman) is socially equal to everyone else, so here a feather knight is bound to be a gentleman. In New York he's bohemian!17 This sympathetic communication extended beyond the text to other relationships in the literary world. Editors treated their writers as social acquaintances rather than business customers, while editors, reviewers, and writers addressed each other as equals.18 Common backgrounds, social circles, and perspectives underpinned these personal and informal business arrangements. In 1891, members of the friendly Author's Club, an offshoot of the Authors' Copyright League, helped pass the International Copyright Act, which strengthened the marketability of American writers by prohibiting cheap editions printed abroad and sold at low prices. Prices and underestimate the American editions. Gilder led the movement, teaming up with his close friend, President Grover Cleveland, to advocate for legislation and then get it through Congress.19 Corresponding to this broader movement was the creation of anthologies that included contemporary American writers Independence. In the field of poetry, the eminent literary critic and promoter of the Gilded Age Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833–1908) led efforts to promote the vernacular verse of living authors. Stedman made a living as a Wall Street stockbroker and pursued poetry as a hobby. In the 1880s he contributed a series of critical essays on British and American authors for The Century Magazine, which he later published as hugely popular books, Victorian Poets (1883) and Poets of America (1885). In a more theoretical work, The Nature and Elements of Poetry (1892), Stedman laid out his artistic values.20 He began by acknowledging that the pursuit of poetry seemed futile in a capitalist and Protestant society. But this difficulty only strengthened his resolve: "Under the pressure of neglect or public dislike, lovers of any thing or art find their appreciation of it more unshakable than ever."21 American lives, he insisted, must be saved.

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Grace of poetry because it gave glimpses of the "innermost truth of things" and delivered eternal truths. In Stedman's idealistic view, the poetic imagination acted as a spark "by the help of which man makes every leap forward". The importance of poetry lay in its ability to "allow common mortals to think as the poet thinks to use their wings". To support this claim, Stedman quoted these lines from beloved poet James Russell Lowell: For I believed the poets; it is they who proclaim wisdom from the depths of the center and, listening to the inner flow of things, speak from eternity to eternity.22 Stedman differed from his fellow Victorian anthologists in acknowledging the contributions of women poets. Rufus Griswold, for example, traditionally published a separate anthology for women.23 Stedman, a shrewd businessman and editor, knew that women made up his largest readership and that women authors made up nearly three-quarters of the poems submitted. So the inclusion of women not only recognized their achievements, but formed a wise marketing strategy. In Stedman's best-selling anthology Poets of America, they are critically examined alongside male poets. But inclusion did not mean equality; Stedman even posited essentialist notions about gender, arguing that a woman's nature proved advantageous in the composition of the verse: "The revelations of the woman's heart are most beautiful and welcome, because the typical woman is purer, unselfish, and more consecrated than the typical man. It is through fiery self-revelations that our ideals of holiness are upheld.” Poetry was only effective when it ebbed and flowed like a woman's breath, “like an exhalation.”24 Throughout the nineteenth century, literati and literati had to grapple with the tension , which arose between science and poetry; scholarship accumulated the sort of cultural capital formerly maintained by verse.25 Wordsworth opened Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (1802) with a paean to the superior wisdom of poets, calling poetry "the breath and the finest spirit of all knowledge". 26 He did, however, consider the possibility that poets might negotiate a truce in the future as scientists incorporated more nature and human needs into their theories. In "Lamia," one of the most celebrated poems of the century, Keats provided ballast for those who championed poetry.

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Priority in helplessly contemplating the post-Newtonian world of demystified beauty where scientists and philosophers "weave a rainbow": There was once a terrible rainbow in the sky. We know its weave, its texture; it is given in the monotonous catalog of ordinary things. Philosophy will clip an angel's wings, conquer all mysteries by rule and line, empty the enchanted air and my gnome - unfurl a rainbow as tender Lamia once melted into a shadow.27 Newton may have slain the wonder of the cosmos, enslaving Humanity into a materialistic universe, but poets had the tools to put the shattered light back together. Shelley also reiterated the poet's duty to create coherence, for "Life is like a dome of stained glass / Stains the white glow of eternity". At the end of the century, Matthew Arnold asserted that "more and more people will discover that we need to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to comfort us, to sustain us. Without poetry, our science will seem incomplete, and most of what bypasses religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry.”28 Combining knowledge, morality, and ideal perfection required both poetry and science. Nonetheless, members of the gentile community felt compelled to justify their beliefs about the value of poetry. They did this by highlighting the similarities between the two ventures. Poets, explained Edmund Stedman, were concerned with technical matters, "with the 'science of verse,' with its rhythm, diction, and metrical effects". For example, he praised Tennyson for his technical ability and warned against "the lesser students of Wordsworth, the 'jerky' lyricists, the neo-romantic craftsmen". ', who marched with confidence and made material discoveries about the mysteries of nature, he celebrated the complementary nature of the two disciplines. Too much analysis applied to literature, however, acted as a solvent with the potential to 'slow down' poets. "Can we take poetry like a botanist takes a flower and analyze its parts?" asked Stedman. "One element must always elude the investigator, and that is precisely the element that makes poetry poetry."

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Ultimately, the power of poetry remained unfathomable: "I confess that we cannot define the specific scent of a flower." Poetry reigned supreme, for while science presented mere phenomena, poetry provided "an insight that penetrates spiritual realities." Poets offered a less tangible but still valuable find: a "distinctive voice". His work was a perfect counterpart to science, for with each new technological advance poetry promised to enchant the world anew: "Each time science fulfills our hope the poet will have again the charm of dreaming." English and continental Romantic poets they so admired - Wordsworth, Keats, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Heine - gentle poets expressed their rejection of the emerging political and economic arrangements of democratic capitalism which stifle the infinite creative potential of the individual. Mugwumps, or liberals, took a more reformist line than the mainstream. They were actively involved in social causes, but their politics followed closely the principles laid down in their poetic desiderata: they would welcome innovation but, with few exceptions, not challenge the status quo. In the post-war period, his calls for civil service reform and criticism of laissez-faire capitalism found a following in the middle class. At The Century, the self-proclaimed "squire of poetry," Richard Gilder, championed progressive reform issues, commissioning articles by prominent politicians, including Henry Cabot Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt, who advocated for conservation, public service reform, and public officials. Gilder ended up publishing essays by conservationist John Muir, attempting to extend the Pendleton Act of 1883 mandating selection processes for federal employees to state and local governments, and fighting corrupt Tammany officials. Hall.32 Later New York Governor Roswell Flower appointed Gilder as Chairman of the New York Tenement House Commission. Gilder sought the advice of investigative journalist Jacob Riis and hired him to report the committee's findings to readers of The Century. Gilder visited the living conditions of the city's poorest residents, then prepared reports to show lawmakers how best to improve the appalling living conditions. Edmund Stedman championed a national poetic tradition and international copyright protection, and served as president of the Public Art League and the New York Kindergarten Association, where he advocated for free kindergartens.33

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As they struggled against their countrymen's hostility to the imaginative arts and made convincing arguments for the need for "divine faculties," they also exerted a sort of democratic impulse. The Gilders and Stedmans of the poetic world liberated poetry from the clutches of a religious elite and worked for democratic causes, believing that anyone could participate as long as they developed the right skills. In theory, at least, they had inclusive ideals and aspired to reach a mass audience. The advance of immigrants, workers, cities, and popular culture sites threatened the carefully nurtured reserves of the fine circle. With the flood of immigrants that began in the 1880s, this gentle optimism about the democracy of culture waned. Gentle judges then asserted that a certain level of culture was necessary to appreciate poetry and contemplate beauty. Members of this community became increasingly synonymous with elitism, rigidity, and mediocrity because they failed to combine high standards with mass participation, assuming that admitting the masses meant lowering standards. And in their poetry they refused to explore the new experiences brought about by modernization trends such as urbanization, industrialization, and bureaucratization. They tended to treat beauty as so primitive that it would be corrupted by impure people. As a result, soft poetry, although a staple of civilized life, largely became a personal pursuit or private space in which the middle and upper classes could preserve their values in an industrialized capitalist society. Their cultural vision now left little room for non-Americans and began to link aesthetic ability with innate class and character traits. Stedman wrote, "The truth is that taste is innate, however sensitive it may be."34 Whether they read, wrote, published, or politicized, gentle reformers remained determined to uphold their privileges. After the railroad strikes of 1877, the friendly poet George Curtis urged state militias and the US Army to repress workers.35 Richard Gilder, despite his commitment to helping poor immigrants, was suspicious of the foreign-born. At the time of the Haymarket and Pullman clashes, he could not have imagined that purebred working-class Americans would use violence to resolve labor disputes. He had little patience for rioters and advocated harsh measures against them, and he enacted restrictions on immigrants as a cure for workers' quarrels. his job

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in an exclusive Blue and Gold series (along with the likes of Lowell, Holmes, Whittier and Longfellow). Speaking about American imperialism, he objected, not out of pacifism but out of fear of miscegenation.37 Changes in cultural configurations of masculinity were also a concern. In the 1880s, Stedman readily contemplated the transgender poet's "androgynous" artistic temperament and makeup: "Woman's intuition, sensitivity, and nervous sophistication combine with man's restrained strength and creative power to mold the poet." " . as new fears about masculinity emerged in the late 19th century and a chain of developments reinforced this trend. The industrial economy produced a white-collar class who toiled in bureaucratized clerical jobs, while a new middle class and a respectable consumer culture emerged that subverted male self-control in favor of pleasure and frivolity. It also introduced financial volatility on a previously unforeseen scale. The Depression of 1893, which lasted until 1897, left many families vulnerable to economic vagaries and roused fears of dependency or poverty among a new contingent of middle-class workers. At the same time, the “New Woman” prevailed, avoided the riot, earned a college degree, pursued a career, and went on strike for the right to vote. The growing strength of immigrant votes and labor strikes, as well as new categorizations of homosexuality and neurasthenia, further fueled fears of class and gender disintegration. Gender and race mutually defined each other: Black men and women were simultaneously denied the privileges of gender discrimination and became hypersexualized. 39 Demand for more “masculine” poems (i.e. less emotional verses on more relevant topics) multiplied. In 1884, a critic in Writer Magazine complained, "Every singer takes his net and chases a butterfly, none goes to the Eagle's Nest." Thomas Aldrich unwittingly articulated the critics' grievances when he wrote to Gilder in 1892: 'Your May number is a songbird's nest. I don't think a single issue of a magazine contains so many excellent verses. None of the twelve or thirteen poems touch on the mundane.”40 A regular writer, Lee Wilson Dodd, condemned the dominance of fragile, feminine lines in flowers and towers, and urged colleagues to send in more solid contributions. Bliss Perry, editor of The Atlantic Monthly

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from 1899 to 1909, railed against poets “who tell us about their little feelings. . . annoying peculiarity". of business and published parodies of the sort of sterile, unattainable verse often found on their covers: Much better dumb Was the emasculated lute, Much better dumb than this chirp An echo of things past - 43 1890, The Century published a satire, “It is always so”, on this subject: Ad Astra, De Profundis, Keats, Bacchus, Sophocles; Ars Longa, Euthanasia, Primavera, As Eumenides Dum Vivimus Vivamus, Sleep, Palingenesis; Salvini, Sursum Corda, on the mountain. Desert, To Miss These form part of the content of Violets of Song, Susan Mary Strong's first volume of poetry. The formation of a modern poetics more in tune with contemporary motifs necessarily involved an exploration of issues of gender and sexuality, as well as racial and political questions. With old notions of masculinity under siege, literature's association with femininity has become increasingly problematic.46 Some individuals have attempted to save it from ridicule and irrelevance by asserting literature's robustness. Theodore Roosevelt, who was successful

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he transformed his own unreliable public image, becoming one of the most vocal exponents of masculinist poetics. As a graduate student, Roosevelt wrote letters to the Harvard Crimson in which he accused those who opposed President Cleveland's foreign policy of "unmanliness." Early in his career, Roosevelt's temperate demeanor, youth, soft language, and staff led journalists to compare him to Oscar Wilde. In 1890, journalists still referred to them as "Dandy Jane" and "Rosy Roosy". His achievements as assistant secretary of the Navy and as a lieutenant colonel in the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War changed that perception.47 Roosevelt teamed up with his literary mentor, Brander Matthews, to revitalize his class. Fulfilling the "white man's burden" of "civilizing" the darker races and combating cultural decay with its morbidity and spiritual malaise, imperialism demanded a more masculine literature. Matthews claimed that weakened Orientals had softened cultural life by importing European works, and he wrote correspondingly strenuous texts for American students. Aged 25.49 Matthews extended his influence to undergraduate students as professor of literature at Columbia University from 1892 to 1924. An avid Arnoldian, he used his position as senior book reviewer for The Nation from 1875 to 1895 to issue edicts on The Nation's role in culture in the fight against anarchy to renew, not to overthrow them. The poetic community began to fragment in the 1890s, as social changes, innovations in print culture, and changing tastes clearly emphasized the limits of gentle idealism. During this decade, conflicts were compounded by labor strikes, economic crisis, clashes with Jim Crow and war with Spain. A year after the Depression that began in 1893, unemployment reached 18.4% and Coxey's army of unemployed workers marched on Washington. Heated debates over currency reforms, species and antitrust laws went hand in hand with peasant revolts. In this age of dark labor disputes, dangerous extremes of wealth and poverty, and a deafening clamor for American intervention in the Cuban uprising against the Spanish, gentle poets avoided depicting difficult realities. While pre-war American Romantic poets such as John

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Greenleaf Whittier - who edited anti-slavery journals and wrote abolitionist poetry - and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - who used the profits from "Hiawatha" to buy the freedom of slaves, donated money to abolitionist groups, and published Poems on Slavery (1842). – included activism In their art, soft poets have kept the two activities separate. Following the call of Matthew Arnold (in the famous preface to his poems of 1853) to seek models of excellence from the past and to depict basic but universal sentiments, gentle poets often ended up in antiquity or the Middle Ages as the setting for their compositions. The desire to leave the verse untouched and protected from the annoyances of modern life and the filthy crowds also inspired his choices. Considering the high beauty, kind authors tried to protect her from impurities. Gilder, for example, published five volumes of poetry during that decade, in which he spoke serenely about nature, love, obedient mothers, and the Civil War (“that glorious spectacle”).51 Similarly, Thomas Aldrich examined the effects of unionization in a realist story steeped in sentimentality , as he did earlier in a serialized novel, The Stillwater Tragedy (1880), but he would never consider mentioning the issues of work and class in any of his verse or in the poems he wrote during his tenure at The Atlantic Monthly had selected . Whitman, who passionately explored the pathos and misery of the Civil War in Leaves of Grass, rejected gentle poetry as a transport to a more ethereal world, despite the grim reality that hit on all sides. He characterized the dominant tone of such a line as a "delicacy" and likened it to objects in a Victorian drawing room: "Porcelain, fine china, delicate curtains, exquisite carpets."52 Novelists took a different tact. The literary naturalism in the fiction of William Dean Howells, Stephen Crane, Ellen Glasglow, and Theodore Dreiser, among others, portrayed characters subject to impulses and instincts, often bullied by more powerful individuals and forces. Stories of ordinary people subjected to cruel circumstances reached a new audience willing to take a close look at contemporary life. Selling alongside standard literary confections brimming with optimism and exaltation, novels written with searing precision and penetrating prose were slowly but surely changing the dominant rules of fiction. A more tangible threat to the texture, tenor, and sustainability of gentle literary recipes has emerged from within the publishing industry itself. In 1893, The Century sponsored an exhibition in

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of the Chicago World's Fair on the journal's method of processing manuscripts and drawings for publication. As one commentator observed, "The Century behaved like the national institution it had become."53 In the same year, however, periodicals catering to the tastes of a more diverse readership challenged the dominance of sophisticated publications. Based in New York, his appearance has driven the professionalization of the publishing industry. They were subscribed to by ads rather than subscribers, marketed them to mass audiences, and were able to attract writers with higher salary scales. The articles were not aimed at the "soft reader" or embodied timeless truths; Here, the immediate and the ephemeral found a 30-day shelf life with a ethnically diverse audience. Selling at fifteen cents an issue (compared to Harper's thirty-five cents or Scribner's twenty-five cents), photographs (rather than woodcuts), and a less personal and more journalistic tone, McClure's soon reached a circulation of 365,000. In 1900 Munsey's Magazine sold 700,000 copies a month at ten cents a copy. The advent of these cheap mass magazines divided the reading public and forced editors and publishers to focus on specific demographic groups. Gilder responded in The Century with articles on trains, construction projects and heavy industry, and in 1904 he published Jack London's novel The Sea Wolf. change your politics in verse. Protectors and practitioners of the refined aesthetic tradition tirelessly claimed that verses belonged on the heights of Parnassus; Infusing stanzas with practicality would only ground the muse. Though they appropriated Ruskin, they used his work to justify a merely uplifting sentiment, rather than seeing poor industrialists as beautiful or finding in them an orderly balance and arrangement. Ruskin's beauty consequently acquired an apolitical, ethereal focus. Believing that readers would shy away from long or difficult poems on topics of the day, Aldrich, Gilder, and other friendly editors continued to publish short, transparent verses in classical form on traditional subjects. As a result, American poetry during this decade, although now a subject of great interest among literary scholars, seemed to have taken on a pale hue to contemporaries. once light

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Crafts, poems published in magazines, series, newspapers and books now seemed outdated, unadventurous and conventional - a mere pastime composed by amateurs and canteen ladies. Influential magazine publishers and editors, for their part, noticed the lack of good poetry and began to doubt the effectiveness of his project. Writer Jessie B. Rittenhouse remembered the 1890s as a time when publishers entertained their readers with articles about "The Downfall in Poetry," when critics spent their time speculating as to what became of this ancient and respectable art had become. Some declared that the scientific age was the enemy of the imagination, others that the modern tempo was too fast for the contemplative moods of poetry.56 The ideology, institutions, and relationships of this community produced poetry that now found a significant number of readers sclerotic and sclerotic irrelevant. . Rigor mortis had set in. At the turn of the 20th century, then, the upper class establishment was vulnerable from many sides: from below with the sentimentalists; by those who saw him as backward, effeminate and irrelevant; and by writers who have lost the Arnoldian faith. The rise of popular places of entertainment, shaped by commercial rather than cultural interests, and oriented more toward recreational consumption than character-building, threatened to render obsolete the gentle nature of poetry, along with its social class and literary elite, and undo its claims of superior performance. From Coney Island to Bill Cody's Wild West shows, burlesque revues and motion pictures, jazz bands and anniversary singers, department store windows and neon signs, the divide between "high" and "low" culture that Van Wyck Brooks later erected, widened there. 57 Friendly editors and critics saw a loss of prominence and formed an organization to protect their promontory. Brander Matthews accepted Arnold's idea of an authoritative academy in 1898 and helped found the National Institute of Arts and Letters with the motto "Hold up the flaming torch from age to age". The declared goal was to promote American literature by awarding a "seal of approval" to the best writings. The award categories featured an elegant taffeta accent: the William Dean Howells Medal for Best American Fiction; Gold Medal for Good Diction on Stage; O

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Evangeline Wilbour Foundation grant for "the preservation of the beauty and integrity of the English language, and its thoughtful enrichment". The Institute maintained a closed nomination, election, and veto system that guaranteed exclusivity and deflected responsibility for decisions stemming from class, gender, and racial prejudice. The National Institute nomination, intended to be a measure of achievement, served to some extent as a bulwark of elitism, which promoted fictional values of appreciation and moral elevation but did little to build a vibrant community of readers and writers. For example, Gilder's successor as editor of The Century, Robert Underwood Johnson, campaigned behind the scenes against Carl Sandburg's appointment to the institute because he was writing about ordinary people performing pedestrian duties, such as a poem about a man walking in a Pullman car shaved.60 The poetry, criticism, and institutions of the cultured nineteenth-century poetic community had lost their vitality and vivacity, and established cultural mediators took little interest in the work of the younger generation; A discrepancy continued to exist between the poetics and projects of young authors and the rules and procedures of established publishers. With few places to publish, gain recognition, and find like-minded writers, American poets of a different vein increasingly began to vent their frustration. Edgar Lee Masters recalled the stagnation of that era: You know what poetry was like in 1898 and before, and how hard it was for a writer in central Illinois in the late 1980s and early 1990s to break away from the earthly impose conditions. . . . Then what was Chicago as an inspiration for the muse? There was no market for anything and no interest once you made it. Nor did he write what Gilder, Stedman, Fawcett, and others wrote.61 In 1899, Harvard poet William Vaughan Moody questioned editorial decision-making: [I regret] Atlantic's failure to take a more liberal stance on verse. . . could pursue a wide and happy

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Influential on the future of American literature, emphasizing the positive rather than negative qualities of the verse manuscript presented to her, and weighing an ounce of charm and power against an ounce of obscurity or imperfect execution of the work, rather than concentrating solely on technical deviations, but The Atlantic- Editor Alexander Sedgwick explained the limitations imposed by audience expectations, along with the overall quality of the poems submitted. In 1902, Sedgwick halved the number of poems the magazine published from four to two per issue.63 Moody made a similar argument to The Century, insisting that the magazine's editors had misjudged public demand. He wrote to Robert Underwood Johnson: "I was led to believe, by several signs I noticed and by conversations with many people who habitually read the journals, that the official and accepted diagnosis of the case was not exactly correct. that there was a deep, broad, and very genuine interest in poetry itself, and that people yearned for something better than they had or were ready to 'represent'.”64 The many rejections Robert Frost received were these Time shaped him forever. Despite Frost's bucolic demeanor, quarries of hostility lay just beneath the surface, built up over twenty years as he tried unsuccessfully to break into the soft world of publishing. Frost never forgot cancellations, old or new. As he told a biographer: During the years on the farm I gave all good magazines a chance in my work. The office readers were totally against me. You'll never know exactly what good poems the damn manuscript readers won't print. There was an old bitch on the staff at The Atlantic who kept my verses out of the magazine for ten years. : I bump into dunghills of fragrant puss like Atlantic Monthly and Harper's and Scribner's as they were in 1900 and essentially ceased to be while they existed. the stench of

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rancid perfume contains deadly gases that eventually poison. No language could disguise the loathing I feel for a Sedgwick.66 This letter to Harriet Monroe is representative of Pound's plaintive attacks on nice publishers and magazines: Why I loathe American magazines and why I think they are in revenge for the damage done They made American poetry because they specialized in two or three tones. . . Chasing a popularity, they express a mood or two, usually cheap complacency or elsewhere formulaic pity. . . The rest is smeared in Century Magazine.67 Pound's correspondence continued to explore this issue for the next forty years. He contradicted claims that there was no such thing as a public: "My war is not against public taste, it is against publishers and pretenders." Until more receptive editors showed up, Pound could only scoff: "TO HELL WITH HARPER'S AND THE 'MAGAZINE TOUCH'". It gained more traction with newspaper publishers, including William Marion Reedy's Mirror, which played a significant role in supporting new poets, and several of William Randolph Hearst's newspapers.69 Meanwhile, the North American Review rejected "Fable for the Frivolous." von Untermeyer" for its "prolixity—too many words to express the thought, lack of the sentimentality indispensable to fables". Untermeyer, remarked another editor, added too many quotations adding a "literal taste" leading to " a spirit of apparent insincerity." The editor urged him to "write more simply. Do not strive for unusual effect, thought, word, or character."70 The Century's associate editor Robert Underwood Johnson accepted "Wine of Night" but returned many other poems, which he defined as "not rejected, but simply returned."71 Harriet Monroe achieved somewhat more success than her younger peers.Born in Chicago in 1860, the daughter of a famous lawyer, she was married to a woman , who feared that the power of books might shatter family ties.After her father, Monroe read Shakespeare and the Poetry r of Romanticism and decided at a young age to devote her life to poetry.72 For years she earned her living as a teacher (see above

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she confessed little talent or patience), speaker and freelance journalist who contributed reviews of plays, art and music for the Chicago Tribune and Hearst's Chicago American. Seeking poetic community, she joined a women's literary club called Fortnight, but left when she discovered, to her chagrin, the conservative nature of her tastes. After publishing "With Shelley's Poems" in The Century's May 1888 issue, she traveled to New York to meet with the publisher. Years later, she recalled what acceptance meant to her: “There was nothing arrogant or patronizing about Gilder. . . I felt like I had been fired by acceptance from The Century. Uncovered, she contacted Charles Yerkes, a member of the ceremonies committee whom she happened to know through mutual acquaintances, and asked a committee to write a poem commemorating the event. Given that artists and architects, musicians and sculptors had already received significant payments, she demanded the very large sum of one thousand dollars, which she received in addition to the title of Poet Laureate for the exhibition. When composing the piece about the procession of American history since the arrival of Columbus, Monroe decided to look to the future. "All along I was determined not to use classic imagery," she wrote. "A new and wiser age was dawning in which the wondrous discoveries of science would be employed to further the happiness and welfare of the race."75 Despite this intention, Monroe had to conform to the poetic criteria of the Ceremonies Committee, which asked her to make twenty-two amendments to make to the submitted poem, e.g. For example, shouldn't 'alone' be repeated three times? 'Alone! Alone! Alone!'”76 For these committee members, poetry meant high language and exaltation. Monroe resisted many suggestions, and the public's positive response confirmed her instincts. Sarah Cowell LeMoyne, a six-foot-tall New York actress whose voice had more power than that of the diminutive poet (who sat alongside other celebrities), recited the ode at the opening ceremony. When the New York World published the poem in full without Monroe's permission, it filed a lawsuit against the company. Edmund Stedman testified for her, and she was awarded a settlement of $5,000.77 Aside from this limited commitment, however, Monroe found no endowments, awards, grants, or professional forums for her.

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written. Editor Bliss Perry wrote that he felt like a "tenacious tennis player" rhythmically reciprocating the poems as they went off. but not yet in print.79 Hampton's Magazine rejected Monroe's proposals because, as the editor wrote, “the verse we print is of the progressive and uplifting kind that Kipling would write if he were in this country would write. Anything more graceful and delicate is inappropriate for the content of our magazine.”80 After some editorial changes, Monroe was able to print The Hotel and The Turbine. Likewise, The Century published The Shadow Child and The Fortnightly Review accepted The Dances of the Seasons. Part of the problem lay in Monroe's determination to address modern themes in her poetry. Monroe's compositions, which for more than two decades anticipated French poet Guillaume Apollinaire's call for poetry about machines able to compete in the marketplace, struggled with contemporary advances in science and technology, a move anathema to members of the educated literary community was experiences inspired this desire to embrace technological developments more readily. When she and her family attended the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the fourteen-year-old was more drawn to the Corliss engine with its "massively big wheels" than to the art gallery full of old masters. His sister married John Wellborn Root, architect of Burnham and Root, famous for the skyscrapers that tower the Chicago skyline. In Paris in 1897, Monroe sped to the "serene simplicity" of actress Eleanor Duse, whose subtle style contrasted with standard melodrama. And while working with Jane Addams at Hull House in 1907, Monroe admired the modern dance performances of Loie Fuller and Isadora Duncan.82 The young poet's enthusiasm for invention and innovation—whether in industry, dance, the theater, or painting— found its way into the art of your verse. In The Turbine (written in the 1890s but not published until 1910), dedicated to her brother, an engineer who designed power plants, Monroe celebrated the ingenuity of machinists and generators. But these poems were routinely despised rather than welcomed. A contributor to The Atlantic Monthly scoffed at statements that poets tended to associate with change

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than the defense of old standards in an essay "Contemporaneity" arguing: "No great dramatic poetry, no great epic poetry has ever dealt with contemporary conditions. Only the severe processes of time can plunge the multitude of immediate facts into the priceless residue of universal truth. The great playwrights turned to the past to find materials, not willingly but out of necessity. Here and there, in the darkness behind and in the abyss of time, one sees a human figure, a human episode that has stood the test of time and assumed certain mysterious attributes of truth; and upon this foundation is built the tremendous structure of heroic poetry.83 More than thirty years later, this position still angered Monroe. In her autobiography she lamented the apathetic attitude towards poetry that prevailed during this period, and particularly towards any poetic work that deviated from the beaten track established by Victorian practice and prejudice. . . and the stony lack of understanding or sympathy that greeted the publication involved such profound dismay that further reflection in this direction was prevented. Further evidence of indifference to the poetic art has continually pushed me against a stone wall.84 As a result, poetry has lagged behind other arts in representing or even constituting American life; The landscape in verses remained a stronghold of recognized ideals of beauty. Amy Lowell was born into a Boston Brahmin family in 1874, just four years after Monroe, and grew up in a family of books and learning. However, her wealth did not deter her from the difficult task of finding outlets for her writing. Sedgwick in The Atlantic Monthly dismissed Lowell's poems for their "profane rhymes", on "new" subjects, and obscure references. however, he found them "marred by defective rhymes and similes". Sedgwick objected to inaccurate rhymes such as "own" with "gone", "worn"

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with "down" and "retain" with "world". Some of the blank verse compositions could not be digitized, leading him to adopt an "arbitrary" method, while others reported ideas too obscure to be understood by most Atlantic readers. "It is my theory in running the magazine," he wrote to Lowell in 1911, "that we should avoid absolutely new subjects and prefer those vaguely known". He rejected the license Lowell also took with punctuation, citing it as violating grammar rules if it omitted commas or periods. Sedgwick agreed not to accept some of the poems until she corrected what he saw as technical flaws.86 Aspiring writers did not initially have strong ideological disagreements with the refined tradition; they simply wanted to tap into the existing literary structure. They were convinced that there was a deep appreciation for their work, but that gentle guardians of culture created obstacles rather than bridges to enable new poetry. In their efforts to pursue their careers and visions, they began creating an alternative infrastructure to encourage new poetry. William Stanley Braithwaite was one of the first to take steps in this direction. He began with the hope of reviving the refined tradition, opening it to new currents and making it more sensitive to new developments in modern life and aesthetics. He knew firsthand the difficulties of breaking into publishing. As a young man Braithwaite had sent a bundle of his verses to kind publishers and writers. Neither Stedman, who had just completed the multi-volume Library of America and An American Anthology, nor William Dean Howells, who used his influence to launch the career of African-American writer Paul Lawrence Dunbar, offered much advice to the aspiring author. The poet. .87 Richard Burton of Lothrop Publishing Company rejected the text manuscript, stating that “today . . . it's just a Riley with his dialect or a Kipling with his military band that can attract a lot of people. Book News Monthly, Critic, Cosmopolitan, McClure's, The Independent, The Dial, Outlook, Metropolitan Magazine and Everybody's Magazine. An editor at Hampton's found his poetry "charming", but the magazine had a policy of publishing only "militant" and "vigorous" verse. In the early years of the century, Braithwaite managed to get one poem each in The National Magazine, The American Magazine (edited by Ray

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Stannard Baker), The Christian Endeavor World, Book News Monthly, and in local Boston newspapers such as The Boston Courant, The Boston Journal, and The Boston Evening Transcript. Sitting under a stone bridge in the Public Garden, he pondered the grim possibilities of his profession. In search of a remedy, he came up with the idea of examining large magazines for their publication history of poems. Braithwaite approached the editor of The Boston Evening Transcript and presented the article.90 Two years earlier, in 1904, when Braithwaite had proposed an essay examining the best poetry published in periodicals, the editorial board had responded with roaring laughter. Burton Kline, editor of The Transcript, later recalled: "To cast the deepest contempt upon an enemy, to destroy him for the rest of his life, it was enough to suggest that he wrote verse for magazines."91 Braithwaite was given the green light . He went to work and looked at the 1905 editions for a whole year.92 Braithwaite found that the verse occupied only a tiny fraction of the copy. Of the top six monthly magazines examined, Lippincott's led the list with 106 poems, while McClure's came last with 23 poems. The mere thirty-three poems published in The Atlantic Monthly represented "a higher value of poetic achievement" than either Harper's (fifty-four poems) or Scribner's (forty-seven poems). Braithwaite hailed Gilder and Robert Underwood Johnson of The Century as poets "of exceptional merit" and complained that only five of the sixty-two printed poems were "really excellent on the subject", while the remainder fell into the "extremely common" category. Not entirely without self-interest, he laid the blame for this sad state of affairs on the publishers, who had "failed to judge good poetry". watch your poets” and set out to change that state of affairs.94 Jessie B. Rittenhouse made a similar commitment to foster community and draw attention to innovative work. Creating a supportive community and public was important to her. The daughter of wheat farmers grew up with her six siblings in the Genesee Valley near Rochester, New York. In his memoirs, Rittenhouse wistfully described his idyllic childhood in the Erie Canal countryside: “I look like

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having been encased in a beauty charm.” Then, within two years, four of his brothers died — three of “fever” (probably the flu) and one of heart disease. Her ailing mother has moved back to Michigan to be with her family, leaving thirteen-year-old Jessie to do the housework. Rittenhouse took refuge in reading and memorizing British poetry. Unable to attend school, she joined a group of neighborhood girls who pooled their resources to buy books. "Winter nights have changed," she wrote of Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, and Jane Austen. Four years later, his maternal uncles provided the college money. She attended Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, became President of the Literary Society, sixth form essayist, toast teacher, speaker at tree plantations, and regular host at other school events.95 After graduation, the only career open to a woman of her talent and upbringing was teach, which she did reluctantly for several years. A self-proclaimed "disciple priest," she wrote in her memoirs that two passions guided her life—reform and poetry—but neither offered a living wage.96 In her commitment to reform, Rittenhouse resembled other writers of her generation in the last third of the 20th century strayed from the strict religion of their parents in the 19th century.97 His autobiographies bear witness to the influence of itinerant preacher and freethinker Robert Ingersoll, who exhorted believers to ask the "why" of things and continue to embrace life on earth. Poet and editor Floyd Dell later recalled: "Bob Ingersoll fought the battle between Darwin and the priests before we were born. . . we have characteristically sided with Darwin. We were for the present and against the past.”98 Her evangelical heritage drove her to action to find a calling that made sense and included her spiritually and emotionally. They moved to big cities and found secular jobs as an outlet for their religious enthusiasm. If Ingersoll provided a model for socially engaged evangelicals, Abraham Lincoln served as his political icon, with each poet writing poems, essays, and even (in Carl Sandburg's case) multi-volume biographies about the Illinois Republican who freed the slaves and embodied democratic democracy . Virtues of egalitarianism, integrity and opportunity. John Ruskin was also a hero, with "Ruskin Clubs" spreading west (Jack London was in the San Francisco chapter). Sandburg gave a bachelor speech in "Ruskin, A Man of Ideals," while Jane Addams and Edwin Markham both idolized

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Ruskin and Tolstoy.99 These young aesthetic progressives also held esteem for John Peter Altgeld, Illinois governor and reform leader who had liberated the surviving Haymarket rebels.100 At a time when government regulations were comparing the best poetry to the "Parthenon frieze," they wanted to invigorate poetry with their new social vision.101 To bring about this change, they first insisted that poetry should not be limited to towers and flowers; it had the consistency needed to represent speed and tenacity—the many facets of modern life—rather than simply serving as a record of progress and moral elevation. They contended that instead of being limited to the divine, uplifting, or decorative in poetry, readers would encounter the mundane, mechanical, and bewildering of modern life; You read about sex and sofas, spark plugs and suspension bridges. Harriet Monroe, an ardent admirer of Shelley, felt "a need to bring poetic expression to modern life, to fill a gap between poetry and reality that many seemed to feel". , in the preface to his 1907 private edition, Pilgrims and Other Poems, defended themes that addressed contemporary concerns: "If, as has often been repeated in recent years, the love of the muses has grown cold, this shall not be materially caused by the fact that verse writers have chosen subjects alien to our modern thinking. Historians of American culture, particularly Warren Susman and Jackson Lears, have overlooked this connection between poetic introspection and political engagement in their focus on antimodernism as a therapeutic reconciliation between authenticity and a bureaucratic ethos. In the therapeutic thesis, fin-de-siècle elites, beset and confused by the rationalization and alienation of modern industrial capitalist society, abandoned the search for large-scale social transformation and instead developed a fascination with pre-modern crafts. and mysticism.103 They turned to artistic beauty to provide space for emotional, physical, and moral regeneration, to serve as a sort of “epistemological toilet” through which fractured bourgeois psyches retreat, their knowledge of the world and theirs place in it, and then returned to reestablish its cultural dominance.104 As a result, enduring Victorian decorum gave way to moments of shattering reality, not as expressions of defeat or as a means of reshaping the world, but as tools of assimilation of authority - traditionally with newly emerging corporate forms and bureaucratic forms. This argument ignores a significant group of activists for whom art has not fostered broader allegiances.

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Far from being distractions from special delicacies, encounters with poetry, painting or music encouraged empathy and a broader understanding of solidarity. For progressive poets, reading and writing verse was not just a marginal pleasure or an esoteric ideal, but a fundamental principle that offered joy, insight, and empathy, and was crucial to realizing meaning, worth, and individual freedom. They believed that large-scale political and social change first entailed emotional transformation at the individual level. The scale of modern bureaucratic life required of every human being that they cultivate a sensibility stimulated by direct experience and natural wonders, skills that would otherwise be overshadowed by the hustle and bustle of modern life. Paraphrasing the German romantic writer Friedrich Schiller, Upton Sinclair stated: "It was my idea then that mankind would be saved through poetry." the Two Kingdoms in Louis Dubedat's famous creed from The Doctor's Dilemma: "I believe in Michelangelo, Velasquez and Rembrandt, in the power of design, in the mystery of colour, in the redemption of all things through eternal beauty and in the message of Art who made these blessed hands, amen.” How we are moved by those rolling syllables and how confidently we gaze at this abstract thing that Louis called “beauty” to solve all problems. much disagreement. Efforts to remodel beauty came after major shifts in modern American thought and culture. In the "revolt against formalism," writers, intellectuals, and reformers saw the philosophical idealism and rigid free-market individualism of Locke, Smith, and Mill as too harsh and misguided. Sympathy for the poor, the creation of practical tools for advancement, and the strengthening of social cohesion promised to help the victims of industrialization and capitalism. and retrograde, as some of the most avant-garde artists did. They intentionally supported verses that conveyed difficulty and fragmentation that expressed a

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more ambiguous than definite inclination, and with which they experimented in perspective and form that they felt best represented modernist experiences. If revitalizing poetry meant legitimizing new themes, then a key challenge was breaking contemporary themes while maintaining a patina of idealism.107 They rejected two-tier Platonism, which separated the realm of imagination from the realities of Unique approach that combines science and beauty to embrace all of life. Both Jane Addams and W.E.B. Du Bois, for example, sought to use culture not as a means of separation or escape, but to bring meaning and dignity to a life weakened by poverty and prejudice. Poets may disagree on the level of reality and action that should be embedded in verse, but they agree that what is needed is a type of poetry that reconfigures the poetic sensibility by enhancing sensitivity to all aspects of the contemporary life increased. As turn-of-the-century poetics remained inseparable from the transcendent, changes in the central notions of ideal, ethereal, and platonic beauty affected not only the form of poetry but, to a large extent, its function. As David Hall has shown, for centuries poetry has served explicitly as the servant of religion and provided a touchstone of moral leadership108; and indeed the newly emerging poets were reluctant to abandon this religious impulse or the ethical infrastructure of religion altogether, even as they wrote poetry that addressed the contemporary moment in new ways and with new intentions. At the same time, astute readers and writers rightly felt that the old skin of bloodless devotional verses was utterly inadequate to contain the new poetic wine, a wine composed of both social justice and sexual liberation and spiritual yearnings and sentiments. a devotion to beauty.109 In a series of books on aesthetics and philosophy, the iconoclastic philosophy professor George Santayana (born Jorge Agustin Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás) articulated a spiritual function for poetry. A generation of Harvard University students, including Du Bois, Conrad Aiken, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Max Eastman, Wallace Stevens, and Witter Bynner, struggled fiercely with some of the 19th-century beliefs they shared in class and in conversation met Santayana. . Along with other poets in his Cambridge literary circle, such as William Vaughn Moody, George Cabot Lodge, Philip Henry Savage, and Trumbull Stickney, Santayana argued against elevation while still retaining that beauty.

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Truth and divinity formed the tripartite basis of every aesthetic enterprise. Santayana flirted with a form of anti-moralism, arguing that poetry represented a liberation from late Victorian bourgeois morality and offered psychological benefits through the harmony, rhythm, and haste of words: "There is no situation so dire that it cannot can be softened of mind to look at it aesthetically. So pain itself doesn't become quite pain; by our reflection a sweetness is added. The saddest scenes can lose their bitterness in beauty.”110 Santayana believed that imagination had a moral function while religion had a poetic nature. As such, the architecture of the poetry resembled that of the house of worship: "Verse, like stained glass, sustains attention in its own complexity." To read or write poetry was to answer a divine call. It was “that subtle fire and inner light that sometimes seems to shine through the world, touching the images in our minds with indescribable beauty, so that poetry is a transient harmony in the soul amidst stagnation or strife, a glimpse of the divine and a stimulus.” to religious life.”111 Although for Santayana spiritual life meant acceptance of human impotence rather than a source of change. The notions of perception, practical experience, and pragmatism articulated by Santayana's Harvard colleague William James served as key tenets of a radicalism that inextricably linked culture and politics. Among other things, James had reconfigured the philosophy to improve the experience of everyday life. The pragmatic emphasis on empirical analysis over abstract discourse went hand in hand with modern poets' efforts to expand the parameters of beauty to include more trivial concerns. In his memoirs, the poet Orrick Johns detailed James' influence on members of the educated middle class who worked to improve conditions for factory workers, slum dwellers and the environment: It is indeed hard to overestimate how much we rely on transcendent optimism politically have been under the spell of Lincoln, Thoreau, Emerson, Jefferson, Rousseau and the German sentimental poets of the last century and correspondingly disillusioned. The first whiff of hard philosophy that came to mind - and it happened a few years later - was that of William James. At first we were a little annoyed about it.112

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Pragmatism offered a means of rethinking the form and function of poetry: the thought that has always haunted me was this: What is the use of this poetry of abstract thinking about human behavior, what is the use of the great imaginative discoveries of philosophers and scientists ? - in the USA? States of 1912? For the Platonists, beauty meant “the splendor of order”. I wondered if these thinkers had ever known bare reality like we do. I searched for a reality that could be beauty, but nowhere I looked could I see order or truth. The impulse that I think all people without exception feel for order and truth and for chaos and conflict that people's actions cause just didn't make sense.113 It was in the prose, poetry, and posture of Walt Whitman that used a "harder philosophy" to illuminate the chaos of "raw reality" that progressive poets found to be the fullest embodiment of their vision for poetry's role in American life. Born into a poor farming family on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, editor, teacher, and typesetter before becoming a published author. Politics greatly influenced his writing. He wrote a temperance novel and articles on the rights of immigrants, women and workers, and he protested the spread of slavery in the Western Territories, empathizing with the plight of slaves. In 1855 he self-published the historical Leaves of Grass. Written in free verse, the book marked a new beginning in many ways. In the foreword, Whitman outlined a more democratic course for American poets, avoid "talking about the soul, eternity, and God," and keep in mind the average of men and women, nature, equality, and justice: Here's what you should do: Love them Earth and the sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone who asks, defend the stupid and the mad, dedicate your income and work to others, hate tyrants, do not quarrel with God, have patience and forbearance with people. . . Walk freely with powerful and uneducated people. . . Recheck everything you were told at school, at church, or in any book.114 Whitman's ideal poet was neither aloof, barren, nor scholarly, but instead "pricked with pity" walking down the street for him

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Partner. He did not write ballads about medieval love, but was "inundated with immediate old age," writing about machines, trains, inventors, chemists, and slavery. He saw no need for priests, no division between poetry and science, no need to shy away from difficult and controversial subjects. "The English language" is finally "strong enough, flexible enough and complete enough". From the famous opening line "I Celebration Myself" to the infamous "Love's Flesh Swelling and Deliciously Aching,/Love's Clear Boundless Jets, Hot and Giant," Whitman's vision of democracy in verse marked a shift in form, kindness, and attitude. He unabashedly described himself: "Walt Whitman, an American, one of the rough, a cosmos, / Disorganized, carnal and sensual. . . eat, drink and create, / Without sentimentality. . . no one is above men and women or separate from them. . . no more modest than immodest.”115 Although some readers admired the author's combination of transcendence and vigor, most contemporary critics took offense. Rufus Griswold regarded Leaves of Grass as "a stupid mass of dirt" and invoked Latin to criticize the inclusion of homosexual references: "Peccatum illud horribile, inter Christianos non nominandum" ("that terrible sin which must not be mentioned among Christians "). Unlike Griswold, Edmund Stedman included Whitman in his anthology, but he also objected to the poet's inclusion of physical and sexual themes: Beauty Discretion: "There are no scruples that leave anything to the imagination... The law of suggestion, of the half." Concealment determines the best effects and is the surest path to truth.” The book, which has published several editions over the years, the conservative Chicago magazine The Dial also lamented “its lack of poetic talent, its inability to understand a poet's business ', while the Literary World 'condemned passages that sound like a lecture on the midwifery of lust. ... and the apotheosis of the phallus.” In 1882 a Boston District Attorney officially declared the volume of obscene literature, and the Postmaster banned it from mailing. eios.117 Whitman had broken the code of conduct that governed the etiquette of writers. In the 19th century, studying a text was like having a polite conversation in mixed company. imaginary readers

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a relationship with the author and recognized his character through diction, tone and subject. As Barbara Hochman's study of the reading habits of the period concluded: "A sense of connectedness 'with the author' was seen as an inevitable, legitimate, and indeed desirable part of the reading experience." instead of volumes by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., James Russell Lowell, and John Greenleaf Whittier, who kept them on shelves by their fireplaces (hence the term "Fireside Poets") and organized groups like the Tennyson Society and the Browning Society because these writers themselves presented with sublime sophistication and their poetry was the pinnacle of sensitivity and emotion. As Americans struggled to adapt their ethos of agrarian individualism to a world girded with aggressive capitalism in the discordant 1890s, Whitman's "barbaric yawn" became much more elegant. In the age of office buildings and telegraphs, plutocracy and speculation, nativism and imperialism, calls for a more compassionate and inclusive society are most appealing not only to the dispossessed but also to the middle class. A new generation of writers also found appealing his insistence, also supported by Henri Bergson, that poets delve into the object or scene under study and then capture its perception not as a realistic photograph but as an exuberant moment of simultaneity and passion. . With the consolidation and codification of Jim Crow across the country, African American educators were the first to invoke Whitman's poetic vision. In 1895, the year of Booker T. Washington's "Atlanta Exposition Address," Kelly Miller, dean of Howard University, appeared before the Walt Whitman Fellowship to praise the poet's "aesthetics," which challenged notions of beauty only for whites transcended and anchored by the principles of equality and democracy. “All are welcome in Whitman's literary empire; No one is denied, shunned, shunned, ridiculed, or shamed. In fact, Whitman's whole theory is a protest against such exclusion.”119 Almost fifteen years later, Ezra Pound advocated recognition of Whitman's achievements and proclaimed him “America's poet”. In 1910 James Oppenheim asserted that "Walt Whitman is the founder of the new poetry", arguing that "we younger writers in America - and there must be thousands of us trying to play our age."

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Poetry - must now attack consciously and without fear. We must build on Walt Whitman.” Two years later, Leonard Abbot called Whitman “a liberator.” "from nature directly, from men directly, from the political assembly, from the hayfield and the factory."121 Harriet Monroe listed their contributions: the insistence on "freedom of form"; rejection of "archaic language"; and above all "his reaffirmation of the ancient conception of the poet as prophet and of poetry as religion, as the ecstatic expression of faith." Education and publishing house of the country: "The bourgeois thinkers and teachers who run our schools and our press are undemocratic and ignorant." Amy Lowell wrote that Whitman helped modern poets bridge the gaps between nature and man and between science and poetry to bridge, while Santayana credited Whitman with being "completely direct, absolutely sincere and unconcerned about anything that wasn't experience". Meaning here at the forefront of life.”123 One writer who successfully navigated this complex cultural terrain, and heeded Whitman's call for poets to write in a spirit of companionship about modern life in all its complexities, was Edwin Arlington Robinson. A young admirer of romantic poets, the Maine-born poet nonetheless wanted to bring in more humor, sympathy, and, when poetry took on a more difficult role, more contemporary themes. He began his career in the 1890s but found little praise for his dark and unheroic tales of butchers, clerks, misers and losers. Unable to find a publisher for his first volume, The Torrent and The Night Before, Robinson privately printed three hundred copies in 1896. . The book is full of references to God, souls and sorrows and full of exclamation points. It contained a poem about Whitman that diagnosed the reasons why Americans ignored his seminal work. Whitman's cadenzas were "very powerfully pure, / very lovingly triumphant, and very grand". However, he predicted that Whitman's popularity would soon increase: "There are some who hear him and/know that

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tomorrow he will sing for all people, / and he will hear it all the time. The poem “Oitavas” signified the robust role that poets should play in modern society: to reach the eternal power of things and turn them into fearlessly powerful songs is, I believe, the mission of this man whom the world would call a poet . He can sing, but coarsely and yet without grace; But when he stirs the right chord where the music of God sleeps and awakens a dormant ambition to truth, he sings well.125 Beauty, Robinson suggested, consisted in penetrating essential truths. He strove for realism, minimalism, and in "The Clerks" monosyllabic: I did not think that I would find her cheeks and women called her beautiful. . . Neither the editors nor the readers of the 1890s, accustomed to the somewhat profound and the meretrice, knew what to make of such simplicity. Not surprisingly, Robinson received letters of rejection from The Atlantic Monthly, The Century, Harper's and Scribner's. However, the lack of appreciation hurt. In "Sonnet," Robinson urged the poets to "enlighten Parnassus with a newer light" and "put to flight these sonnet-males." He wrote of editorial politics and their numb production: Oh, for a poet - for a bright beacon breaking through this dead grey's unchanging luster. . . Putting to flight those little sonnets, Which with ingenious mechanics form soulless songs. . . 126 Robinson confronted the misery of industrialization and the spiritual confusion of Western civilization in simple, minimalistic verse. In a letter he explained the central "message" of his poetry

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to his friend William Braithwaite: "I suppose part of this could be described as a vague hope to get some of us to understand our fellow human beings a little better and to see what a small difference there is between us after all. as we are, and ourselves, not only as we could have been, but would have been if our physical and temperamental makeup and environment had been a little different.”127 o Pessimism dogged Robinson. Harry Thurston Peck, a Columbia University professor and literary editor of The Bookman, praised the poet's "stern restraint" and "real fire" but cautioned readers about the poet's pessimism: "His mood is somber and the world is not fair for him. , but a prison house. At night there is weeping and sadness, and in the morning there is no joy.” Robinson qualified Peck's warning by saying: “The world is not a 'prison' but a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of confused children try to push God with the wrong blocks to spell.”128 Pushing the boundaries of beauty, Robinson contended, equipping people with some of the right building blocks to understand the modern human condition. To this end, poetry can and must reflect the resulting confusion and pain; to ignore them risked courting insignificance. Other writers also faced this prejudice against poems that conveyed pessimistic themes. The Chicago German daily Abendpost offered to buy George Sylvester Viereck's "Humanistic Poems" but not those dealing with "World Pain". Viereck confided in his diary: “Werner likes my poems, but the content is too pessimistic for him. The beast, man, does not like to hear that he is imperfect and not immortal.”129 The editors of The Century, on the verge of adopting Louis Untermeyer's Landscapes, rejected it because of the poem's politics and pessimism. "Your bloody social conscience could have been chased out of this poem to your advantage," explained William Rose Benét. "Don't you think your enjoyment of the world can sometimes be an adventure without being withdrawn from the crowd?" The editor justified his belief in practical necessity rather than willful miscalculation: "You will probably express that to me find absurd. But it's not about squinting to the dark side; it is the fact that the dark side is so present in most of our good novels and poems today that it makes us yearn for untouched joy.”130 In other correspondence, Benét showed less patience

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and tact. Handing him a sonnet back, he complained, "That's just rude. It has nothing to do with the construction of this world.”131 The mental, moral, and manual dexterity required to shift from gentle notions of beauty as uplifting to beauty as bewildering has proved very difficult for some. Robinson, for example, tried to persuade members of the Boston literary community to broaden their horizons and include a wider range of perspectives in their verse. He advised Josephine Preston Peabody to stop "philosophizing" and "endless tweeting" and instead "write about objective things." Peabody, who had been advised by the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, Horace Scudder, to heed traditional notions of beauty, tried unsuccessfully to heed Robinson's advice. For her, beauty was “the everlasting presence” that suffered “captivity in every human mind” and for which she felt an “overwhelming homesickness.” For a writer, "hoarding human discouragement" would be an "almost unforgivable sin." She made a grand and desperate plea for soft values, saying that the poet must always "give the positive crumb, the positive, the positive! . . . to save, to save, to save, to greet, to restore.”133 Peabody explained his position in a letter to a friend: “What is the will of God but supreme beauty, perfection, peace, tenderness, glory, radiance, radiance, true Truth be beautiful enough? . . . [The] will of God is that all things be filled with love and truth; we ourselves are so full of love and truth that we become part of the very fabric of divinity.”134 Even George Bernard Shaw noted this widespread and ingrained tendency towards a culture of enthusiasm for the way out of pessimism. In his 1903 play Man and Superman, he portrays a young American named Hector Malone as likable but naive, fashionably dressed but poor in spirit. Filled with "a fondness for elevating rhetoric (which he calls a moral tone)" Hector can't stand even when people mention the names of Nietzsche and Anatole France, so he counters by referring to Matthew Arnold, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. calls. and Macauley. 135 Finally, in 1905, Robinson received support from President Theodore Roosevelt. Throughout his life, Roosevelt remained an avid reader of poetry. His sister Corinne recalled that as a boy he knew many verses by heart and enjoyed singing poems by Longfellow, Swinburne, Browning and Kipling, and visited the White House to write an article

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"The President as Reader" for The Century): "I met a poet." As a result of Rough Rider's praise, Gilder reconsidered the merits of Robinson's candid sketches of characters such as Richard Cory, Reuben Bright, and Cliff Klingenhagen and accepted "Uncle Ananias." for the magazine.Poetry began to change as the confluence of new ideas, inspirations, and institutions connecting poets, readers, and critics enabled a new understanding of what readers and writers could expect from poetry, as well as from each other. Instead of sitting lazily by fireplaces, waiting for comfort and joy to come, poetry had to be re-adapted to meet contemporary needs.As Henry Adams pointed out in his autobiography, Daimler engines, electricity and the dynamo ( Technique) generally in 1900 “a symbol of infinity” and “a moral force.” The verse, to be relevant, took on e more dynamic valence. Like the last remnants of Victorian culture, characterized by piety, moralism and coherence of knowledge, the fragmentation, unpredictability and critical rationality of life in the early 20's gave way to new poetic communities with their own forms and forums, themes and values. Members of these diverse poetic communities that emerged in the first two decades of the twentieth century carried volumes of poetry with them as they worked to address the deep ethical problems posed by unbridled capitalism. They fought for workers' rights, demanded better conditions for workers and immigrants, and called for federal regulation of business and finance. They also called for individual responsibility and urged workers to honor the Sabbath and practice temperance. They published protests against racial violence, rallied for women's rights, volunteered at Hull House, voted for William Jennings Bryan, Roosevelt and Eugene Debs and fought in trenches in Meuse-Argonne. They firmly believed in the primacy of emotion and imagination to bring about change, and employed a moral vocabulary that addressed platonic notions of literature. They believed that poetry, like politics, could reform American values.

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2 Reforming verse, edifying society: the labor theory of poetic value

Whitman's first influence was not in form but in ethics, bringing the social movement to poetry for which Edwin Markham pioneered and remains the greatest voice. . . Poets ignited by this flame, turning art into the immediate needs of mankind.1 - Jessie B. Rittenhouse (1915) The man looked familiar. He was in a rectangular field of grass, rocks, and thistles. Square legs, rounded shoulders, he leaned on a curved wooden handle. As Edwin Markham looked at the farmer in Jean Francois Millet's painting The Man with a Hoe, he recalled the backbreaking work on his mother's farm. Years later, as he traveled through the foothills of the Sierra Mountains to inspect schools, he met families traveling west to homesteads, mortgaged their lands to buy groceries, and embittered when banks, wholesalers, and railroads used his work benefited. His experience disproved the Republican agrarian myth about the nobility working the land. Bursting with debt, these planters protested against a system that benefited monopolies and barons, not those who produced goods. The growing number of industrial workers wore the same geometry of mourning. In underground factories, mine shafts, and factory floors, workers had few opportunities to avoid dirt and gloom. Over the years, Markham has returned to Millet's portrayal. He took notes, wrote verses and looked at the original painting himself. In 1898 he had an eight-page poem The Man with the Hoe. In simple language and traditional form, he described the plight of a farmer whose endless toil and poverty had dehumanized him; 57

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Figure 2.1 Edwin Markham, 1899, the year he wrote The Man with the Hoe. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

bereft of beauty, it becomes bovine. The poem became an important literary and cultural event because it expressed discontent that reflected broader social discontent. It resonated intellectually and emotionally with progressive reform projects and converged with strategies that appealed to moral sensibility

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Regeneration that gravitated toward souls and individuality over possessions and wealth. Markham combined the positions of the literary heroes of the time - Whitman, Shelley, Ruskin - in a sort of cowboy aesthetic that made the poet more relevant and masculine. By expanding acceptable themes into verse, The Man with the Hoe marked a turning point in the relationship between American poetry and politics. It also helped break the deadlock in poetic production and reception, creating a stream of verse that inspired poets and avid readers. As a result, the poem became another milestone in the production of the poetic explosion of the 1910s. Markham's early years heralded life in the rodeo circus rather than the recital circle. After running a tavern in White Pigeon, Michigan for several years, his parents, Sam and Elizabeth, moved west and led a caravan of emigrants in wagons across the prairie through Indian country and buffalo herds. The Wagon members settled in Oregon City, where Elizabeth ran a general store and Sam ran a ranch with the help of his seven children (four from his previous marriage). Edwin was born in 1852 and his parents divorced soon after. He moved to California with his mother, one sister Louisa, and Columbia, his deaf brother. 2 Instead of hiring farmhands, which her generous divorce settlement could have paid for, Elizabeth, a strict Campbellite, pressured her children into working on the 150-acre farm. One by one they fled until only the youngest, Edwin, remained. From the age of seven he worked as a shepherd, farmer and rancher. He spent his youth on horseback, riding the five-mile trail to a one-room schoolhouse and sleeping under the stars in the California foothills. Though Markham was lonely, he took uninhibited delight in books that he had to hide from his mother, who feared he might see a more desirable life beyond the drudgery of childhood duty. His fears were not unfounded. At thirteen he came across a copy of Lord Byron's poetry and began having "lovely dreams of a promising future, in which I would have nothing to do but read books and write them". At school, a teacher introduced him to the wider world of literature, including Thomas Moore, William Cullen Bryant and Lord Alfred Tennyson. At the age of 23, Markham left home after his mother refused him to go to college.3

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Markham found a way to continue his education despite living a miserable existence for the next decade. After graduating from State Normal School in San Jose, he held a series of teaching positions before settling as principal of a school in Eldorado County, which was the site of James Marshall's gold discovery in 1848 and other posts in San Francisco and San Francisco Oakland became famous and brought him into direct contact with children from poor and immigrant families as well as with the most powerful labor activists in the country. Markham, who grew up without a father, is now determined to support those in need morally, spiritually and even financially. He believed that the first step in relieving suffering was uncovering it.4 Markham's reputation as an educated and dedicated teacher and administrator grew quickly, and he was soon being asked to run on the Republican list for Superintendent of Schools . In this position, which he won easily, Markham's duties required him to inspect schools across the county. He spent long periods wandering and reading, finding inspiration in radical writings such as Marx, Fourier, Kropotkin and sympathetic studies of the Paris Commune of 1871, while Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs spurred Markham on literature's power to illuminate injustice. In line with this philosophy, the teachings of the mystical poet and utopian communist Thomas Lake Harris had a tremendous impact on the young educator. Harris had founded the Fountain Grove colony in Santa Rosa, where devotees worked together to preserve the land and vineyards while absorbing teachings about charity, brotherhood, and the living Christ exacerbated greed and perpetuated an unjust distribution of wealth. He also came to believe that the moral force of art could dampen avarice and inspire charity. Christianity, political philosophy, and poetry were complementary ways of promoting social betterment. Shelley remained a lifelong inspiration. "I love Shelly. . . [I] have some of that rebellion in me that has been moving through his life,” he wrote. But Markham despaired of finding like-minded activists: "And even in these days of protest and prophecy, I rarely find a group that I seem to fraternize with. Christian socialists don't quite represent everything my soul desires.” America lacked a labor movement and literary figures who combined this kind of aesthetic, activism, and religion. Also soft modern poetic communities

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Founded in the 1910s, it was not until Ruskin's lectures, which challenged capitalist assessment and published as Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workman and Laborers of Great Britain, 1871–1878, that Markham found "a frequent voice for my thinking". Although in Ruskin he was "a soul all sweetness and light," Markham found it difficult to reconcile claims of beauty with demands for fairness and support for craftsmanship with championing of the labor movement. In 1896, The Century, Scribner's, The Atlantic Monthly published and Overland Monthly Poems by Markham, but none that transgressed the humble and patrician notions of American periodicals. When Edmund Stedman sent Markham a personal note, the aspiring author proudly wrote to his mother: "He says that to him my poems are 'really and exquisitely poetic.' America; so I am encouraged to believe that I can do work that cultivated minds will admire.” While Markham publicly accepted the tenets of such a powerful cultural authority, privately he expressed dismay. He noted that the canon as organized in Stedman's 1893 edition of Poets of America left "plenty of time and space for the ephemera, the little singers of the moment". In a letter to Walter Harte, editor of the New England Monthly, Markham spoke of the need for magazine editors to publish verse that does more than glorify lofty ideals: "There are times when the shell of our conventional lives crumbles and we die see the pettiness and stupidity of our petty existence, its offices, its greed for money, its slanders, its jealousies, its disappointments.”7 Markham also had to justify his belief in making the real as well as the ideal in life and poetry his future wife , Anna Catherine Murphy. As secretary of the California Association of Teachers and a poet herself, she believed that each individual had the power to develop their character and improve their position in life. Markham responded to this individualistic ethos by pointing to structural inequalities and challenging his definition of the poet's role: You're right that reformers need to reform—to become wholehearted men. But after all that has been said, the fact remains that man needs a better system of social justice, a better structure of social security. . . Of course, the poet's offering must always be poetic; but after that

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Condition, shall we say that this and that is a forbidden thought field? Markham conceded that "Keats is right: we need 'comforting things'", but insisted that life and poetry required more than a respite from personal pain and the pursuit of private pleasures. "If you knew me better, you would not regret that I feel this social passion, for it is the best and most unselfish thing in my life." Of New Humanity, Markham remarked sadly and somewhat grandiosely at the kind of reception poetry would receive who supported Henry George's flat tax doctrine, women's suffrage, or agrarian protests against land speculation: This book will be rejected, spat upon, the mob cursed by pygmy souls will pass by it Will be burned (Burn in the same fire that burned Galileo's books) Yet his free will soul live you cannot [die]; Its root is God. Everything that aspires in our destiny. . . Dedicated to 'the immortal memory of Shelley, poet and socialist', the book was rejected outright by the editors. Eventually, Markham published the plays as a single selection in various newspapers and magazines. With friendly publishers in America ignoring his policies, Markham looked abroad to London for encouragement, and he received it from one of his great heroes, William Morris. In September 1886 the Socialist Guild and the Poet in the Commonweal Markham published the "Workers' Song", written to commemorate the "martyrs" of the Paris Commune of 1871 who "met old mistakes in anger". Reception outside the rigid world of gentle publishers in which the most diverse literatures flourished. Poems, written to be sung during rallies and marches, grew in popularity among urban workers during the Golden Age. Between 1865 and 1895 thousands of song poems circulated in this unofficial culture. The sharp class division in the reading public prevented working-class poets from easily reaching middle-class audiences.11 Over 2,400 volumes of poetry were published in the 1890s.

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published, mostly by vanity publishers. Simplified poems on rural subjects in the local dialect predominate. Not far behind were the Kiplingesque "Be" poems: "Be Brave", "Be Patient", "Be Cheerful", "Be True", "Be Kind". Volumes dealing with domesticity and death also sold well, particularly anthologies of verse about deceased children and dead pets, and "Ernest Willie" Upshaw gained recognition for his self-titled volume of poetry about invalids.12 The first printing of 3,000 copies was quick sold out, with an eighth printing still selling well in 1899. Each region of the country produced such poems in a conventional form on standard themes. In the West, “breezy Western verse” crossed the line as Southern poets told romanticized tales of a supposedly “easy world” of pre-war slaves and masters.13 Sentimental humor also found a willing audience. The most popular poet of the 1870s, Will Carleton, sold 40,000 copies of Farm Ballads. "Barefoot Indiana boy" James Whitcomb Riley (1849–1916) managed to quit his job as an actor in a patent medicine program and painter of barn signs to become a full-time poet, following this credo: What We Want, as I Feel, on the O' line poetry is something yours and mine - something with cattle in it and out in the open, and old crick floors, logs and plane trees. . . Put in the sermons of old nature, - they're the best, - And 'hang up a hornet's nest occasionally' for boys who run away from school can be useful - and let them deal with it. . .14 Riley strove to connect with the reader ("The Heart Is Everything") and created a sympathetic protagonist in the familiar settings of childhood, family life, or "Days Gone by".15 His life and work spanned the period when the country was changing from a nation of mainly rural farmers to a nation that was largely urban and industrial. In poems like "The Raggedy Man" and "Little Orphan Annie," he conjured up nostalgic images of independent pioneers and workers living in simple, stable idylls. Riley has modeled his career in many ways on that of his hero, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who urged readers to cultivate as cultivators

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he researched stories from American history to produce compelling stories; he characterized his approach in The Day Is Done: Some simple and heartfelt way to soothe that uneasy feeling and banish the thoughts of the day.16 1855, the year Whitman published the first edition of Leaves of Grass, Americans, published flocked to buy Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha, which began with an intimate invitation to the reader: You who love the legends of a nation, love the ballads of a people, calling to us like distant voices, lest we stop and listen, so speaking in tones is simple and childlike, the ear can scarcely distinguish whether they are being sung or spoken; - Hear this Indian legend, this song by Hiawatha!17 Riley also courted a wide audience of readers. Without much education or money, he had no qualms about writing "to please the masses", convinced that readers wanted "smiles and wholesome joy and words of encouragement", not "sobs and tears and agony". As long as “the words have poetic power, when they are fervent, sublime, stirring the heart, exciting the emotions, burning with scorn [,] exhilarating with hope and promise”, then a poet “can be sure of an audience. 18 When Kentucky poet Madison Cawein asked his advice on how to increase readership and sales, Riley replied, "Keep them [poems] all sunny and sweet and wholesome to the core, or if they're ever tragic." are, with solid last hopes when they're pathetic, my goodness God! Baptized with his own tears and turned to joy!”19 In his Hoosier dialect poetry, Cawein presented a cadre of characters with good hearts and common sense. Her fame grew so much that her picture appeared on stationery, commemorative cards, and posters. Restaurants are named after him, and the US Postal Service issued commemorative postage stamps with his image.20 Not everyone applauded Riley's work. Morose San Francisco columnist Ambrose Bierce called Riley's writing "trivial."

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illiteracy” and “their sediment of feelings”. These remarks were dropped because, while Riley insisted that "it is humans who make literature" and that poems humans dislike "would prove to be false, fictitious, and inhuman documents," Riley craved critical acclaim . Beginning in the 1870s, Riley sent out a selection of good publications, although he knew they published only writers who wrote long poems evoking universal themes. Eventually he found an admirer in Robert Underwood Johnson, who wrote to Riley after the publication of The Old Swimmin'-Hole and 'Leven More Poems': "There is no one here who writes that I think seems to be getting as much as the real one nature of human life in a space as brief as yours.”21 The Century published In Swimming-Time that year, and after Underwood took over editorial duties, others followed. After twenty years of mailings from the Midwestern poet, The Atlantic Monthly published The Sermon of the Rose in 1898. Until then, these publishers saw Riley as an ally in ensuring morally uplifting literature. Along with them, he believed that "there is a poignant quality in all true poetry that reaches to the very center of the human heart, and there it vibrates and thrills us thoroughly with gentler emotions, higher aspirations, and yearnings to be better than ourselves." ' Similarly, Riley commented on the literary realism found in fellow Hoosier Theodore Dreiser: 'There is no need to write this problem. Why don't these people look around and see the beautiful things that are being given to them to admire? All this nasty, feverish stuff has no raison d'être. Readers have experienced enough difficulties in life; they didn't have to deal with more in art. Riley promised poems that would "take humanity to pleasant places, cheer it up, and present it with only the bright, beautiful, and good." Poet. He has recited poetry to presidents from Grover Cleveland to Woodrow Wilson, received honorary degrees from Yale (where his fans included professors Henry Beers and William Lyon Phelps), the University of Pennsylvania, Indiana University, and Wabash College; and in 1908 the National Institute of Arts and Letters, with Underwood's sponsorship, elected him a member and awarded him the 1912 Medal of Distinction in Poetry. James Riley Day became a statewide celebration in Indiana in 1911 and a national affair in 1915. When he died in 1916, his body was buried in the rotunda of the State Capitol, a

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Honor was bestowed only on Abraham Lincoln and General Henry Lawton (head of US forces in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War).23 In tone and intention Markham differed markedly from the popular poets of the time. Not surprisingly, Markham secured outlets for his work in newspapers and cheap magazines rather than in the fancy newspapers. In the July 1880 issue of the California Magazine, he published "In the Shadow of the Earth," a poem that reflected his main concerns. In a letter to his mother he explained his intention at work: I am trying to portray the saddened spirits of the world, the poor, the broken, all the children of defeat, the denizens of the earth's shadow, among the figures of the sad petrels. . . Sometimes hope comes to them like a rosy wind, but it soon passes. . . his dream of tranquility is dissolving.24 In another poem from the 1880s, Markham penned an apostrophe to religious and political leaders who focused on doctrine and power, rather than serving the poor like the carpenter of Nazareth: O steward in in the churches and in the state Why look at you idly from tower and gate. Where is the road you built for him, where is the throne for Christ the artisan—25 In the 1890s, as Markham struggled to find community and outlets for his most rebellious verses, he wrote articles for local newspapers. For a piece commissioned by The Californian at the 1893 Chicago Columbia Exposition, Markham attended the Exposition's literary convention. A speech by Charles Dudley Warner, Mark Twain's co-author of The Gilded Age (1873), exhorted aspiring writers to heed the demands of the general public - a notion Markham condemned as lurking, believing poets had the discernment and the to lead, not just follow, moral authority. 26 Markham revisited the theme of poets as Christian stewards five years later in The Hope of the Nations, a work written in response to the Spanish-American War, which predicted the second coming of Christ as he drew people together would the call: "Come on, let's live the poetry we sing!"27

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In 1896, after a decade of organizing and agitation, the workers' cause faltered on both the poetic and political fronts. Markham supported the presidential candidacy of the "Great Commoner" William Jennings Bryan, whose defeat that year was followed by a resurgence of free market encouragement as economic recovery, the Klondike Gold Rush and support for the Spanish-American War covered the tracks of the Depression, which had started in 1893. In this environment, the cause of the work seemed to lack support. That changed one Sunday in January 1899, when a progressive newspaper published a poem by William Randolph Hearst that took thirteen years to write. Markham originally conceived the work in 1886 when a friend drew his attention to a woodcut of a painting by Jean Francois Millet. Markham saw the image as a synecdoche of the plight of the honest and powerless poor: I quickly realized that Millet is not presenting us with an occasional farmer, a simple compatriot. NO; This stunned, apathetic peasant is the nature of industrial oppression in all countries and in all trades. He could be a man with a needle in a New York moonshine factory, a man with a pickaxe in a coal mine in West Virginia, a man with a pickaxe in a London alley, a man with a spade on the banks of the Zuyder .28 Markham wrote at once "Field Notes" for a poem that mixed morality, politics and aesthetics. Over the years he kept a file on Millet, read his biography and tinkered with drafts. The opening lines showed a plowman as an object of pity, more brother to beast than to man: Bowed by the weight of centuries, he leans on his hoe and looks down on the ground, The emptiness of time in his face, And on his back the weight of the world . Who made him dead for ecstasy and despair, a thing that doesn't suffer and never waits, listless and dazed, a brother to the ox? Who loosened and loosened that brutal jaw? Whose hand was it that drew back that eyebrow? Whose breath turned off the light in this brain?

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The worker's situation disrupted the natural order and divine harmony of the universe by denying access to eternal ideals. For this "slave of the wheel of labor" beauty had no value: . . . What are Plato and the scales of the Pleiades for him? What the long reaches of the peaks of music, The dawn, the blush of the rose? Markham blamed this swamp on the powerful and rich and appealed to their moral sensibilities to remedy: O masters, lords and rulers of the whole earth, is this the work you give to God, this monstrous thing, distorted and wiped out? How will you straighten this shape; Touch it again with immortality; Bring back the look and the light; Rebuild music and dreams in him; Correct the age-old shame, the question wasn't rhetorical. The fate of the mighty lies in the answer. He warned: How will the future depend on this man? How to answer your crude question then, when eddies of rebellion shake every shore? How will it be with kingdoms and with kings - with those who made it what it is - when this mute terror rises to judge the world after the silence of centuries? In 1898 Markham considered submitting it to The Century and, as he did, ranked it as one of his least radical compositions, appealing to God and those in power rather than to revolution. He used traditional forms and content that, while not standardized or sentimental, were certainly not shocking. After all, by the turn of the 19th century Wordsworth had expressed his desire to write verse about rustics in his famous preface to the Lyrical Ballads.

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popular in accessible language. Robert Burns captured the slang of his native Scotland, while in America Victorian writers composed odes about the plight of farmers beset by drought, locusts and dust storms, as well as currency deflation, competition from Europe and eastern speculators. In sonnets these poets contrasted the virtuous and sane peasant life with the greedy and unsanitary life of the city. Few unpleasant aspects of life were left unaddressed in the verses of the so-called Age of Innocence.30 However, few of these poems had a touch of class struggle or were addressed directly to the owners of the means of production, and their audiences remained limited. At a New Year's Eve party in California in 1898, guests took turns singing songs and entertaining. Markham took a stack of pages from his pocket, typed the other day and read The Man With The Hoe. The newspaper's editor, Bailey Millard, felt that the poem expressed something new and profound. He persuaded Markham to publish it in The San Francisco Examiner, a Hearst newspaper that had previously published allegations against the Southern Pacific Railroad's unfair fare plans and Ernest Thayer's popular "Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888" entitled "Casey at the Bat” had released. "The Man with the Hoe" appeared on January 15, 1899 as a full-page treatment in the magazine section. To attract more attention, Millard commissioned a decorative draftsman to embroider the poem with sketches of orchids below from a reproduction by Millet painted and wrote "An Appreciation of Professor Markham's Virile Verse" which accompanied the work.31 The poem was published immediately to a sensational character from Presley partly based on the now famous Markham. Presley is pitted against other literati in San Francisco, most notably Mr. Hatrath, who has a slack handshake, shoulder-length hair, writes sonnets, accepts patronage from the despised railroad treasury, and proudly admits, "'I am very confidential. it's my cross Beauty,” he closed his aching eyes with a small expression of pain, “Beauty breaks me.” When Presley protests the railroad's behavior (he spends the novel trying to find ways to dismantle its power), Hatrath warns: “When the poets are materialized [sic]. . . What can we say to the people?” Throughout the story, Presley's efforts to write an epic “Song of the West” are thwarted by a sensibility that ignores Leiden: “His beliefs were not awakened; he didn't care about people. Not his sympathies

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been touched. . . Now he belonged to the people; he had been touched to his deepest depths. Presley knows he wrote a great poem because he responded to criticism by declaring, "I'm serious." Presley doesn't publish the poem in a monthly magazine like Scribner's or Harper's, which was intended for "the rich." , but in a popular medium: the daily newspaper.32 Norris characterized the success of the poem (in the novel the poem is called “The Toilers”): it was promptly copied in New York, Boston and Chicago newspapers. It was discussed, attacked, defended, praised, ridiculed. He was praised with the brightest flattery; attacked with the strongest condemnation. Editorials were written about him. Special articles in literary pamphlets dissected his rhetoric and prosody. Phrases were quoted - they were used as texts for revolutionary sermons, reactionary speeches. It has been parodied; it was misread as advertising branded cereals and infant formula.33 This fictitious assessment was not far from reality. A contemporary journalist remarked of The Man With The Hoe: The poem flew eastward across the continent like a contagion. As fast as the Post Office took it, the newspapers published it as a new focus of infection, first in California and the Pacific Coast, then in the Mississippi Valley, New York and New England on the Canadian line. Within a week, phrases and couplets were on everyone's lips. The newspaper editions that contained it sold out, and publishers reprinted it, along with editorials about it and hundreds of manuscripts with comments from the public. Newspapers, one historian of the time remarked, represented a unique phenomenon "in that 'O Homem da Enxada' was given as much space as boxing matches and police stories. Clergymen made the poem their text, orators recited it, university professors lectured on it, debating clubs debated it, schools took it up for study.” Provident gift that provides a blueprint for poetry's potential to become socially relevant. A new generation of aesthetic progressives found a way in Markham's immediacy to connect their consciousness to culture. Arthur Davison Ficke recalled: "It happened to express a criticism and an ideal

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that were hidden in the minds of many; and thus tapped into that hidden source which controls the great flow of popular emotion.”35 Letters and requests for reprints, as well as critical praise, were received. Writer Hamlin Garland declared it "a grand and beautiful thing in the sense that Wagner is grand and beautiful". Another Bay Area poet, Joaquin Miller, likened the poem to "all of Yosemite—the thunder, the power, the majesty." the freedom". He wrote to Markham: "It seldom befits man to stir up the electrifying world with a single stroke of genius."37 Author Joseph Dana Miller praised the poet's ability to articulate a social ill in such convincing terms.38 Ridgely Torrence, who was to come to write a series of verses about the realities of African-American life spoke for a generation of rising poets as he thanked Markham for providing an American model of poetic achievement: "It means a lot to a young man like me to have it a master of his art among their own living countrymen; Throughout my childhood I had to see Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Watson, and Mr. Kipling.”39 Others gave more qualified praise. William James considered the poem "magnificent" and full of "humanity and morality", but questioned the portrayal of the chopping man: "I think he is a happier, better and less terrible creation than you care to consider him. for the purposes of your verses.”40 Another reader complained that in a capitalist society it simply takes initiative and risk to get ahead. Horatio Alger's bootstraps mentality held that lack of ingenuity and non-repressive structures ensnared individuals in meaningless labor: the men whom the poet would symbolize in "The Man With the Hoe" have endless opportunities, in this country at least, and when they do keep weeding, because they are useless for nothing else. To invoke the cause of its worthlessness shows only a narrow, even morbid, view of modern civilization.41 Edmund Stedman acknowledged that the poem had "certain enduring qualities" but dismissed the technical shortcomings: blank verse should not be restricted to his five feet hang in a row, but even more so in your caesuras. I note that with a few exceptions

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You have no breaks or pauses in the middle of your lines, and that only a few lines flow into subsequent lines at a time. So your poem is written in a novel, and may I say staccato, a kind of pentameter without rhyme. It is a series of emphatic lines of questions or statements, each of which can be almost isolated.42 A self-proclaimed socialist who believed in "raising the level, not lowering it," Stedman was also concerned about the poem's potential for abuse: " His poem will be enjoyed by all the social radicals of the world.”43 In a lecture at the Brooklyn Institute on modern American poetry, the eminent and mild critic Hamilton also characterized Mabie Markham's popularity as an unfortunate and unnerving development, although Mabie modulated this criticism with an appreciation for the "masculinity of his subjects", the "succinctness of his style" and his "high, pure, lyrical note". unseemly, it was utter disobedience. They resented the impudence of a poet who would dare to deface art by painting a problematic reality, protest and shame; and in emphasizing injustice, it represented an obvious object of the poet's duty to envelop and exalt, ennoble and bring beauty. Ambrose Bierce, who served as a sort of mentor to Markham in his early years in San Francisco, also rejected the poem's socialist nature. He believed that "the greatest man is the man capable of the loftiest, most enduring, and most useful intellectual work—and the highest, most mature, and richest fruit of the human intellect is undoubtedly great poetry". But he cautioned Markham to remember: “The 'first cause' of poetry is beauty; nothing else is possible.” Poets must pass into grandeur, not logic: “It is the philosopher's job to make us think, it's the poet's job to make us feel”. In his Prattler column for The Examiner, he questioned the poem's veracity: "The notion that the sorrows of the lowly stem from the selfishness of the great is 'natural' and can be made poetic, but it's silly. As a literary conception, it lacks the vitality of a sick fish.” In subsequent columns, Bierce reiterated his dislike for the Hoe poem, claiming that only a certain audience, those of “peasant understanding and sour heart,” found it palatable. Bierce then published a personal attack, scrawling a crude image of Markham as a "demagogue" or, worse, a "labour leader," which went viral

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the gospel of hate known as 'industrial brotherhood'” that sought to reverse God's natural order on earth. The poet's popularity also provided evidence of corruption. Markham performed before audiences made up of "fools" who knew nothing of poetry and draped themselves in beauty as they worked their way toward barbarism.45 Despite Bierce's criticism, Markham had not involved capitalists directly in crimes against workers; he had only pointed to some difficulties in the dark future, perhaps the day of Christ's return. great idea of social justice.”47 In terms of poetic form, the poem was not innovative. Like Edward Bellamy's retrospective, it offered new ideas for a social and economic order without threatening refined norms and staying within the realm of moral exaltation. Like other turn-of-the-century reformers, Markham looked back as he attempted to advance more progressive ideas. It took William Jennings Bryan to dust off the poem's untold remnants and uncover its social implications. In response to a request from William Randolph Hearst to write an explanation of the immediately popular poem for The New York Journal, Bryan turned poetry into political protest. "It's a sermon that goes to the heart," he said, explaining the poem's appeal. “It expresses humanity's protest against inhuman greed. The argument has a majestic panache; some of the lines pierce like arrows. Bryan connected certain lines of the poem to general problems in the country, including wealth inequality, unfair income tax laws, exploitative child labor and the notorious but inscrutable trusts: “The extremes of society are growing ever wider. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few. At one end of the scale, luxury and idleness breed effeminacy; at the other end, hardship and misery breed despair.”48 As the excitement and noise continued, Markham added his own interpretation of the poem's protagonist and the political implications, emphasizing the unjust and undemocratic state of the market: The Hoeman is the As a symbol of humanity betrayed, the worker was conquered by epochs of oppression, by epochs of social injustice. He is the man who is driven out of the land by those who don't use it, until he finally becomes a mindless servant

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in his muscles and no heart in his work. He is the man pushed back and shrunken by the special privileges accorded to the idle few. Markham protested against a system that robs work of its dignity and leaves little opportunity for human flourishing: in Hoeman we see the slow, sure, horrific degradation of man by work without end, without hope, and without joy. Did I say work? NO! - Hardship! This man's struggle with the world was very brutal. He does not ascend according to the divine music of the world. The movement of his life has been stopped, if not reversed. He is a figure of humanity degraded below the level of the wandering savage, having a step of dignity, a tongue of eloquence. . . The Hoeman is the image of man, a being with no way out for his life, no elevation for his soul - a being with no time to rest, no time to think, no time to pray, no time for the mighty hopes that make us human .49 The exhausting labor of modern industry and agriculture made man "crude" and threatened to turn him into a "machine." sensitized to the humiliations of the new industrial order. Marked by an incipient pragmatism, these reformers blamed society and the environment for the meanness of modern life; Enhancing the environment through practical amenities, Christian ethics, and applied experience promised courtesy and a revived sense of community. A contemporary historian remarked that the poem became "the tocsin of a generation". Any treatment of the 'Reformation Age' that fails to recognize it as either poetry or a reformist attitude is automatically silly and sick.”51 Although somewhat exaggerated, the poem's impact had a resonance that invited comparisons to Harriet Beecher's Uncle Tom's Cabin of Stowe . Progressive politicians such as Cleveland Mayor Tom Johnson and Toledo Mayor Samuel "Golden-Rule" Jones have referred to the poem in speeches calling for more human rights and laws to recalibrate the scales of justice . was not included in any American textbooks until 1918. However, it was widely translated and appeared in textbooks in Russia, England, Denmark, Austria, Spain and

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Poland. Mexican human rights demonstrators and reformist members of the Russian Duma used the poem as a mobilizing force.53 Not everyone was satisfied with this emergence of reformist sentiment. One of the four great railroad builders in the West, Collis P. Huntington, worried: "Are we going to let a mere poem lead the whole nation into socialism?" To curb the poem's unbridled appeal, he sponsored a poetry contest Answer to the poem Hoe. He recruited Edmund Stedman, Thomas Aldrich and Charles Dudley Warner as judges and announced the competition in The New York Sun. After reviewing 1,000 entries - many of remarkably low quality - the judges awarded the prize to John Vance Cheney, director of Chicago's Newberry Library and a friend of Markham's (the two men edited the weekly Book Land column in New York Morning American) that he composed the poem to win a much-needed $400 cash prize. Markham to print a book of the famous poem. He chose Doubleday and McClure after they placed the highest bid and dedicated the collection to Edmund Stedman, "First to Hail and Caution Me". By August 1900, three months after the original publication date, the book had entered its fourth edition. Markham continued to compose verses on traditional themes alongside poems commemorating Alfred Dreyfus, the French-Jewish captain wrongly accused of treason, Cuban patriots, and denunciation articles on subjects such as "Worship of Wealth as Crushing Disaster of Characters", "Hell of exploitation". , and Spinners in the Dark to reform magazines. One of the biggest obstacles Markham faced was the charge of pessimism; Poets should be noble optimists. Some angry readers went further and described him as effeminate and wide-eyed, associating him with the urban underclass of immigrants and anarchists.56 A debate ensued on the editorial page of The New York Times. Henry Wilson, a resident of the Empire State, acknowledged the existence of "creatures so wretched that Mr. Markham made his "patrons" and likened his situation to the miners and slaves of the South. He defended the poet against accusations of supporting anarchists, stating that "his subject is true and worthy of a poet".

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Sonnet "The Night Watch of Love". "It is clear," wrote one supporter, "that the poet feels it is everyone's duty to cry out against these obstacles, and so help to make the world divine." Isn't all poetry more or less exaggerated, that is, highly colored ? Do poets who can see nothing but beauty in this world do a higher work than he who strives to make the whole world beautiful in reality, by exposing and bringing to light the evils and injustices that have prevented them for so long has? Fitzgerald of New Haven also defended the poet's realism, saying, "This man holds up the mirror to nature, and nature doesn't like the picture and breaks the glass. Markham sees a man sitting on the safety valve of the engine of life and warns him of the danger.” The Reverend compared Markham to brazen abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison, who opened Americans' eyes to injustice by giving a voice to the oppressed. Markham went beyond sentimentality and did not stop at the aestheticization of misery; his poetry was an effective form of protest literature. Fitzgerald continued: Millet's photo is "excitingly beautiful" as a work of art. The dilettantism of Europe and America raved about it as an image, but when the man with the hoe spoke it turned out to be vulgar and pessimistic, and the man who spoke a sort of disruptor outside of Euclid .60 Fitzgerald criticized those who sympathized with the poor as long as they behaved accordingly. Nor did he care much for poets who held rigidly to a form of beauty that was ordered and coherent. In Fitzgerald's view, Euclid, "the father of geometry," should not be the only model of aesthetic achievement. Other proponents defended Markham by claiming that the poet tempered realism with optimism. John Talman of St. Paul, Minnesota argued that "underneath Markham's apparent pessimism it is easy to discern a tone of hope, an unshakable motive and goal born of righteousness and undying truth," but "his inclination is never ignoble. His message is always uplifting, yet revolutionary.” Talman also appreciated the way Markham's verse expands on that

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Province of Beauty: "While other poets merely gratify our love of beauty, approximate our ideals of perfected art, or even reach and move the heart with tones of human interest, Markham pierces and splinteres. . . Error, prejudice, caste, ignorance, meanness and convention". Talman was delighted by the direct and intense style of the poet's pen: "It becomes for this warrior of music to ride in a chariot of fire and thunder before the gates of infinity!"61 As soon as the crackles of dissatisfaction subsided, Markham fanned out by publishing a poem entitled "The Suicide" in the November 1899 issue of Scribner's, prompting another round of concerned letters to the editor of the New York Times literary section, and questions about Markham's tone and role as a poet. However, most of Markham's editions continued standard literary protocols. The verse published alongside the title poem reflected the spirit of transcendentalism with its emphasis on intuition, divine immanence and harmony with nature. Fifteen of the seventy-four poems were sonnets dealing with forests, birds, mountains, mystical spirits and deep soul feelings. As he wrote in one of the first lectures, he read poetry to "get a sense of the higher powers behind all science". Art,” he recalled of the kind of sermons heard in tents at revival meetings. "Man saves himself" by coming into contact with the beauty found in poetry.63 This communion had the effect of transforming "the animal into divine masculinity" and raising individuals "to exalted spirits" who were "noble and heroic". Poetry provided "a vibration of order and harmony, a vibration of the ideal", it was a "revealer of beauty" and the "primary vehicle for realizing that sacredness, that mystery, that wonder". Poetry is "quiet and yet lively". As a poem by Wordsworth that Markham was fond of quoting, it was said: "Through words / I would awaken the sensual from their slumber / From death and win the void and void / To noble ecstasies." Echoing Santayana, Markham believed that poetry in its original incarnation stemmed from religious reverence. However, "all the rubbish of theology and church life" has distorted this pure feeling. Ancient religions, sacred hymns, divine dramas, mystical rhapsodies, and noble ideas arose not from earthly interactions but from impeccable imaginings: "Gradually, from above, the poet's mind is impregnated with divine ideas." Likewise, the process of creating a poem resembled that of a midwife: “Things are born

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and are alive and growing', instead of 'simply made' objects impregnated only with the 'mechanical, artificial and dead'. By surrendering their hearts, minds, and bodies to this divine primitivism, the poets attained greater consciousness. Echoing Emerson, Markham explained that poets became aware of "a rhythmic movement through creation, like a deep undertone and a choral dance" and developed a "desire" to join "this living harmony". The insights gained from the encounters between the poet and the "living harmony" became poetry; Perceptions “cover themselves with language”, then fulfill their evangelical mission on earth with the help of poets. In February 1900, Markham published a full account of his poem's origins and intentions in a pamphlet, The Man with the Hoe, With Notes by The Author. He castigated those who denied that the workers endured such discouraging conditions. “There are some who say that the vile Hoeman does not exist anywhere in the world. Do they hope to drive the thing away through denial?” Markham distinguished between two strands of poverty. The pioneer, despite being tested by job-like conditions at times, experienced nature first-hand and was able to build a better future through individual will. Then there was the desperate "poverty of the workman, portrayed by Millet, lamented by Ruskin, and lamented by Carlyle; the poverty of slaves bent in factories, in factories, in mines.” Drudgery has denied contemporary American workers Garfield's determination on the towpath, Lincoln's determination on the railroad stack, and Ben Franklin's Thirteen Virtues on the road to self-improvement; Such work was ultimately un-American. Markham made it clear that he was not against work but against its degradation, not against the presence of problems but against the absence of beauty. In a hymn that harmonized with Republican civic virtues and ancient notions of dignity, Markham called for a farming experience that harks back to Thomas Jefferson's vision of simple citizenship, where workers fertilize their minds and souls through self-education: Life on the farm can be beautiful be made, ideal. Why shouldn't the man who gives the peoples bread receive back the greatest gifts of culture and art? Why shouldn't the Plow Prince know Shakespeare and Shelley, Schumann and Wagner? There is no need to pry anyone off their heels, but there is a deep, compelling, divine call to your higher recovery, to your spiritual advancement. He

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grew many seeds from one. Let him have more than the chaff for his reward.”64 Markham distanced himself from the pessimists: “So I will side with the optimists—those who are willing to trust in love. . . not only at home, but also in the extended family of the state.” He ended with an appeal, not to the workers of the world to unite, but to middle-class Christians to do their duty: life, men of good will, men who have the Christ purpose in their hearts.” Instead of the rabid populist, Markham in The Man With the Hoe sentimentalized eternal sacrifice—the salt of the earth to be mourned rather than identified. The trials of the workers deserved to be portrayed in poetry. Markham employed a different strategy to debunk accusations of radicalism as he worked to establish a new direction for poetry. He regularly cited the Bible as his main source of inspiration and used his fame to create a crude image of the poet. He advocated repeated exposure to hard work, urban squalor, and political injustice to teach poets to resist and be inspired by appalling social conditions. In a series of newspaper interviews, he attempted to dispel derogatory stereotypes of poets by using the image of a feisty cowboy. C. H. Garrett, writing for The Literary Era monthly, titled his essay "Edwin Markham, Cowboy and Poet," and it contained lengthy passages about farmer's duties and rodeos, harvesting barley and wheat, and forging metal as a blacksmith . .65 Other articles about the poet usually began with a description of his impressive appearance. A New York Times journalist, for example, praised the endurance of a man whose strength belied his age. At forty-seven, Markham's charisma and strength gave him the appearance of someone half his age. Colonel Hinton marveled at Markham's "noble skull" and other "regular and strong" physical features: "The nose is masterful, strong at the base and broad at the nostrils"; “The shoulders are square and rather broad; his chest is deep; Limbs are strong, alert, active. A good climber. Unlike members of a fringe group, Markham “impresses with ease; a relaxed grace of movement that shows physical freshness”. He didn't look like a pathetic pedant, but like a learned cowboy: “The teacher doesn't dress properly.

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He has the western touch in his costume, but it doesn't fit with any pedagogical thought. 'Ah,' an observer would say, 'a publisher or a lawyer—who is that?'” In fact, Markham himself insisted: “I'm a student; not a bibliophile” (see Figure 2.1). This handsome and unassuming man was "someone the passer-by looks up to" and was "not a candidate for public power or a platform debater, nor will he place himself in a school". Valuing Christian commandments, Markham said, "I believe in religion steadfastly, though sometimes I doubt religion," and defended workers' rights through peaceful action and their power of persuasion, "always insisting that the road to joy and Peace leads through the gates of social justice and through the way of fraternal life". Hinton provided evidence of Markham's conservative approach to social reform by citing several lines such as Earth with a sense of life's unity and value, a sense of its mystery and wonder. Markham's physical and intellectual heritage stemmed from a devout, principled lineage that produced sturdy, clean lines: This American of the Purest Race; nourished in the Hebrew prophets; and filled with the philosophy of Plato, Hegel, Kant and Swedenborg, the sociology of Mazzini and Herron and breathes an atmosphere all of its own. We remember Wordsworth as we read it, but it's just an echo. We are reminded of Whitman; Nevertheless, it is only the intonation of his nature-loving democracy. Tennyson's beautiful melody is contained in these verses. Browning's subtlety, without its haze, is here too. Finally, Hinton asserts that Markham's poetry "elevates and ennobles," and has tamed the poet's more radical and socialist tendencies. Appearance of the poet: "He is tall and energetic" with a "classic and clean profile". Whitelock cataloged Markham's furniture like a checklist

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of respectability: a picture of Tennyson hung on the door of a book-lined office; a three-volume edition of Keats by the desk. However, Whitman's image required some qualification. Just as Colonel Hinton compared Markham to a desexualized Whitman, Whitelock observed that while Markham asserted the "many great truths" found in the poet of democracy, he lamented that they played too lightly with "puerilities." Whitman may have articulated ideas that ", as Emily Dickinson put it, leave you 'zero in the bone,'" but he was not "the prophet America has been looking for, the poet of our expectations." Markham suggested that The Man With a Hoe not only fulfilled these expectations, but ushered in a renaissance in literature because it opened up "a wider range of subjects" and "emancipated us from being confined to purely so-called 'literary' subjects." 67 O Markham's friend and fellow California poet Joaquin Miller wrote a similar article, calling the author alternately a people's poet, a high mountain cowboy, and a gentleman of Christ.68 Along with Walt Whitman and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Edwin Markham He was one the first and few poets who could make a living by giving civic speeches and anthologizing his poems. His portrayal as a virile cowboy who upheld Emerson's principles of originality made him the prime candidate for literary fame.69 He worked hard to build a loyal following, traveled the country giving popular readings, and wrote replies to fan letters. Proceeds from an overland tour sponsored by the McClure Lecture Bureau and reprint orders enabled Markham to retire from administrative duties, relocate to New York and pursue his writing full-time.70 In the tradition of the popular but now-forgotten Will Carleton, Edgar Guest and Eugene Field, Markham maintained his role as a public poet by taking steps to make connections with his readers. He published in popular venues such as mass circulation newspapers and magazines and acted as a personal critic for aspiring poets. In ebullient language, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fans—including lawyers, housewives, college students, doctors, and established writers—sent letters expressing the power of poetry in their lives and soliciting comments on their own compositions. Markham responded with editorial comments and encouragement. In the days leading up to the M.F.A. programs, it was not uncommon

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for individuals to turn to their favorite authors for guidance. In his answers, Markham outlined the content of the poems and the qualities of a poet. To a woman who sent poetry about royalty, he advised: "Kings and queens are usually just idle, golden parasites, cut off from any real sympathy for the working people." . "You say too much directly to the reader", "There is no room for the play of imagination around you", "It is too obviously didactic", "Too didactic", "A poem should be more a song than a sermon". 72 For the deaf, Markham included a list of books on composition and rhetoric, Stedman's Nature and Elements of Poetry, works by Ruskin, Carlyle and Emerson, affirming that 'a poet's first requirement is a passionate soul. Add to this the devotion to a high ideal.”73 Other important character traits necessary for sound poetic composition were “fiery seriousness”, “noble intention”, “fresh conception” and “clarity of expression”. Individuals submitted their own poems only as thanks, Markham thanked profusely, and when others wrote in solidarity with the workers' cause, he mobilized them to continue their commitment. By 1909, Markham was more optimistic about the country's literary output. "There is a tendency everywhere towards ordinary human life as it really is," he wrote in an article for the New York Times. “Our old romance has crumbled and we are finding a new romance in the beaten path of everyday life. . . An old woman leaning her burden against the wall bears more tragedy than any queen in ancient history.” Prophetically he concluded: “We are at the dawn of a new epoch in literary and human history.” by thirty-six younger poets. The verses ranged from the sensualist George Sylvester Viereck to the socialist offerings of the radicals James Oppenheim and Louis Untermeyer. To give the undertaking more seriousness, Markham linked the volume to seminal texts such as Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads and series by Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites, which established new literary traditions. Considering the book's contributors, "The Defenders of Beauty and Duty, The Adherents of Vision" and "The Apostolate of Poetry," he promised that "the hope of the world lies in its poetry: for religion is but poetry in practice. Yes, all true culture is just

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an attempt to transform our dreary prose existence into the beauty of lyrical life.” Certainty. Offering moral clarity, ethical foundation and regeneration, the poets added “to our tone a precious vision, a vision that reveals to us eternal truths and values”: All of this is good news for the nation’s ideal interests – good news for those which are serious Ghosts among us are tormented by the hoof and horn marks of our unbridled commercialism, that blind power that creates a philosophy of cynical fatalism amidst the shrill footsteps and shrill screams of the market. . . the hope of the world lies in his poetry.77 Although Markham inspired and encouraged the new poetry, his aversion to impure verse marked him out as a nineteenth-century man. His introduction was intended to reassure readers that the volume was indeed experimentation in form and content, but he remarked with a sigh of relief and confidence: "Most of all, I am pleased to note the moral sanity of these selected poems. . There is no raging fever of decadence here - none of the eroticism that springs from wet satiety and sick imagination. Rather, these poems exuded "a wholesome spiritual atmosphere, a poetry sweet in the wind and warm in the sun." A staunch supporter of suffrage and women's rights, he rejected literary portrayals that denigrated women. “The erotic poet sees in women only the beauty of the flesh, the sensual side; he knows nothing of the mystery within her,” he wrote. Ultimately, poetry should reflect divinity: “Here is the crucial point in art: the body must never be separated from the soul; the body breaks down by itself. It is our duty to spiritualize the material, to materialize the spiritual; Whenever the two divorce, there is a void for Lucifer to fill.”79 While the basic realities of economic and social existence could be deciphered in verse, the human body had to remain covered. Markham also furthered the cause of poetry, associating with literary institutions and composing poetry for civic occasions, such as the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, which celebrated "Markham Day" when the poet wrote his ode at the exhibition read.

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in front of 15,000 people.80 In a parody of contemporary writers, poet Margaret Widdemer (whose own poem "The Factory" criticized child labor and the conditions of working women) satirized Markham, "who, although he had to lay a stone key, revealed a bust of someone delivered two lectures and wrote encouraging introductions to the works of five young poets before taking the trio to Staten Island, offering his response benevolently and unhurriedly.”81 Markham also used his writing and reputation to advance other social justice causes to pursue by promoting crusades temperance, disarmament, women's suffrage and education, birth control and the humane treatment of animals. He insisted on changing the draft age to 21 and abolishing the death penalty. His work for children, including a book Children In Bondage co-written by Judge Ben Lindsey and George Creel (the Denver reformer who chaired the Committee on Public Information during World War I), earned Markham the presidency of the Federation of Children a • child labor. (With duties, he joked, that required him to look "wise" and attend the annual dinner.)82 He helped find foster homes for orphans, contributed to socialist journals, and criticized Russia's treatment of Jews. Having been married twice before meeting Anna Catherine, Markham defended the Russian and Bolshevik author Maxim Gorky when scandal broke out during the writer's fundraising trip in 1906 when newspapers revealed that Gorky was not legally married to his consort.83 Markham took the same position in 1909 when a similar controversy arose about the philanthropist Ferdinand Earle. For Markham and those in the new poetic communities in the process of being formed, Industrial Age poets had to walk a fine line: engaged in the modern world but upholding ideal principles; Cultivate beauty but transcend kindness; and build empathy without suggesting radicalism. When the Poetry Society of America was formed in 1910, Markham was the obvious choice to serve as its first honorary president.

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3 Healing a Community, Creating a Renaissance: A New Infrastructure for the “New Beauty”

A silent and patient spider, I observed where it was isolated on a small promontory; It marked how He threw out threads, threads, threads to explore the vague and vast surroundings; Always unwind it - always accelerate relentlessly. And you, O my soul, where are you, surrounded, detached, in vast oceans of space, ceaselessly meditating, daring, playing, seeking the spheres to connect them, until the bridge you will need is formed, until the flexible anchor 'till the thread of the net you cast catches somewhere, O my soul. — Walt Whitman In the fall of 1912, after living for seven years in a palatial villa in Florence, Italy, Buffalo, New York-born banker heiress Mabel Dodge sailed into New York Harbor. When she saw the Statue of Liberty, she began to sob. "We have left everything valuable behind us," she called out to her son John. "America is all machines, profits and factories - it's ugly, ugly, ugly!" Within months her tears dried up as she helped set up the Armory Show Exhibit of Modern Art and was determined to protect her homeland, if not nice, at least to make it more open to art and culture. "I would piss America off," she vowed. Then a thought occurred to her. As she recalled in her memoir, "I wanted to blow up New York." At his Greenwich Village home on April 85,

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On Fifth Avenue, she opened a salon that brought together a fleeting mix of wobblies and writers, anarchists and artists, bohemians and birth control advocates. "It seems that throughout that year, 1913, barriers fell and people who had never been in contact before came closer," she wrote. “There were all kinds of new ways of communicating, as well as new communicating. The new spirit was widespread and sweeping us all together.”1 While Dodge hatched inflammatory ideas to reshape America, others hatched blueprints to institute reforms using less combustible materials. George Sylvester Viereck, who organized a poetry night for one of Dodge's weekly meetings, and Harriet Monroe, who attended The Armory Show, were instrumental in creating a network of institutions that connected writers and their audiences in new ways. One of the most prominent poets and literary agents on the American scene between 1897 and 1917, Viereck was an ethnic German, a direct descendant of Kaiser Wilhelm I, who embraced culture as the measure of vitality and vision that Anglo-Saxon culture lacked. American art. and letters. A longtime ardent admirer of Oscar Wilde and Sigmund Freud, known for his provocative and sexually charged verse, Viereck was often criticized for immorality. However, in his editorial work at Current Literature and his organizational efforts at the PSA, he politely welcomed newcomers and veterans alike. Monroe had a decidedly different temperament, a reputation more suited to the salon than the underworld, and a demeanor more receptive to the middle-class reader than the manifesto writer. As an editor and anthologist, she supported writers whose works deviated dramatically from conventional verse, making them more acceptable to polite society. Viereck and Monroe were both poets, publishers, and men of letters, both deeply rooted in the world of writing and the arts, both with a flair for the public sphere, and both with a deep commitment to the dissemination of poetry. With distinctly different personalities, they recognized that to succeed, the new poetry needed the support of the new media – financial and critical – and an informed and appreciative public. With the founding of the Poetry Society of America in 1910 and Poetry: A Magazine of Verse in 1912, writers now had forums to meet, read, exchange ideas, engage an audience, and maybe even win a few awards. Much to the chagrin of Greenwich Village radicals, the PSA meetings and poetry pages reached mainstream readers who were open-minded, if perhaps a little wary, of modern ideas. When stretching out the hand

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and by building a structure that supported poets who deviated from accepted aesthetic codes, Viereck and Monroe helped initiate a renaissance in poetry. Viereck's family tree goes back to the Hohenzollerns. His grandfather was Kaiser Wilhelm I of Prussia. His illegitimate father, Louis, was a leading leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, serving as a member of the Leipzig-Land Reichstag from 1883 to 1887. Louis traveled to London with August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht to formulate a party doctrine with Marx. and Engels. At Louis's wedding, Engels served as best man. When Bismarck outlawed the Socialist Party in 1878, German authorities arrested Louis for attending a party meeting. In prison in Zwickau, he discussed party strategy with party leader and fellow inmate August Bebel. Ludwig's commitment to moderate change contradicted the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat advocated by other socialists. After his release, the leaders called a party convention in St. Gallen, where they expelled Louis, who soon left for America with his family.2 Shortly after moving to New York, George Sylvester Viereck—Louis' thirteen-year-old son—published a poem in Hearsts influential German newspaper in New York: The morning journal, which he published under the title "Still so young and already so - poetic!". (“So young and already so – poetic!”). Viereck's fame as a child prodigy grew with successive publications, including poems against Tammany Hall and translations of English verse into German. A large number of his poems recalled Baudelaire, Swinburne, and other aesthetes who explored carnality, melancholy, and an ethos of art for art's sake. Nietzsche inspired his atheism and aestheticism, and he also found inspiration in the verses of Whitman, Poe, Byron, and Shelley. However, the life of Oscar Wilde provided a model for artistic life. He confided in his "Jugendjournal", which covered the years 1899 to 1903: Wilde is great. I admire him, or rather I love him. He is so wonderfully ill, so beautifully morbid, I love everything morbid and evil. I love the splendor of decay, the filthy beauty of corruption. What I hate are the nosy, cold, freezing rays of the sun. Day is nausea, day is boredom, day is prose. Beauty of the night, splendor of love, poetry, wine, scarlet, rape, vice and bliss. I love the night.3

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The longest passages in the diary concern Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, whose poetry Viereck admired. He began a correspondence and the two met for lunch when Douglas visited New York in 1901. Sylvester also wrote to Swinburne, author of Saphire and Faustrina, which inspired Viereck's own "Lesbian Chants," written in the decadent style. While some viewed Viereck's decadent verse as high poetry, others denounced it as disturbing rhetoric. After deriding the dark content, major newspapers such as The Washington Post, The New York Sun, The New York Herald, The Boston Evening Transcript and Review of Reviews praised the innovation found in the pieces. A year later, in 1905, Sylvester's first book in English, A Game At Love and Other Plays, turned out less favourably. Noted theater critic James Huneker expressed admiration and surprise at the poet, who "seemed too young to write so wonderfully well". Monster with an audience's head.” Although Huneker showed sympathy for Viereck's boldness, Huneker warned that the public was “heads full, yea, full of notions of duty, love, religion, patriotism” that could not be snuffed out overnight.5 Another German-American, H.L. Mencken, also found the dramas interesting but denounced their racy content. Less politely, The Nation considered the plays too full of "contempt for all the limitations that prevent human society from relapsing into barbaric animalism". Viereck's attempt to reconfigure the thematic field of drama marked him as a literary renegade. Viereck attended the tuition-free City College of New York (CCNY) from 1902 to 1906. In addition to his own expenses, he had to support his family by writing articles on literature for German-American newspapers such as the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung and Berliner Tageblatt. Despite the difficulties, Viereck was extremely competent, confident, and proud of his Hohenzollern ancestry. This bold pose won both respect and censure. The title of a parody published in the CCNY Mercury, where Viereck served as literary editor, indicates the ridicule he received from peers: "The Story of George Sylvester Viereck, by Himself and by Himself."6 His Mannerisms, Advocacy of Free Love, and his meticulous fashion style (especially his brightly colored oriental dresses) set him apart. However, his classmates recognized his talent for poetry and self-promotion and chose him to be class poet.

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Translated into English verses from Viereck's first German collection, Poems, formed the basis of Ninevah and Other Poems, expanding Viereck's circle of admirers and critics.7 The imagery in Ninevah, though less explicit than in his dramatic plays, is in A Game At Love and Other Pieces, they deviated from established conventions and themes. In an introduction to the volume, Viereck explained his desire to update poetic form and stressed that "the metrical cloak" had to fit the content exactly: "People have forgotten that rhyme and meter are just a means to an end. At least in art, the end justifies the means.”8 Traditional techniques, “like ready-made clothing, can sometimes do the trick; often they won't. It is then up to the poet to modify them or, better still, to create new forms closely adapted to the demands of the occasion.” Like a lawyer pleading his case for an unjustly imprisoned client, Viereck defended liberty to produce poems of "rhythmic individuality". In his own verse, he attempted to “extend the frontiers of poetry into the realm of music on the one hand, and into the realm of intellect on the other.”9 Liberating verse from metrical scales did not mean that he advocated a hermetically sealed art. He still hoped to express "some note on the infinite scale" as Poe did with "Raven," Markham did in "Man with the Hoe," Dante Rossetti in "Blessed Damozel," and Wilde did with "Ballad of Reading Gaol." Future poets, he explained, "will extract new music from language" not by refuting the past, but "using the resources already available" and "bringing the sonic heritage of the past into a nobler and broader application". A contradictory brew, Ninevah condemned New York for an inherent sinfulness yet craved and indulged in the same behaviors and desires. The volume was alternately reverential, decadent, simple, allusive and, reflecting the author's own sexuality, contained an undercurrent of homoeroticism. Dedicated to Century Editor Richard Gilder, a man whose dedication to writing Viereck admired, "Consolation" spoke of how "the heartbeat of the universe" ennobles the ephemeral nature of life. "A Poet's Creed" declared "There is no god but beauty", while "Hadrian" concluded: "But where beauty is sacrificed / We also shall kneel to adore and worship." Many poems appealed to God for liberation from physical desire. Other poems simply showcase private sins and "puritanical" values. For example, "Love Triumphant" spoke of "feverish fingers," "raging flame," and the "burning desire" kindled during a night. The title poem "Ninevah" depicts New York as a contemporary version of the ancient Assyrian city, with men roaming the streets

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Overflowing with "red bloodstains of murderous flags", the women climb to "disgraceful death" and "In every heart lives a worm". The urban landscape is dotted with mansions "promised to lust/Where the whorehouses are liberated with their guests" where "titanium-strong" bodies squirm on "sin's" couches. However, Viereck combined the hustle and bustle of Nineveh with a good portion of traditional verse. Songs of nightingales and gentle, temperate breezes are honored on "A Spring Blessing". "Confession" pays homage to nature, while "Sunset" emphasizes the order and harmony of the universe. Several poems are written in free verse (e.g. "Kakodaimon" and "The Three Sphinxes"), and Arnold's artistic themes such as redemption, preserver, bulwark against chaos and as a reflection of God's image color the collection. Nineveh produced letters from prominent English writers, including Thomas Hardy, Arthur Symons, a leading Symbolist poet, and Alfred Austin, Britain's Poet Laureate. Closer to home, George Woodberry, Bliss Carman and Edwin Markham wrote words of encouragement, while Richard Gilder interspersed praise with caution. In 1905, Gilder published a sonnet written by Viereck in The Century. The two then met for lunch at the National Arts Club in New York, after which Viereck composed and dedicated 'Consolation' to the esteemed editor, who was now writing with some advice. After pointing to his association with the "brazen" Walt Whitman as evidence of his "strong stomach," Gilder expressed in the letter his "feeling of physical revulsion," which he likened to a moment when he saw "a man who left a house". Prostitution”, showing “complacency in the parade of a vice knowledge”. Viereck, it seemed, courted both indecency and respectability, an irreconcilable duo according to Gilder:' He reminded Viereck that 'noblesse oblige applies above all to the poet' and challenged him to interpret Milton's definition of a 'true poem' as ' a composition and pattern of better and honorable things” to follow. Gilder signed the letter: "Your love of beauty, of art - and above all of poetry."10 In his reply to Gilder, Viereck endeavored to distinguish the glorification of vice from the depiction of vice. "I assure you that the atmosphere of the vice is no less uncomfortable for me than for you," he wrote. “But I am far from excluding mine from the realm of art

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Art, everything, even evil.” He continued, “In the great circle of human life I strive to express every thread, be it purple or gold, dark or light.” As long as a piece was well written, it was considered art and not as a dirty word: "I would only banish vulgarity from the realm of texts, not necessarily descriptions of vulgarity, but vulgarity in descriptions." Viereck thanked Gilder for seeing, unlike some critics, and realizing that spiritual ideals inspired many of the poems. The letter ended by saying, "We are all instruments in the hands of the unknown God. . . I love beauty as you love it, even though I may perceive it very differently than you do.”11 Viereck did not advocate a total reconstruction of poetry and its practice, he wanted to renew its form and content. New verses could find their way onto the modern stage to accompany the old ones. Among the critics who only focused on Nineveh's erotic content was Louis Untermeyer. In a review in The New York Times, Untermeyer belittled Viereck's efforts to sexualize verse and distinguished the young poet's work from that of Oscar Wilde, to whom he was often compared; both showed a fleeting tinge of amateurish, decadent cosmopolitanism. "Decadent as it was," Untermeyer wrote, "Wilde used sensuality as color to introduce strange harmonies, while Viereck used color for its own effect, not as a means to an end." rejected, he raised similar accusations against Viereck: “In his verses there is never the refreshing scent of green earth – it is the foul smell of the underworld; it is more the speck of decaying rubbish than the breath of fresh fields and clean heights. Untermeyer urged critics to take a closer look at the "gap between genius and precocity". The critic, however, recognized his inherent talent: "Viereck possesses, it must be admitted, a strangely powerful genius in the presumption of seductive fantasies and the organization of daring words. As for form, he has it within himself. In order to retain its audience, the article warned, Viereck must be sure to maintain "the grace of sincerity." Despite the complaints about "cynicism, tiredness, disillusionment" that the young poet, who was still rooted in neo-romanticism

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and decadence, Bradley nonetheless displayed lyricism, conciseness, and intelligence. Instead of focusing on passion and sensuality, the critic preferred to "deal with his idealism, with the way his poems seem to take shape and come to life in his mind, not just through pretty words or seductive images, but by means of the active activity of the intellect". Bradley admired the "artistic integrity" displayed by Viereck and the faithfulness of each poem to the "embodiment of a distinctive idea". "It is this idea," he continued, "that governs and controls the poem, dictating its form, the precise degree of passion, the individual shade of color appropriate to it." Bold and colorful, Ninevah revealed "how the world of moral ideas can be imaginatively reshaped without losing poetic truth". reviewer had omitted. Barker met Viereck in 1906 and was immediately impressed by his "deep and earnest artistic aim". He assumed the public persona of a poet, insisting that poets read their works aloud to one another and discuss issues such as technique and originality. As an astrology student, Barker divined Viereck's fortunes and saw that the alignment of the planets heralded glory. She defended the poet's "fundamental seriousness" as well as "his airy towers and minarets of image and music [which] are always grounded on the solid rock of universal human experience". Grounded in reality, the poems embodied “vitality”. Unlike Bradley, Barker believed that the poet's roots in decaying tradition lent credibility because "the ideal of neo-romanticism is beauty, and he who is guided by pure beauty will find truth before he is far in the poet's journey goes". Aside from demonstrating the nebulous state of contemporary criticism, Barker's critique reiterates the preoccupation with beauty as the pre-eminent benchmark of poetic merit. Viereck has set a new standard in the Manhattan publishing world. One writer, William Lengel, recalled Viereck's sphere of influence: Ever since I first came to New York, I've heard editors, writers, residents of Greenwich Village, the intellectuals and radicals of the day talk about Viereck. . . Most of them spoke of him in some way

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impressive, and he seemed to me like some sort of literary knight in armor who broke convention, blazed a new trail for free speech in America, and was generally a dominant, dynamic individual. He threw out prejudices and paved the way for others.16 Viereck's fame indicates the unstable nature of the first decade of the twentieth century and the extent of the restructuring of American poetics. In the supposed "twilight years" before the 1912 poetic revival, audiences of readers and critics were ready to hear new voices. There were many new attractions for the middle class interested in exploring areas that their predecessors would have simply avoided. Under the headline "Believes He's a Genius," the traditionally respectable The Saturday Evening Post promptly reported the sensation the author of Nineveh caused: The most talked-about young literary man in America today is George Sylvester Viereck. . . In maybe a decade, no young man has been so unanimously accused of being a genius. . . At the age of 22, he produced a volume of verse that generated more controversy and more letters to the editor than any comparable book in years. In a way, it's the exception of Keats, aptly put by Viereck: 'I want to be heard while I live, and I don't want to starve. I believe in activity, even when it's about myself.”17 This kind of ingrained self-promotion seemed like vanity to some. But Viereck believed that in the absence of a formal publicity mechanism and in the face of much public calumny, poets wishing to be taken seriously as professionals would have to advertise themselves. In 1909 Viereck's streak of success continued with an adaptation of a play by Schiller for a Broadway production, reproductions of his verses in prestigious publications, and an appointment as the first poet of the American Exchange in Berlin.18 The now styled poet and editor himself is Germany's leading interpreter for America . He secured funding from Otto Kahn, Adolphus Busch, Paul Warburg, and other German-American businessmen for each of his publishing ventures, including a German-language version of Current Literature which he called Rundschau Zweier Welten ("Two Worlds Review").

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Figure 3.1 George Sylvester Viereck, circa 1904, the year he published his first book of poetry. Photo courtesy of University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa.

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The first issue was published with a letter of support on the front page from Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was one of Viereck's main contacts. The old Rough Rider began a correspondence with him after reading his poetry. They corresponded for a year before finally meeting at the National Arts Club.19 The two seem an inexplicable couple given the poet's decadent exhibitions and Roosevelt's strenuous outlook on life. But in the years leading up to World War I, the former president was a fan of the vitality (which he felt was lacking in Anglo-American society) in German education, science and culture, and he admired Kaiser Wilhelm II more than any other European leader. . . Undoubtedly, Viereck's relationship with the Hohenzollern leader aroused interest. In 1912, Viereck participated in Roosevelt's Bull Moose presidential campaign, wrote an anthem, and served on the Progressive list as Roosevelt's elector for New York State.20 Roosevelt returned the favor by serving as the guest of honor at a dinner with donations to a magazine Viereck devoted himself to contemporary art and politics, and planned to begin.21 In the same year, Viereck published Die Bekennungen eines Barbaren, a sort of Baedeker of European culture he had collected from his recent travels in Germany, which he hoped would they would help guide his adopted country out of puritanism. Europeans may have lax views on sex, he argued, but they have been far more vigilant in prosecuting corporate corruption and corporate responsibility for the common good. Americans, on the other hand, have focused on sexual leaks to induce conformity while turning a blind eye to corporate titans out of a not-so-secret admiration for money-makers. While some of his exploits were viewed as perverted, Viereck firmly believed that a reputation for honesty in business and writing was more important. A Confessions review in the New York Times illustrates the contemporary consensus of Viereck's work up to that point: "It is impossible to deny the author of this book a measure of genius - largely undisciplined, in some respects willfully perverted, but capable of much ... when the years have matured. Maturity would bring the young Viereck a greater sense of decency, perspective, and perhaps even a touch of humility.22 Viereck even received a nod from Upton Sinclair, who developed the character of Strathcona in his 1908 novel The Metropolis on Sylvester. Sinclair called him "the young poet of diabolism" and described him as energetic, good-natured,

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and gifted. “He took the sum of mankind's moral experiences, turned it upside down, mixed it up and used it like broken glass in a kaleidoscope. And the audience gasped and whispered 'devilish!'”23 A review of Hutchins Hapgood illustrated the views of a burgeoning group of Greenwich Village writers who shared refined norms and radical views. "Our common taste calls for a whisper, calls for low relief, silence, gray," he wrote. "Sir. Viereck shouts with a cheerful, carefree youth... He thinks himself a genius." Alongside the author's selfishness, Hapgood objected to the book's unfailing focus on culture: "With relatively few exceptions, writers who are truly alive today express our social sentiment in one way or another. That is the distinguishing feature of our day." Viereck had to listen to Wordsworth, who advised writers to "concern more about truth than expression". Then "he will be more in tune with the zeitgeist."24 Similarly, the confident Style among other Village radicals, often Viereck's sometimes flamboyant manner, attracted mixed reactions.A close friend, Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff, who also served on the international staff and was a frequent contributor to Current Literature, remarked, "Not everyone liked Viereck. Many feared him. In this fear of his caustic and bright language and exotic personality, there was both jealousy and dislike for his aggressiveness, his glorious assurance, his rich talents.”25 Another explanation for some of the animosities can be found in the class differences expressed by different Village chroniclers were found to have worked to support his parents, his li Terran colleagues remained firmly in the middle class and were united by a common code of values. Floyd Dell admitted in his autobiography that a hierarchical caste system operated tacitly among bohemians. The elites were "intellectuals" distinguished by their intellectual ability and artistic ability: "almost all had a record of impeccable social respectability." Witter Bynner (1902), Arthur Davison Ficke (1904), Van Wyck Brooks (1908), and Walter Lippmann (1910).27 Another Harvard graduate, journalist, poet, lover of Mabel Dodge, and future chronicler of the Russian Revolution, John Reed (1910) parodied Viereck's compositions and behavior: O let us humbly curve the neck To George Syl- ve-ter square

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Whoever trampled on us a merry continental pattern over womb, phallus and tomb, nearly made Oscar Wilde's or Baudelaire's hair stand on end, Mr. Viereck raves so openly about womb and phallus and tomb. 28 Even non-Harvard villagers like Max Eastman and Floyd Dell consciously regulated their private lives: “The sexual urges were satisfied, not impulsively or haphazardly, but in the light of a considered social theory, which could be of almost any kind, but be thoughtful and consistent had to."29 Whether this was a well-established principle or simply a convenient rationalization, Dell had learned the hard way, "given its reputation," Greenwich Village was "an exceedingly snobbish and hypocritical place."30 He had settled in fell in love with a woman who has been labeled a "low-brow" for her alleged intellectual limitations. Their love affair was "subjected to a complete and unrelenting ostracism" as a result. Viereck's humble background must have influenced its reception. His indiscreet banter about love affairs, as well as his crude talk about money, certainly drew unfavorable attention. And although initially drawn to Freudian psychology for its promise of adjustment to society and personal liberation from neurosis, these pre-war radicals eventually rejected psychoanalysis in favor of the Marxist aesthetic with its appeal to class solidarity and the rebuilding of society. However, Viereck was more interested in exploring sublimation than promoting socialism, reading Freud rather than Marx. An editorial position offered after graduation brought Viereck into contact with left-wing political activists. Leonard Abbott, a friend of Edwin Markham in socialist circles and editor of the Letters, Art, and Religion sections of Current Literature, offered Viereck the position of contributing editor. Abbott, educated in English public schools, advocated a utopian community modeled on Edward Bellamy and William Morris. Edward J. Wheeler, the son of a Methodist minister and Prohibition leader, founded the magazine in 1888 as a kind of Reader's Digest.

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in the format of a monthly general bulletin reprinting articles in politics, science, religion, music, theater and literature. Wheeler, a self-proclaimed evolutionary (rather than revolutionary) socialist, set the tone for the literary selection and adhered to the Platonic notion of beauty. "When the poet gives us the truth without the beauty," Wheeler wrote, "he stops being the poet and becomes an educator, and his poem becomes a pamphlet." But his off-the-cuff utterances about sex and money resonated colleagues to mixed reactions. As a writer, Alexander could compare Harvey's preoccupation with Viereck's personal sin with Emerson, who "looked into his own heart to understand the most heinous crime ever committed" and medieval Italians, who tolerated "every insult on the level of sex". As a socialist, Harvey could not easily dismiss what he saw as Viereck's selfishness: "He's like a true artist in the sense that he's all by himself. Imagine turning down the socialist ticket by declaring that he had no intention of voting for a party that would make all his stocks and bonds worthless! who made no new and beneficial contact.”35 The “Recent Poetry” section of Literature Current, beginning in 1904, devoted three full pages of each issue to contemporary poetry. Viereck's signature was evident in the selection, which corresponded to his desire for poetry that was democratic but intelligent, inspired by reality but not prosaic, friendly to science but superior through beauty affinity. A typical edition contained a reprint of a traditional song's lyrics on a modern theme by Edith Thomas, first published in The St. Louis. Louis Mirror, a sonnet by Sara Teasdale (with whom Viereck corresponded) from Harper's and excerpts from Ezra Pound's Provence. Certain writers, like Edwin Markham, have been published regularly. Witter Bynner, McClure's poetry editor who has written poetry on modern subjects, has received praise for works such as A Prayer for Beauty (as the editors commented: "We 'have a habit' of liking everything Mr. Bynner writes " ). 36 Rudyard Kipling was an all-time favorite for his 'vital, genuine, first-hand quality'. Another valuable contribution was James Oppenheim, who exhorted poets to "fall in love with their own time and live a life of interest and joyous adventure" because "it is the poet's function to express his own

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Age.”37 In the August 1910 issue, Oppenheim's poem “Die Züchter” appeared: We have the love of life – that's our glory! Strength and feel our possibilities like a genius. . . O vision, fairest! . . . 38 Viereck compared John Masefield's sonnets to Shakespeare, his versatility to Kipling and praised his Keatian 'sonnets on beauty and life'. a passion and a freedom that are contagious, and he has a love of beauty that our poets sometimes seem to despise in these days of rebellion. Mr. Lindsay himself is something of an insurgent and social passion runs strong in her chest; but he never revolts against beauty.”40 The “blurring and fading” of beauty formed a motif in the works of Madison Cawein and Charles Hanson Towne that was also praised. Richard Le Gallienne, another regular writer, used fidelity to beauty as a yardstick in his own criticism of Viereck's poetry. Le Gallienne, hardly an impartial commentator (Viereck's Nineveh was dedicated to him), applauded Viereck's intelligence, sense of drama and rhetorical power, and rated Viereck's efforts in the Benchmark positively: "Beauty must, after all, continue to be the first and the last to consider." of a poet, whatever his subject, whatever his method. There must be magic in his words that neither he nor the reader knows how - or why. Nothing can finally take its place.”41 The editors of Current Opinion stayed true to this principle as the poetry's popularity increased over the decade. They explained their selection criteria: “We are not looking for a specific type of poetry. We are not fashionistas. Poems of the old style seem as good to us as those written in verse libre. We're not looking for oddities or freaks. What we are trying to find in a poem is not novelty of form, or even novelty of subject, but beauty, vitality, vigor, sincerity, and power of transference." More writers were publishing in new journals, they ventured, because "the essence good poetry is intellectual freedom”, which is more often found in smaller magazines that “do not represent much self-interest”.

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In charge of the poetry department, Viereck followed a new generation of beauty. Introducing a poem by Arthur Davison Ficke, Viereck wrote: "If the poet's mission is to find beauty in ordinary things, then what follows is not poetry. It is downright brutal, and instead of attempting to enhance the beauty of the subject depicted, it amplifies the ugliness.” Had Viereck stopped there, he would have sided with mild-mannered critics, but he recognized the poem's value. He continued, "However, it would take more courage than we have to deny that this is genuine poetry." Similarly, Viereck cited a series of articles by Louis Untermeyer in the Chicago Evening Post that cataloged the qualities of this "new beauty." . "Poetry has become democratic again," wrote Untermeyer. "It is being rewritten to be read by strong men, thieves, and deacons, not just small groups." Poetry "was no longer an escape from life," but an "encounter with it," including its most unpleasant aspects. Beauty was a constant; What changed was the poet's vision and voice. Viereck agreed: "Each poet has his own way of expressing this beauty, but it is the same beauty that existed in Sappho's time." Despite the new themes introduced into the poetry, the essence remained: "It is the beauty in Masefield,” Viereck declared, “that will bring him to life, not the brutality or vulgarity.”43 This new definition helped legitimize poetry. Viereck asked, "What good is poetry in a wayward, pragmatic, utilitarian world?" If poetry were tried in a death penalty case before a jury of "bankers, stockbrokers, lawyers, and engineers," Coleridge's testimony would waver: "Poetry, to me, was one big reward; relieved my suffering; multiplied and refined my joys; made my loneliness dearer; and it gave me the habit of wanting to discover the good and the beautiful in everything that finds and surrounds me.” But poets do not always have to rave about beauty and goodness to achieve this effect. Viereck observed: "The lover of beauty is sometimes enriched by showing the terrible things of life, its despair, melancholy, and crushing sadness, as well as by showing its joy, glory, and moral loftiness."44 The most problematic aspects of the Revealing life, the new beauty increased an individual's understanding and sense of compassion. Businesspeople who have settled into their daily routines and skim short-lived newspapers and flashy ads are at high risk of capacity shortages in these areas, Viereck argued. Greater attention to reading poetry promised protection from it

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Burnout: “Poems need to be read carefully, or better yet, not read at all. Her beauties need to be sought out because the subtlest and sweetest beauties aren't the ones that catch the eye. Read carefully and read honestly." Viereck pointed to Ezra Pound's "Ballad for Gloom" as an example of a "difficult read," as difficult as someone "digging for gold mines in the Bad Lands of Montana." It's tough. There are blunt throwers [sic] and penetrating cacti that can be traded.”45 Just as Santayana and Markham had argued for a spiritual function of the verses, Viereck contended that the rewards of intense reading practice came in the form of spiritual insight, “passion.” . , and “magic”.46 In later editions, Viereck returned to the same subject. He printed excerpts from prominent Scribner editor Hamilton W. Mabie, who claimed America had been too busy to notice his poetry for twenty years, but that state of affairs was about to change. "Now that you learn that wealth without poetry is weariness," Mabie wrote, "and that the disconnect between the senses and the imagination is a spiritual scandal and also a generator of material scandal, you can turn again to the singers who neither feared nor flattered, but refused to be dazzled by its wealth or confused by its sweeping activities.” The new poets and “the new poetry” made for “invigorating reading,” but more importantly, “preserves the old fidelity to things of the spirit". The editors of the magazine kept themselves up to date with literary developments at home and abroad. They repeated the results of William Braithwaite's annual poetry survey, reported new theories surrounding verse, relayed information about controversies (such as attacking the Spoon River Anthology as "pessimistic"), and tracked developments in the ongoing poetry renaissance (excluding a small credit for your ascension). Harriet Monroe, who complained about the magazine's "possibly too Catholic" selections, nevertheless acknowledged the editors' contribution to the rise in poetry's popularity: "Indeed, this section of Current Opinion was one of the first glimpses on the horizon in a long time the apathy darkness. It was, she claimed, "perhaps the first official indication given to the American people that their poets are doing something worthy of attention and encouragement." Promotion of contemporary poetry, similar to Paris and London. In December 1910 he assembled a group of poets at the Upper

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Eastside home of a friend, Isaac Rice, founder of the Electric Boat Company, builder of the US Navy's first submarine, chess champion and editor of The Forum. Viereck wanted to create the kind of salon he found all over Europe to serve as a forum for the support and encouragement of new poets. As editor of Current Literature, Viereck called for poetry that requires "careful reading and sustained attention," that poets appreciate modern inventions and customs, that readers are compassionate, understanding, and supportive, and that Americans recognize that poets deserve a minimum wage for their work .48 By the end of the night plans had been made to establish a main base in New York. Viereck, Markham, Wheeler, and Isaac and Muriel Rice then circulated a letter to prospective members announcing the idea and inviting them to another meeting on February 22, 49 , Browning, Dante - to share their own art, as well as an intelligent and receptive audience care for. The end product, the ambitiously named Poetry Society of America (PSA), was largely based on strongly egalitarian notions: that poets of all persuasions should be encouraged and protected, and that poverty should not be a bar to membership. . In the absence of initiation fees and dues, the more generous members of the Society defrayed the costs. The National Arts Association made contributions while the National Arts Club donated meeting rooms. A condition of this agreement was that club members could attend PSA meetings. This did not pose a problem as the PSA's own policy allowed non-poets to become members if they wished.50 This approach is in stark contrast to the requirement of the Poetry Society of Great Britain, founded the same year, that at least one book is published by a reputable publisher - is aptly summed up in this statement by Viereck: "Certainly the subject of poetry is broad enough, deep enough and vital enough to provide a suitable basis for such an organization which poetry is formed also by lovers as producers."51 This recognition of the necessary—and sometimes complicated—relationship between audience and author was central to the founding of PSA. Article 3 of the PSA constitution makes this connection clear: The aim of the Society is , to secure the full recognition of poetry as one of the important forces contributing to a superior civilization

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to inspire a fuller and more intelligent appreciation of poetry, and particularly the work of living American poets; and to do other acts deemed necessary or appropriate to encourage and promote American poetry and to aid and support American poets. A key building block in the advancement of American poetry was the public repositioning of American poets as humble stewards of the country's "best traditions, aspirations, culture, and humanity." Invited to publicize the PSA's opening dinner, William Braithwaite sympathetically recounted the encounter in an article for The Boston Evening Transcript, calling it "a spectacle that embodies deep and vital spiritual ideals of the nation." , of course, has existed on both sides of the Atlantic since Romanticism and before: even a hardened scientist like Darwin, who spent significant chunks of his time on the Beagle reading Milton, lamented in his later years, "If I had to If I were living my life again, I would have made it a rule to read poetry or listen to music at least once a week.”53 At the time of the PSA's founding, there was a particular and acute feeling that as America grew Wealth and international standing, but their neglect of culture prevented them from achieving greatness - and poets would resurge and help uphold the country's lofty ideals. The loss of aesthetic understanding would amount to a "loss of happiness" that could "possibly damage the intellect, rather the moral character, by weakening the emotional part of our nature". and ennoble society, they must be able, financially or otherwise, to see their works in print and in the hands of an appreciative public. At the PSA's first meeting, Percy MacKaye spoke of the many poets who had turned to careers in law, medicine and industry because of a lack of opportunity in literature, and this common grievance led to one of the most important platforms of the young society .55 Edwin Markham held a lecture on the interdependence of science and poetry. Both expressed their progressive belief in information to affect hearts and minds. As Braithwaite reported, "The heart of mankind instinctively turned to what was deepest and truest when convincingly addressed." In an interview with The Washington Post, Viereck expressed hope that the organization would not only support poets (and in part, "expand the circle of grateful readers

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poetry" and to bring them closer to "the active life of the present and its themes"), but also to actively help unknown poets to solicit publications in well-known newspapers and magazines.56 This obvious and attractive goal actually depended on several elements , not lastly, poets should have forums where they can meet and appreciate each other's work, and be heard and evaluated by editors and other gatekeepers of publication, and poetry-writing should be financially viable as a career - by express pressure when necessary , into magazines and publishers to change their salary structure. The PSA built saloons hosted by members of the gentile poetic community throughout the 19th century. In Boston, Louise Moulton hosted "Fridays" for local writers, while Richard Gilder hosted New York held regular meetings at his brownstone in Manhattan Z with Brander Matthews he organized the Authors Club (which required either a published volume or a chairman). to go in there.57 A few blocks away from his home on Tenth Street, Richard Stoddard ran a salon with Thomas Aldrich and William Brownell. Edmund Stedman had his own meetings on his famous Sunday evenings (which lasted until 1889). Harriet Monroe recalled the effect attending one of her dinner parties had on a young poet: "These professionals regard one's aspirations as the most natural thing in the world, as refreshing as daylight after the catacombs." between the end of elegant brownstone culture and the emergence of new poetic communities, Markham bridged the gap. On Sunday afternoons, his Staten Island home became a place of pilgrimage for admirers. Along with his wife Catherine, Markham kept the house open from noon to four in the afternoon. Newcomer poets such as Witter Bynner, Louis Untermeyer and Sara Teasdale paid their respects by visiting and presenting copies of their published verse collections. Non-poets also flocked to his home, including legendary actor John Barrymore, Sun Fo (son of Chinese revolutionary and democratic leader Sun Yat Sen), French philosopher Henri Bergson, and British writers John Galsworthy and G.K. Chesterton. A nucleus of Chicago poetry readers and writers formed among local journalists in search of camaraderie. Eunice Tietjens, future associate editor of Poetry, who adhered to poetry "as an unchanging value in a changing world", recalled the impact of this connection

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as she recalled a rare evening of poetry readings with Floyd Dell and other friends: I was walking on air, like someone warming up with champagne, even though I hadn't had any alcohol but the spirit. Poetry, I cried to myself, is not something dead, something to lock in books to decorate library shelves and teach to schoolchildren, something to give away at Christmas, or shyly buy and read for yourself. Drugs and they're never, never talked about because nobody cares. Poetry is a living thing. I am not alone in the world today. . . poetry lives! And I danced in the street and sang to myself. . . From that night a floodgate opened inside me and I began to wake up.59 The new generation of PSA founders wanted to go beyond the dictates of salon culture and build a professional organization that would elevate the status of poets. The founding members included eighteen women and twenty-six men, spanning a range of abilities, ages, and approaches, from George Santayana to George Woodberry, Edwin Markham, and Lizette Woodworth Reese.60 The New York Sun, reporting on the first PSA meeting, predicted a renaissance of poetry that would result from the synergy generated by the organization: "Artistic and literary awakenings are brought about by the fusion, in close association, of brilliant minds, by the formation of organizations such as the new PSA."61 Interestingly. , several newspapers initially ridiculed the PSA, derisively comparing it to a union of plumbers and carpenters—workers who handled physical, practical goods—rather than a professional organization like the American Medical Association or the American Bar Association. In fact, however, both comparisons have some validity. While members of the society hoped to gain greater public recognition for their craft (which many considered "the highest of all arts"), they also sought to encourage the production of "poetry of the highest quality" through the exchange of ideas and ideas of unitary cry. for a living wage for poets. One of the first things Edward Wheeler did as PSA president was to conduct a survey of 27 major weekly and monthly magazines to calculate compensation. He noted that the number of poems submitted was increasing and named several poets who made a living solely from selling their verse, including Alfred Noyes, Arthur Guiterman and Vachel Lindsay.62

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To encourage and compensate the poets, the PSA instituted a national award through Columbia University, which became the Pulitzer Prize.63 Indeed, the Society has been remarkably successful in several respects. By 1913 membership had reached 250, and requests to join affiliates or form new ones kept pouring in. Magazines and newspapers responded to the increased production of quality verse by increasing copy space. more publishers paid on receipt rather than on publication, a move that helped many writers with little financial means.64 New bookstores devoted solely to poetry, such as the Gotham Book Mart, grew in popularity, and new trade journals, among them, also appeared Poetry, Poetry, Lore and The Poetry Journal. Perhaps most importantly, the poets really had a forum in which to meet as artists and equals. At an early meeting in 1911, for example, Witter Bynner opened with a reading of Sara Teasdale's 'Helen of Troy', seated in the audience with Ezra Pound behind her (her only PSA appearance, as he returned to England soon after). , and the floor was opened for discussion. In the early years, Samuel Untermeyer, a legal reformer who advocated government regulation of the financial sector and played a key role in founding the Federal Reserve, transported PSA members in a special train car to a nature and dinner program at his home. . near Yonkers.65 Subsequent PSA meetings brought in poets writing traditional verse such as villanelles, sestinas, and sonnets, as well as those venturing into verse libre, vorticisim, and imagism. British bards including William Butler Yeats - who addressed a meeting of two hundred members - and John Masefield made key speeches. Poets from Latin America, South America, India and Japan also came to give lectures, take part in meetings or appear as guests of honor. As Jessie Rittenhouse put it, the organization soon became "a place of camaraderie, encouragement, the exchange of ideas, and especially support for younger poets to present their work for criticism and recognition". success of PSA. When she was first invited to discuss the creation of an organization dedicated to poetry, she was working as a literary critic at The New York Times Review of Books and had published a bestselling collection of contemporary poetry. At the PSA, Rittenhouse saw an opportunity to create “a center for the craft of poetry in America that would bring poets closer together and prove to be one place

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Encouragement to those afar off.” In her capacity as secretary of the PSA, she worked from 1911 to 1922 to rehabilitate poetry's reputation.67 Edward Wheeler may have chaired the meetings as president, but for many Rittenhouse members it was “the society ”.68 She organized monthly meetings, authored and distributed monthly newsletters to members across the country, took steps to include the writing of living poets in textbooks, and responded to hundreds of requests from coast to coast to lecture on new poetry. 69 Ahead of the PSA's annual dinners, she hosted a pre-excursion "poet party" at her Upper West Side apartment to provide a more intimate setting for poets meeting their Northeast peers. Markham and his wife Catherine were always present. "Nothing could have thrived in New York without the Markhams," Rittenhouse recalled. When he entered a room, “it was like letting in a damp gust of wind – everything moved immediately. . . Goodwill - shall we say love? – flowed from him, drawing everyone into the warmth of his atmosphere.”70 During Rittenhouse's tenure, the PSA headquarters in Gramercy Park was amassing a library of publications by contemporary poets. PSA branches were formed in almost every state, while colleges and universities organized their own affiliated societies.71 The Poetry Society of America facilitated discussions of content and technique. One of the first meetings addressed the question, "Should poetry be a vehicle for social controversy?"72 In 1915 Amy Lowell spoke from a platform containing texts by Cale Young Rice and a debate on one of the year's most popular books. , Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. Lowell addressed the principles of rhythm and cadence in vers libre and extolled the virtues of imagism. "His speech was filled with so much provocative rhetoric," Rittenhouse noted, "that the right wing was stirred into action and primed for a response." Lowell then recited "Venus Transiens" in which he compared Botticelli's Venus to the poem's subject and asked, "Who is more beautiful?" The answer that both were the same drew a lot of applause. With the next poem "Spring Day" she met her luck. It tells the typical events from the everyday life of a young woman, beginning with the bathroom. Years later, Margaret Widdemer recalled the audience's reaction: "It started with stifled giggles, which soon turned into a room full of unconcealed laughter. The Poetry Society of America, two hundred members strong, watched Amy kicking in her bathtub without a lorgnette and tight brown cashmere or whatever.”73

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Most members appreciated Lowell's intellect and experimentation, but discouraged the use of free verse. Rather than just composing in the standard dramatic poetry meter used by poets from Shakespeare to Tennyson, and adhering to strict meter rules regarding the placement of stressed and unstressed syllables, free verse employs regular meters or rhymes. Beginning with Whitman and building on Viereck and Stephen Crane, whose scathing, aggressive, and irregularly punctuated poems were notable for their originality in the 1890s, Lowell and other modern poets believed that this more easily reproduced patterns of speech and made them more true to reality; To free poetry to deal with modern subjects, it had to be freed from the tyranny of regular meter. Alongside the changes in content, these formal variations provoked concern among critics and readers, who saw in everyday replies an eroding aesthetic that threatened to erode the poetry's reserved status. For William Marion Reedy, free verse had potential but risked the coherence and majesty that art should embody: “I tend towards traditional forms, as form means limitation, selectivity. . . And so I am for freedom, but not for licentiousness. There must be order in art and in all that is worthwhile.”74 Even Robert Frost, who dramatically paraphrased the voices of modern poetry, likened free verse to playing tennis without a net.75 The PSA's violent response registered yet another concern. Lowell lacked the usual restraint associated with women in public, leading some of the more conservative members to rise up and question the appropriateness of a bath as a subject for poetry. "Bedlam was published," Rittenhouse recalled. A volley of opinions went back and forth between the right and left factions. Lowell defended the form, repeatedly insisting, "But I did it so gently!" Publicly, she downplayed the fight: "I don't know when I've had so much fun. It was very stimulating and interesting, and the genuine interest of the entire audience, hostile or not, was the highest compliment possible.”76 And Rittenhouse declared in his memoirs: “Open discussion is the law of the Poetry Society.”77 But at least, at least one witness, Margaret Widdemer, believes the event severed ties forever: “The story went back and forth; and Amy Lowell was an enemy of the P.S.A. and many of its members thereafter. Because she always paid her debts.

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further blurring the line between prose and poetry, free verse defended itself as literature and brought "new zeal" to the "creation of vital literature."79 Other members opened the evening in equally exuberant tones. Wheeler thanked Lowell for a speech that was "the most vibrant and stimulating meeting we've ever had." He added an observation to be tested a few years later: "I still live in hopes of having to call a police officer one night to restore order. Then I know the Society is a success.”80 He echoed this sentiment in a column for Current Opinion: We've said it before and we'll say it again—only then will the Poetry Society of America be a complete success A policeman or two should be called to maintain order. Indeed, when feelings for poetry are so strong as to endanger the peace of the community, then the days of the great gods have returned.81 In 1917, Lowell gave another provocative lecture on a ticket dedicated to William Marion Reedy and the poet he mentored , included published Edgar Lee Masters.82 His speech acknowledged America's cultural debt to England but called for complete literary independence. The Anglophiles in the audience took offense and demanded total support for the Allies in the fight against the Central Powers. Viereck's wife Margaret (Gretchen, as he called her) stood up with Witter Bynner to counter criticism of Lowell's polyphonic poem "Sea Blue and Blood Red". Society for Poetry. What pleased me most was his frank admission of his debt to England, along with a declaration of independence from American charters totally hostile. What she said was so simple and so to the point that even though I wasn't the subject, it was a pleasure to hear it." He and Rittenhouse corresponded for years before his reputation appeared in the January 1913 issue of Poetry when Harriet Monroe published General William Booth Enters Heaven. They also met in 1908 when she was lecturing to a group of two hundred women from the Woman's Club in Lindsay's hometown of Springfield, Illinois. A self-proclaimed "socialist", Lindsay,

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Like Markham, he grew up in a strictly Campbellite family, with daily Bible classes before breakfast and scripture readings before dinner. Rittenhouse shared Lindsay's passion for temperance and included her poem "On Reading Omar Khayyam During an Anti-Saloon Campaign in Central Illinois" in his anthology. To a PSA audience that included journalist and poet John Reed, Lindsay sang "The Congo" and her popular "Kallyope Yell": "I'm just the pioneer/the voice of democracy;/I'm the gutter dream "/I am The Golden Dream, / Singing Science, Singing Vapor."86 The Poetry Society soon became a much-respected feature of New York City's cultural landscape. Fornaro, a well-known cartoonist, brilliantly satirized The Sun's guests. One cartoon, "The Poet's Dinner," showed a man playing a lyre surrounded by butterflies over a menu listing "Free Tomato Broth," "Chiffonade Salad A La Wagstaff," and "Cocktail Per Verse A La Viereck with A La Viereck" was listed as "Oscar's Wilde Dash" for dinner. In another character sketch, Viereck stood out with a raised hand mid-gesture, a lively smile, and an elegant tuxedo87 (see Figure 3.2). When the war years came, however, the

Figure 3.2 Drawing of members of the Poetry Society of America by Carlo de Fornaro at the third annual dinner on January 28, 1913, with George Sylvester Viereck front and center. Originally published in the New York Sun on February 2, 1913.

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The PSA's commitment to democracy and tolerance would be questioned and Viereck's contributions would be censored. Harriet Monroe also set out to create a supportive poetic community and develop a stronger audience, believing that poets would continue to be treated with disrespect until a group of powerful citizens took a "special interest in [poetry] to support their." case to represent". a planned and efficient program.”88 The history of Poetry magazine and its editorial relationships with emerging poets is well known. However, a brief synopsis will highlight the way in which his strategy and poetics combined the efforts of Markham, Viereck, Rittenhouse and others to create a new architecture, with new designs that bypassed the clogged channels of refined tradition. Between the time he published his Columbian Ode in 1893 and 1911, when he began making plans for a new literary journal, Monroe saw little opportunity for poets. His own meager publication record during this period offered little consolation. She had to rely on friends to finance her first book of verse, Valeria, and of verse, The Passing Show, both published in 1903 by one publisher. serious press. But Ferris Greenslet, editor of Houghton Mifflin, responded to his inquiry by stating that it was "out of the question" for his company to print a collection of poetry "on any basis other than a commission basis". he was not commissioned, but his answer met with more resentment. 'As we all know,' he wrote, 'poetry book sales are almost non-existent and I already have more volumes on my hands than I can actually publish.'90 Concerned about his career and prospects For poets in the In general, especially in comparison to the worlds of theatre, music and art, Monroe wrote an op-ed for The Atlantic Monthly. In "The Size of the World" (1911) she designs a kind of party stage that stages the zeitgeist as the new leading muse. Examining prevailing editorial practices and the unique problems facing contemporary writers, she argued that poets of earlier times had limited horizons and limited audiences: Euripides played to the limited male audience of the Athenian Acropolis; Virgil, Petrarch, and Racine addressed court and city circles; Shakespeare chose London as the playing field, Italy provided material for romantic interludes. It is only since Robert Burns that a poet has attempted to encompass a plethora of people, places and phenomena. Burns was “the first to

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feel all the passion and emotion of the modern movement.” But guided by “little old compasses” and “little old tools,” he lacked the necessary equipment to find his way. "Crushed between old and new," cobwebs obscured his vision while "ancient entanglements" pinched his hands and feet. Burns ended his days largely from public neglect in Alcohol and Despair.91 These gifted writers needed and deserved more support; without them, the complexities of modern life would remain confused and the mysteries of modern consciousness would remain misunderstood. Monroe prescribed for Vates, poet-prophets, a dual strategy for roaming the "greatness of the modern world" and capturing the experience in masterful verse. Despite the hustle and bustle, fragmentation and alienation, they first had to “believe in our great modernity”. Poets had to appreciate technological advances that promised to shorten hunger and suffering. Such ability required a power that previous poets lacked. Second, Monroe called for a new poetic community. The same audiences moved by the news of electricity, X-rays and monorails needed to be reunited with the Fathers' gifts and messages: "It must search hard for its poet-prophet, who will sing of the old and herald the new." In Monroe's theory of relativity, the supreme art corresponded to the "profound energy of creation" multiplied by the "profound energy of sympathy." Thus the poet's love, intelligence, and wisdom met with whispers, confusion, or a deafening effect. Monroe kept hopeful about this state of affairs, noting that a growing audience was ready to join in an antiphon: "There are many signs of a Awakening of spiritual consciousness in the crowd - confused and scattered signs of sympathies, exaltation, distant ideals. Democracy grows, awakens and becomes conscious” and is “as interested in truth and beauty as it is nowadays in convenience.” It is the task of the poet, she wrote in the poem “To Robert Louis Stevenson”, “Visu mbres von celestial things. "The average magazine editor's idea of good verse is verse that fills a page," she told the reporter. “No editor looks for long poems; You want something light and comfortable. Consequently, a Milton today may live in Chicago and find no market for his verse.”93 At the age of 51, Monroe decided to start her own magazine devoted to poetry. Encouraged by a funding plan drawn up by a friend, playwright and philanthropist H.C. Chatfield Taylor, she sought support from prominent businessmen and artists.

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Customers. In an April 1912 circular, he described the poets' dilemma: the lack of financial compensation for their work; editorial regulations that abridge, abbreviate, and limit originality; and critics who ignored or dismissed important contributions. To make matters worse, the United States lacked an apparatus for finding and promoting poets. 'In short,' she concluded, 'the wide English-speaking world says 'silence' to its poets.'94 At the same time, however, William Braithwaite issued a circular announcing plans to start a journal called Poetry. With the help of his Transcript colleague Edward O'Brien and the support of some PSA members, Braithwaite planned to publish the first issue in October, while Monroe had announced that publication would begin in December. Monroe wrote to O'Brien claiming priority for the "Poetry" track because she had already gained a hundred subscribers. in December) for The Poetry Journal. Although lack of money and time soon resulted in Braithwaite's magazine closing after just eight months, the rivalry between the two editors lingered. The response to Monroe's proposed location exceeded her expectations. She knew enough poets who wrote in experimental ways that she believed an audience existed, but she was less confident of finding support among Chicago's elite. The one hundred and eight guarantors included educators, businessmen, and lawyers; Department store, meatpacking, steel, and manufacturing executives, as well as a bank president, railroad major stockholder, paint manufacturer, electricity supplier, and Clarence Darrow became "guarantors" who pledged fifty dollars a year for the next five years. Years. "Of course it blew my mind," Gilbert Porter, a well-known Monroe attorney, told Monroe. "I don't know of a better way to pay my debt to Shelley." in poetry as art, as the supreme and fullest expression of human truth and beauty.”97 The enthusiastic response offered a wide range of quality poetry to choose from. Believing that the world would be restored through the interaction between writers and readers, and that this interaction would foster great art, Monroe appropriated Walt Whitman's dictum: "Having

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great poets must also have great audiences,” was the motto of their new magazine.98 The inaugural issue of Poetry: A Magazine in Verse appeared in America in October 1912, with an editorial, “The Motive of the Magazine,” spelling out its objective to grow a "great audience" and "a reciprocal relationship between the artist and his audience". and truth, austere revealer of joys and sorrows, of hidden joys and despairs, may continue your bold quest without fear." Edith Wyatt, a member of the advisory board, called the magazine "a gallery of poetry" that has "a social value in would serve their power to remember or to create the beautiful". the making and appreciation of poetry, the supreme and fullest expression of human truth and beauty.” To cater to a wide spectrum of tastes, Monroe's selections boldly ranged from the conservative Arthur Davison Ficke to the scolding Ezra Pound, "To Whistler, American." Subsequent editions also included homages to traditional verse, provided they contained an element of the new. For example, Monroe praised the "heartfelt sentiment," "emotional seriousness," and "wide range of courageous personality" found in these lines from conservative poet William Ellery Leonard: Oh, be bold, be free! Remove this fragrant cloth from thy verse, Rip all silk and lace from thy windows! And stand, man, woman, on the hill beside me!101 Richard Le Gallienne, whom Monroe called "the April Poet Laureate" for his contributions to the genre of poetry in praise of this month (for which Monroe seemed to have a particular fondness) received favorable reviews for The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems. Monroe praised Le Gallienne's invocations, "the magical interpretation of nature in her most enchanting moods," and confessed that the lyric "Oh, climb with me this April night/The Silver Ladder of the Moon" has been my constant companion for years. .”102 In an early editorial, Monroe explained the requirements of this “new beauty”. She had received many manuscripts “whose anxious authors seem as ignorant of the 20th century as if they had spent the last few years in an Elizabethan mansion or a vine-draped Victorian home.

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Cabin.” Even those who rhymed work and tenements did so in the old fashioned way or in a moralizing tone. "It is neither a question of subject nor of form, this new beauty must inspire every artist worthy of his time," he declared. In his view, poets formed a kind of aesthetic elite: "The poet is not a follower but a leader. ' As such, they would have to do more than articulate current ideas, they needed 'vision', 'passion'. ' and 'courage' to convey that poetry, far from being mere slag, is 'the very pulse and heartbeat' of life is in their editorials, as well as Monroe's tactic of openly addressing criticism. The most disturbing complaints, however, came from the magazine's foreign correspondent, the always irascible Ezra Pound. Even before the first issue hit newsstands, Monroe had counted on Pound's help to make inquiries and identify important tasks. The many stories surrounding Monroe's relationship with Pound have a similar focus on the ominous judgments of these two different people. Monroe entered into correspondence with Pound after reading Personae and Exultations during a pan-European and Trans-Siberian train journey, and was drawn to his progressive work slogan, "Guts and Efficiency," as much as his demeanor as an avatar of sensibility. 104 His "beautiful rhythms" also fitted perfectly into his portmanteau of poetics.105 For his part, Pound welcomed his plans to establish poetry; Eventually, he famously left America for lack of poetic communities with channels and intermediaries to support the new writing. He hoped Monroe's magazine would teach America that "poetry is an art, an art with a technique. . . that have to be constantly in flux. . . if it is to live.”106 He shared Monroe's belief that the ultimate function of poetry was “to create the beautiful image; to create order and abundance of images, so that we can give our psychic life a noble ambience.”107 He believed that a poetic renewal was on the horizon: “Our American Risorgimento is close to my heart. This awakening will make the Italian Renaissance look like a storm in a teapot" and promised to help Monroe "find new American poets - les jeunes who are not addicted to magazine habits". ' new works from England and Europe, including his own 'modern material', which he found to be 'objective – without slipping – direct – without excess adjectives'. . . no metaphors that

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allow exam. . . Frank Conversation.”109 Pound's partnership produced manuscripts and early reviews of relatively obscure poets of the time, such as Robert Frost, Rabindrath Tagore, H.D. and, most famously, T.S. Eliot—a long list of authors who became part of the modernist canon . . . Pound's experience was not easy. Monroe had to husk buckets of straw to come up with her normally infallible words of wisdom. Her letters were full of speeches about the "provincial" poems she published in her "family magazine". And while Monroe and Pound gave money and editorial help to writers in need, they differed in their attitude toward the reading public. Pound wanted her to remove Whitman's motto from the magazine's masthead and replace it with Dante's Quem stulti magis odissent ("Whom the fool hates most"), proudly stating, "I don't love those around me and I don't intend to pretend. " 110 He even criticized one of his most famous poems, “The Turbine”, for its “literal and almost literary syntax”, “vague words that [sic] generalize”, and asked: “Have you ever left a noun unattended??? " He continued: I don't like your "Turbine" very much. I hate to talk a lot about something. . . I want a direct presentation. Explanation. Uninterrupted by exclamations: "Phew!" etc. . . Objectivity and objectivity and objectivity again, and NO expression, NO before-after. Without Tennysonism of language, nothing, nothing, NOTHING that you could possibly, under the stress of some emotion, REALLY not say... Every literalness, every word in the book wasted an element of reader patience, an element of sincerity.111 Fearing another address as one of his issues went to press, Monroe sent a warning letter: "Just a word to explain our May issue, which I accept that you will say 'damn'," she wrote. "Nothing that has life passes us by. Some things would make you cancan if you could see them. She explained that what's on the side appeared, often an improvement over was what had appeared in her office: "Often our proposed changes result in a marked modernization of tone and an overall improvement."112 Response to some of Pound's own poetry reveals the difficult balancing act Monroe had to pull through. In 1913, Poesia published Contemporânia and In a Subway Station, which

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to gain canonical status as an archetype of Imagism. On the one hand, a letter from John Neihardt expressed the dislike felt by traditionalists: “You know in your heart that you are being insincere and that you very much emulate the worst of Whitman. Screaming is not poetry. Billingsgate is not pretty. Rebellion leads nowhere. Only slow growth counts. There is no new beauty. . . Big changes are not sudden. . . Why deny sincerity and careful workmanship?” Monroe stood his ground. “I think Ezra Pound is passionately sincere and some of the poetry is extremely beautiful,” she explained. "I think sincerity and careful work alone are of little use." She also refuted the notion that the inclusion of a few poems in one form would derail the whole enterprise: "For sure we were hospitable to all kinds and confined ourselves to not a single school.”113 On the other hand, Floyd Dell, editor of the Chicago Evening Post Literary Review and a friend of Monroe's, presented Pound with a front-page greeting: “Your poems in April Poetry are so mocking, so tender, so unabashed nice that you seem to have brought back a mercy to the world (it probably never existed). ). You are a creator of beauty in a world where beauty exists only through a divine creative process.”114 Carl Sandburg called Pound “a new wanderer of beauty,” making him sound more like a harmless romantic than a whirlwind of beauty. he was verbal rubbish. "Things old and eternally beautiful haunt him, whether moving in women's faces, in flower petals, in moonlit waves, or in Venice's waters by night," which he depicts in murmuring verses like these: And o the beauty you have shown me thine Venice Until its charm brought tears to my eyes. Sandburg also pointed to "Ancient Wisdom," one of Pound's translations from the Chinese: Beautiful and Endless Memories That Tear My Heart Away. . . The black shadows of your beauty On my lover's white face. . . 115

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Figure 3.3 William Rose Benét, As I Imagine Harriet Monroe Editing Poetry, 1917, shows the editor on a stack of manuscripts balancing the competing dictates of refined tradition and modernity. Reproduced with permission from the Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Monroe received solace and support from a group of writers who recognized her poise and professionalism amid opposing factions. William Rose Benét submitted a sketch of Monroe that captures the dilemma she faced. She is perched on a stack of manuscripts with the ghost of Ezra Pound in front of her desk and behind her is a portrait of Bryant (pointing to the wall). A drawing of "Spring" hangs above her, while behind her hangs a torn chain of "Handcuffs from the Past." On the mantelpiece is a bottle of Acid Test, Pound's Works of Whitman, Key to Imagism, and Provençal (see Figure 3.3). Louis Untermeyer also exacerbated the situation by sending the satirical verses "Chant Monroe": Enough! The cry goes out, enough of your twisted and crazy stuff: if you were crowned with blessings,

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Deliver us from Ezra Pound! Manly - They say - a thing of their own - The height of novelty in art; Deep – well, if it goes deep, put us off Ezra Pound!116 Words of praise from the likes of Amy Lowell also cheered: “Knowing that there's an editor out there who really knows and feels makes a world of difference.” 117 Monroe reiterated her commitment to mainstream politics in a 1912 editorial, invoking the metaphor of an art gallery sponsoring exhibitions for amateurs and geniuses alike. Crowds regularly saw hundreds of paintings at exhibitions without demanding that each work be a masterpiece. Likewise, a minor poet can produce a perfect line or evoke a remarkable image, and a great poet can go unnoticed or appreciated for years. As a result, Monroe reiterated The Open Door magazine's policy and put the notion of tradition into perspective, arguing that it "ceases to be useful" once it conforms to orthodoxy.118 A few months later, as The Armory Show Arrived in Chicago After her stay in New York, with its mixture of traditional and avant-garde paintings, sculptures and crafts, Monroe expressed her admiration for the "distant and mysterious symbolism" of the Futurists and Cubists because they represented a necessary antidote to the "conservatism" of the art institute. Art.” “We are in an anemic state that requires strong medicine,” she wrote in a review of the exhibition: “Because in a deep sense these radical artists are right. They represent the revolt of the imagination against the realism of the 19th century, embody disgust at the camera, outrage at the superficial mildness that masks the fragility of the structure. They embody the search for new beauty, the impatience with formula, the search for the unspeakable, and the longing for new versions of truth.119 Monroe rejected realism because it misrepresented subjectivity, language, and culture as unitary and coherent; the new beauty realized that plurality - in identity, consciousness and form - now prevailed. Associate editor Alice Henderson had similar views on the limits of realism, explaining that art not only duplicates but enlivens." The poets' vision, she wrote, "pervades that

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object and imbues it with that imaginative life which is the primary and essential quality of life.”120 Henderson played a large part in the success of poetry. Eunice Tietjens, who took over after Henderson left due to ill health, credited her with finding gems in the mud pile and seeking "the new, the untried". When Tietjens complained that he didn't understand a poem by T.S. Eliot, Henderson replied, "Is it necessary? Neither do I exactly; but it's beautiful and it opens doors in my mind. That's enough for me.”121 Monroe more resolutely defended three transitory but seminal Midwestern poets: Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay, and Edgar Lee Masters. Sandburg fused his moral and aesthetic visions by writing and working in the name of social justice. He toured high school lectures, speaking about his heroes Whitman, Lincoln, and Shaw and their injunction to find inspiration for art in everyday life. From 1908 to 1910, Sandburg served as an organizer for the Wisconsin Social Democrats and served as private secretary to Emil Seidel, the first Socialist-elected major city mayor in the United States. In articles for socialist newspapers, he addressed the party's goals of social welfare, individual dignity, and African American rights. These themes were also incorporated into his verse as he attempted to reconcile idealism and socialism, humanism and pragmatism. "Man does not live by bread alone," he wrote. "He has a soul. This soul is urgently asking to be fed. He wants art, beauty, harmony.”122 Monroe launched Sandburg's career in 1914 with the publication of six of his “Chicago Poems” in the March issue of Poetry, setting off a storm of brutal images and unflattering sketches of the city. The poem "Chicago" began: hog butcher to the world, toolmaker, wheat stacker, gambler with railroads, and the nation's freighter; Boisterous, raspy, quarrelsome, City of the Big Shoulders: Unsurprisingly, the conservative newspaper The Dial lamented the erratic, free-stanza style: "Outpourings like these are nothing short of a cheeky affront to the poetically-loving public." 123 Another Reader scoffed at the proto-Jackson Pollock style of Sandburg and others: "They like to see crimson and purple polka dots all over the screen. Even senseless mysteries and obscure things seem to please

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them.”124 However, with the help of Alice Corbin Henderson, Sandburg managed to get his work published in a seminal publication, Chicago Poems. Monroe elevated the band's songs to democracy and authenticity. "It's a man speaking in his own voice," she wrote. "This is a speech torn from the heart." She defended the "primal and fundamental beauty" of poems like "Used Up": roses, red roses, crushed by rain and wind, like women's mouths smashed by the fists of the men who used them were beaten. O little roses And broken leaves And strands of petals: You who yesterday threw your purple into the sun. Nimble, Sandburg could leap from such harsh imagery to the playful smoothness of "yellow dust on a bee wing." Consequently, "no one would question his sincerity more than wind and rain." At the top of the list were Chicago Poems. However, Chatfield-Taylor, a member of the magazine's advisory board, withdrew. "That's good. There's no doubt about it," he said. "But it's not poetry and we can't give him the award." At this point, Henderson asked, "What is poetry?" and hit the word in the Century Dictionary ', which defines poetry as: 'The art whose aim is the excitement of intellectual pleasure through vivid, imaginative, passionate and inspirational language, usually, though not necessarily, organized in the form of verse or measured numbers'. Chatfield-Taylor now voted for Sandburg with a clear conscience.126 Monroe also supported the career of Vachel Lindsay, whom she described as "the real thing" by providing him with financial

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emotional and professional support.127 When Poetry hosted a dinner for one hundred and fifty sponsors and contributors in honor of William Butler Yeats in 1914, Monroe did her best to persuade the esteemed Irish bard to take notice of Lindsay's work. She left a copy of General Booth Enters Into Heaven on Yeats's bedside table. The maneuver paid off. In his post-dinner remarks the following night, Yeats commended the poem's artistry, using words that reflected Monroe's own poetics: “This poem is free of flourishes; it has a genuine simplicity, a strange beauty, and you know Bacon said, 'There is no eminent beauty without strangeness. to teach.” A poet's “business” was “just to express himself.” Poets must channel the “ference of their lives” into verse and “connect the evil with the good,” “eliminate the abstract” and work to “images to create sensual images. As an introduction to Yeats, Arthur Davison read Ficke a poem by Lindsay ending:129 The song lasts longer than the singer whose breath lives in the song people will have bright dreams even though the person is a fugitive. One thing the gods have withheld from the world - beauty - that man should give it. Perpetually poor Lindsay was only able to attend the feast by borrowing money from Monroe, her desire to be more in touch with the audience and to bring the genre back to its performative origins in ancient Greece, where singing rather than reciting was the norm. 130 The book really found fans among the more cynical radicals. Randolph Bourne, who had seen one of Lindsay's recitations of The Congo, wrote an extremely positive review in The New Republic. Although he doubted the prospects of a gospel of beauty, Bourne hailed the book for its "sincerity" and called Lindsay's work and career "an illumination of the American soul." Release of parts of the Spoon River Anthology at Reedy's

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Spiegel in May 1914. When the book appeared the following year, it caused a stir. While Shelley and Burns provided early inspiration, the concise outlines in J. W. Mackail's Epigrams from the Greek Anthology (1913) modeled a way of exploring idiosyncratic, imperfect, and highly individual experiences. A friendship with Theodore Dreiser, begun in 1912, revealed how to produce corrupt and conscientious literature.132 The result was two hundred and fourteen epitaphs in free verse, allowing for a conversational language better suited to simple testimonies than conventional blank verse. In a June 1915 poem review of the Spoon River Anthology, Alice Henderson told readers, "Behind the sense of tragedy lies a flaming idealism." However, the book reignited the debate about pessimism in poetry. Teddy Roosevelt urged Masters to show "more of the finer side of life and more of the finer traits."133 In another magazine, The Dial, which was rather wary of innovation, Raymond Alden objected to the "deliberate lack of beauty" of the book. Other critics were less forgiving, declaring truthfulness illusory and form obvious. William Dean Howells referred to Masters' writing as "fragmented prose". To counter the many objections, Masters defended his work in an essay "What is Poetry?". in the September 1915 issue of Poesia. He placed himself firmly at the center of the poetic community, with revolutionaries, futurists, and pre-trailers on the one hand, and composers of sonnets, odes to dead poets, and patriotic tales on the other.134 Speaking from the other end of the poetic spectrum, Pound was on the side of evaluating poetry editors and exclaimed: "YET! At last America has discovered a poet.”135 Although Monroe had extended the radius of beauty to a wider range of forms and content, she drew a line in advertising. Crossing the line between art and politics was a delicate endeavor for many artists. She clarified the distinction in a 1915 review of Edwin Markham's The Shoes of Happiness and Other Poems pure form of austere beauty. Here, as with Isaiah and Ezekiel, social rectitude becomes spiritual beauty and thus a high poetic motive.” However, when combined with excessive prose, the poetry melted into a steaming “eloquence” and thus lost its magic.

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otherwise it has earned its accolades. Witter Bynner, who studied philosophy with Josiah Royce and aesthetics with George Santayana as an undergraduate at Harvard (in the same class as Franklin D. Roosevelt), like Monroe, combined traditional and modern ideas in both poetry and politics. He wrote for The Advocate after Wallace Stevens recruited him, and harassed his upstairs neighbor, legendary Professor Charles Townsend Copeland, with ongoing nocturnal animated adventures. After graduating in 1902, Bynner joined Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell and Willa Cather at McClure, where he soon became poetry editor and befriended Richard Watson Gilder, Richard Le Gallienne and Mark Twain. In May 1911, alongside John Dewey, Bynner led the men's section in the Fifth Avenue march for women's suffrage. He later wrote in his journal, reiterating Markham's creed: "Every device of inequality and privilege must be overcome. . . Living poetry is the best way to write it. I am reassured by my inner certainty that the longer I live up to my faith, the better I will write about it.”137 Despite this synopsis, Bynner's 1915 collection, The New World, received only lukewarm applause from Monroe. Based on his 1911 Harvard Phi Beta Kappa speech on multiracial America, the collection celebrated democracy as an emotion. Monroe appreciated the concrete examples, the "simple diction" and the "clear and sublime expression of the beauty of human brotherhood and a prophecy of its universal power in a spiritualized world". Bynner had also successfully avoided "the swamps" of moralizing. However, the democracy he expressed was "the democracy of a sensitive aristocrat in search of imagination, not that of a hardman of the common people in search of knowledge". To be genuine, poetry had to spring from everyday experience. Though imbued with "great beauty" in Bynner's work, it lacked the "broadness and grandeur" of Sandburg and Masters. 1919. Although there was overlap between the two journals, Others was dedicated to a narrower audience. Founder and editor Alfred Kreymborg focused on innovation, with free verse, boldness and experimentation manifesting on every page, undiluted by anything less than modern: "Peter Quince at the Clavier" and Wallace's "Thirteen Ways to Look at a Blackbird". the Choric School of Dance Poetry; The imagery “In

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the Tube" ("antagonism,/disgust,/instant dislike,/cuts my brain, like a sharp dry reed/cuts a finger."); William Zorach's praise of pimps, drug addicts and syphilitic prostitutes; and "Ikons" by Skipwith Cannell: I Broke a Wild Bitch That Got Two Tails. I called her the "beauty" of a mythological beast.139 Kreymborg dedicated issues to women, the city of Chicago, and in 1917 "Poems Not To Be Read". In 1919 Others ended with a tirade by Williams against almost every contemporary critic except Pound. Poems by the likes of Richard Hunt ("To a Gold-Crowned Thrush") and Daphne Kieffer ("An Old Song"). And Monroe's acceptance of aesthetic innovation had clear limitations. His conservatism grew as he edited manuscripts by would-be modernists. For example, in Pound's contributions she omitted words, phrases or feelings that offend Christianity, chided William Carlos Williams for not capitalizing the first word of each sentence, slanted titles and meter lines that were not digitized correctly.141 She tried e.g. It is. Cummings to use capital letters and, finding T.S. Eliot's work extremely repugnant, deleted whole sentences from his posts. Despite her care to cater to the sensibilities of some of her readers, Monroe was surprised by the storm of protest letters after printing the single, outrageously modern "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in the June 1915 issue. "Eliot's Prufrock caused a great deal of disagreement," she wrote to her close friend Louis Untermeyer. "Poetry has produced many sarcastic editorials, but never one in this spirit. I cannot understand the bitterness of his attack and the personal insult to myself.”142 Despite such controversy, in the midst of the poetic renaissance, Monroe resigned to evaluate the contribution of her diary. She began with hopes of fusing modernism and the muses so that the poets would "express this unprecedented grandeur

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Modernity, the unprecedented excitement of this changing world." Just as Markham, Viereck, and Lowell had pushed the boundaries of beauty, so Monroe expanded the platform for poets: Poetry, frankly, has attempted to expand the poet's reach, the conventional barriers, whether technical or spiritual, to challenge inherited from the past and to help the modern poet come face to face with the modern world. We printed not only odes and sonnets, blank verse, drama and rhyming pentameter tales, but picture songs, futuristic fugues, verse libre fantasies, rhapsodies in polyphonic prose - every urge for freedom that seemed to have life and hope within it - a fervor for movement and the beauty of open spaces - even when the goal was vague and distant or remotely completely unattainable. it was this Catholic strategy that contributed to the magazine's influence and resilience.144 By constantly interchanging tradition and innovation and catering to a wide audience, Monroe made new verse manageable and saved poetry from the fate of so many small magazines that in the blink of an eye an eye appeared and disappeared just as quickly. In 1915 it might have had a small circulation of 1,233 copies, but its influence spread exponentially. the artist and his audience.”146 Not only did she succeed in bringing poetry to “Porkopolis,” but together with George Sylvester Viereck, she helped facilitate a revived American literary culture in the 20th century.

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4 Rewriting genre codes, redrawing the color line: anthologies and the dream of aesthetic universalism

It is therefore the struggle of all honorable twentieth-century men to see that in the future contest of races the survival of the fittest means the triumph of the good, the beautiful, and the true; so that we may be able to preserve for future civilization all that is truly good, noble, and strong, and not continue to cherish greed, recklessness, and cruelty.1 —W. E. B. Du Bois (1903) For months he dragged the alphabet. In his kind of work environment at Ginn and Company, the sixth-largest textbook publisher in the United States, William Stanley Braithwaite deftly arranged letters and words, spaces and punctuation marks in the four-by-two-foot square box. Then, one morning in December 1893, while fifteen-year-old "Willie" (as his boss called him) was writing an article in the newly opened Athenaeum Press of the Charles River company in Cambridge, he had an "announcement." After putting the last words into the flat steel box, he stood back to admire his work. The last two lines of John Keats' 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' read: 'Beauty is true, true beauty', that's all you know on earth and all you need to know. If beauty is truth and poetry is beauty, he argued, then by writing and publishing 127 he could benefit himself and his race

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Poetry. The poem by Keats, and then others by Wordsworth and Burns, awakened Braithwaite's sensibilities and made him dream of more harmonious communities. “Keats was my master. No, I worship him as a god!”2 From that day on, Braithwaite devoted his life to the creation and dissemination of poetic beauty. Braithwaite's decision to pursue poetry came at a time when Americans regarded writers, readers, and publishers of poetry with the same regard reserved for old school teachers and maiden aunts surrounded by cats. Later in his career, Robert Frost was fond of recounting to audiences a long and pleasant conversation he had as a young man on a night train journey. The passenger who sat next to him was a businessman and they talked all night about literature, philosophy and world affairs. In the morning, when they were about to separate, Mr. Frost asked what he did for a living. When Frost replied that he wrote poetry, the man exclaimed, "My God! My wife writes these things!”3 Along these lines, H.L. Mencken was fond of recounting an aphorism from his Smart Set associate editor, Nathan Haskell Dole, that “poetry in magazines is only read by women over 38 and 160 pounds. . He says they start sniffling on the 10th line and can't read past the 20th.”4 As these anecdotes show, in the early 20th century poetry was coded as meaningless and decidedly unmanly pursuit. In search of legitimacy for their work, avant-garde poets attempted to separate poetry from its associations with femininity. Rejecting the Victorian tradition, which they found sentimental and effeminate, they turned to theorists like T.E. Hulme, who opposed the opiate effects of reading Swinburne, sought "truth" and equated poetry with religion; Such activities gave poetry the legitimacy of a patented medicine. Hulme asked for poetry that was "strict, mechanical, sharp and naked". Chemistry is a science. In awe of the mysteries of poetry, the modernists embarked on a sort of poetic genome project, in which they relentlessly borrowed scientific methods in search of accuracy and knowledge of poetry's origins in language, music, and myth.8 As Pound warned the authors

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To "make it new," he was among a large group of men eager to construct a new masculinity in response to a more visible and garrulous feminism.9 At the forefront of textual experimentation, modernists tended to rewrite dominant genres than undermine. 10 During the renaissance of poetry, believers in the gospel of beauty had to battle these fears as they championed their cause. They used anthologies strategically to influence a reader's experience of poetry, expectations of the poetic enterprise, and sense of self. The importance of anthologies in the formation of poets and in the creation of a canon has been recognized by authors and scholars. Frost, for example, has called his discovery in 1892 of Palgrave's The Golden Treasury (1861) a life-changing moment, as has one scholar, who has classified the encounter as an important event in modern literary history. Listing his "favorites," Frost identified works by Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, and Browning, and "I also like the entire Palgrave collection." Frost taught at Pinkerton Academy and had his students memorize poems from the collection. Years later he was fond of saying that he went to England because it was 'the land of the golden treasure', and in speeches he declared: 'What [I think] is the pinnacle of everything for me? I can sum it up in the word Golden Treasure - poetry. An almost mindless book; all in the spirit of high poetry; a book on high.”11 For writers, anthologies offered a wide audience and the possibility of canonization, while for publishers they offered the prospect of prestige and profit. Until then, the most popular Victorian anthology was Edmund Stedman's Poets of America, which promulgated views on the sophistication in defining a literary form of nationalism.12 During the progressive era, edited volumes of verse by contemporary authors became a virtual industry in growth. Jessie Rittenhouse, Sara Teasdale, Louis Untermeyer, Conrad Aiken, Amy Lowell, Edwin Markham, Alice Henderson, and Harriet Monroe published these collections. The anthologies were also used as a vehicle to reshape dominant ideas about gender, race, and values in modern America. The pioneering and most influential editor at this point was William Braithwaite. As her career shows, African-American poets took a particularly ambivalent position in such a hyper-masculine environment. Claiming a virile virulence risked playing with dangerous stereotypes. The Jim Crow decades in between

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Harlem's Reconstruction and Renaissance saw a confluence of legal discrimination and racial scourge with lynching campaigns, a renewed Ku Klux Klan, and a Southern President in the White House, Woodrow Wilson, expanding racial segregation in the federal government within a month of taking office. race riots in Wilmington, North Carolina (1896); Atlanta, Georgia; Brownsville, Texas (1906); Springfield, Illinois (1908); St Louis, Missouri, Houston, Texas (1917); Tulsa, Oklahoma (1920); and other cities scattered across the country—North and South, West and Midwest. To combat this oppression, blacks developed a variety of institutions, organizations, and ideologies. In the decades before Harlem was fashionable, black writers had to negotiate between the accommodative principles put forward by Booker T. Washington and the authentic self-expression of W.E.B. Du Bois, between literature depicting real, raw aspects of black life and the work depicting the values of an emerging black middle class. In the fight for black civil rights, Braithwaite sided with Du Bois in identifying literary culture as a crucial component, but he did so in a way reminiscent of Washington.13 Braithwaite chose to to follow the refined tradition - writing in menacing lyrical form and nurturing a wide range of voices - to debunk racist claims about the licentiousness and aggressiveness of black sexuality. In so doing, he angered other African Americans who resented his belief in the transcendent power of culture; The valorization of poetry and the elimination of racial identity, they argued, did not further the cause of racial justice. Many modernist male poets and their New Criticism proponents, whose masculine ethos and methodology had been institutionalized in scholarship, had their own objections to Braithwaite's soft poetry and soft criticism. Despite this opposition, he maintained that a younger generation of poets had important contributions to make to literature, but ineffective editorial policies dampened initiative. Convinced that enthusiasm, opportunity, and recognition would boost the country's sluggish literary field, he began to rouse public support. Against great odds and with little money, he tirelessly promoted the cause of American poetry. Beginning in 1905 with periodical reviews in newspapers, then with annual anthologies from 1913 to 1929, and with a steady stream of letters and lectures, Braithwaite was at the forefront of a new movement to revive poetry's status and reputation. poets in America.

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This connection between sentimental and feminine, between sex and gender, complicated the situation for women writers, black and white, who also saw the need to reform public perceptions of poetry. African-American women poets also adopted the lyrics for similar reasons, because whites had stereotyped the black woman as a rampant seductress, an uneducated creator, or an asexual Aunt Jemima. Helene Johnson and Gwendolyn Bennett appropriated romantic poetry to challenge such depictions, adopting a white-coded aesthetic that explored non-political themes such as love and nature to refute notions of black inferiority. His verses honored spiritual values in a white-controlled materialistic world. They described the passion of love as inspirational rather than derogatory, and celebrated the emotional bonds between black people. An exploration of the letter, as Nina Miller argued, was also an examination of individuality, the body, and the erotic in a setting aimed at making black women and writing about such subjects "silent, asexual, or animalistic." The need to combat stereotypes was also evident to Rittenhouse. At the first official meeting of the Poetry Society in October 1910, she recalled that the room was filled with "scorn": "It was still the time when poetry had to be apologized for, when the poet was considered a variant of the normal, while there was still a subconscious feeling among the public that he was a wimp.” Changes in women's status, their access to higher education, and increasing professionalization in the progressive era enabled Rittenhouse and other women poets to challenge gender conventions and agreeing that good poetry is "manly" and powerful, but arguing that women could participate. - with their own compositions, discussions and criticism - in the creation of new norms. Rittenhouse emphasized the functional and strenuous nature of contemporary poetry: while poetry at the turn of the century was considered more or less a decorative art, a living room thing, mostly a pastime for women, today's poet speaks mainly for men, and for men men living in the labor of the world, for that great class of people of both sexes who pride themselves on clinging to the "practical". How did this happen? Because poetry itself has become the most practical of the arts, dealing most with the issues of modern life.15

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Rittenhouse associated the decidedly unmanly Father with this pronounced masculinity. She and other progressive poets managed to unite two contradictory tendencies in one formulation: an appeal to masculinity and the delicate beauty of gems, to relevance and irrelevance. Rittenhouse was one of the first to jump into the anthology venture. She had found a way to channel her reformist impulses by "becoming a pioneer of poetry". The Hills of Song (1895) by Clinton Scollard, a professor at Hamilton College, served as inspiration. She found the lyrics "fresh and spontaneous and musically particularly delightful" and was dismayed at the volume's lack of publicity or critical acclaim. "As I sat down in the woods to read this book, I decided that something must be done when poetry as good as this could be so little known, and I resolved to do it." She wrote to Scollard, then wrote a long-running article about his life and work and sent it to the Buffalo Express. The newspaper published the article and prompted Scollard's publishers, Copeland and Day, to send him more books for review, beginning his career as a critic. Fearing a lack of review volumes, Rittenhouse decided to supplement her literary criticism with other writings, interviewing luminaries such as women's rights activist Susan B. Anthony and visiting dignitaries including William Jennings Bryan, who came to Rochester to campaign during his first presidential bid in 1896 A trip to England showed that the contributions of American authors also went unnoticed abroad. "There was a general feeling abroad that poetry was dead [in the United States]," she lamented. "Anyone who has questioned this has encountered a blank wall of prejudice." To draw more attention to the achievements of native writers, she collected and edited her criticisms in a collection entitled The Younger American Poets (1904). The book was less an anthology or a critical work than, in Rittenhouse's words, "a creed for its own time." Rittenhouse's principle of selection can be likened to a literary version of muscular Christianity. In order to be taken seriously as full members of society, poets must abandon sentimentality coded as feminine, she argued. Poetry had to be powerful, deal with practical problems, be conditioned by a new and more powerful beauty, and be put at the service of spirituality, a necessary neglected aspect of life in the fast-paced modern world. Her

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The insistence on positioning the poets as male was an impressive attempt at rhetorical sleight of hand. Richard Hovey, she explained, "represents camaraderie," "a healthy, vigorous manhood." He "is the poet of positivism, male, objective," "an American of Americans," who wrote "patriotic poems" of "national pride." Hovey's sonnet "America" is a "celebration of strength" that "thrills with passionate pride in his country as a liberator of the weak". Far from withdrawn, neurotic, and withered, Hovey, as portrayed by Rittenhouse, was a paragon of kindness and confidence. He "had that glorious indifference that faced everything with confidence and ease and treated his relationship to life like that of an athlete trained to win." His writing eschewed negativity, vagueness, and obsequiousness, and was "very far from mawkish or feminine". In his profile of Frederic Lawrence Knowles, "a hipster of hipsters," Rittenhouse discussed the prevailing view that "art suffocates the masculinity of expression and that out of new needs must arise a whole new order of music, songs that must express our national masculinity, our robust democracy, our expanded patriotism" and "this work must define its poet". In "thin, whispering stanzas" and "rousing words," Knowles did so, proclaiming "the modern ideal" from which "a mightier race of bards shall arise": "In the ink of our sweat we shall yet find him,/ The music that it is suitable for men!” With “moving words” Knowles outlined a new poetic credo that combined masculinity, democracy and modernity: today we need passion and strength, grace and good taste in abundance; We need a man to say what he says with a power never before imagined: Rittenhouse re-evaluated the women whose verse was widely considered traditional. Louise Imogen Guiney, the Boston writer who adored the Recusant poets (she lived the last twenty years of her life in Oxford, England) and was known for saying, "Damn me, I'm going to write about antiquity!" unfeminine terms.16 Rittenhouse explained: “Ms. Guiney; She does not flirt in the fragrant gardens of poetry, but enters the tournament in a worthy enterprise. None of them can face fate in a braver tournament than she. The collection showed “no slack thinking. There is fiber in everything she writes; fibers and nerves”. O

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"Power" and "concern" of Edith Thomas' poems also do not contradict the author's gender. "There is no internal evidence in these powerful, moving lines that a woman's hand wrote them," Rittenhouse wrote. "When thought demands manliness of word and action, miss. Thomas has a lively energy of style, masculine strength. . . she has the masculinity of a man. Power alone was not sufficient for modernity. The worker and ordinary reader needed other elements in the literature he found: "They want the original things, love, hope, beauty, the transforming ideal". When asked what she thinks are the most beautiful lines ever written, she replied that poetry "to meet the highest condition of beauty must be both magical and suggestive". She defined "true magic" as "the power to enchant someone, enchanting it, drawing him [the reader] out of the immediate world and into his own inner experience". the inner workings: that was the modern credo. Rittenhouse not only emphasized the power of new poetry, but also displayed prismatic qualities. She translated Father's recipe "always burn with that hard jewel-like flame" into a metaphor, likening poets to jewelers (especially cutters), and cut and polished words like jewels. As a critic, she saw it as her job to judge the caliber of brilliance. Poets “guess the underlying harmonies of life. . . stimulate and develop the higher nature and reveal the alchemical truth that will transform the crude ore of experience into the fine metal of character and spiritual beauty.” They do this because “the great class of our strong, upright, simple people” want that "the carbon of their daily experience is turned into crystal". Rittenhouse praised the "quiet, sabbatical beauty" of Bliss Carman's verse in From Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics (1903) and appealed directly to Pater's notions of artistic conception, clarity, and precision: "For verily all art is but in the distance of Sobreplassage, from the final finishing of the gem engraver blowing the last invisible speck of dust, back to the first appreciating the finished work. Rittenhouse's call to erase subjectivity - whether female or African American - and to connect traditional notes to reality appealed to William Braithwaite, who was pursuing a similar mission with the progressive panache of the time. He was born in Boston in 1878 to middle-class parents who benefited from the city's more progressive attitudes towards race. Though not free from prejudice, Boston, as a center of pre-war abolitionist activism, encouraged a more tolerant attitude.

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Atmosphere for black people in the post-war decades. It was home to Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, wife of Harvard Law School's first African-American graduate and editor of Woman's Era, the first magazine published by and for black women, and Maria Baldwin, who in 1916 became the first African-American director of the Agassiz High School in Cambridge. In the United States Congress, Henry Cabot Lodge (Republican Massachusetts) and Sen. George Frisbie Hoar (Republican Massachusetts) led the fight, albeit unsuccessfully, to get African American voting rights in the Jim Crow South.18 Braithwaite had to give up his goal to study law at Harvard when his father died. After school, he found work delivering documents, and at the age of twelve he began working full-time. More than forty years later he recalled the pain of that disappointment.19 Braithwaite decided that intelligence and determination would make up for his lack of formal education and combat fallacies about racial inferiority.20 He made similar arguments to Trotter in articles for William Monroe's Boston Guardian , founded in 1901 as "a body for the intelligent expression of the needs and aspirations of Americans of color."21 Braithwaite has publicly opposed racial discrimination on a number of occasions. He wrote an editorial for The Boston Globe, "A Grave Wrong to the Negro" in 1906, condemning the spread of "national" and "racial" stereotypes. He also wrote an editorial for The New York World in 1908 in the wake of racial violence between black soldiers and white civilians in Brownsville, Texas. In this year's presidential election, he criticized William Jennings Bryan for ignoring the racism rampant in the Democratic Party and urged blacks to vote for a politician "that gives them, as American citizens, full civil rights and a government participation proportionate to theirs." Share of government granted total population.” He supported Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs as the candidate most likely to seek justice on behalf of African Americans to start a magazine that would feature African-American writing "of literary standard" to "provide a backbone for a black school of writers in this country," but plans never got off the ground with his efforts to uphold black rights and representation in Politics and culture improve fronts that lead to nothing ts, Braithwaite decided to pursue a strategy that transcended race. By 1899, the 20-year-old had completed Sufi poetry. aware of filling a volume. By him

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meditated texts on the sea, the man of Galilee and the wonders of nature. The work lacked any reference to the author's race or experience of prejudice. He attributed his style to temperament, talent and conviction. For him, the ideals "the universality of human nature," "the vision of the soul," "the aspiration of the heart to God, to nature," and the "conscience of human brotherhood" were "holier than patriotism and race—the ultimate goodness." , absolute beauty, the divine evolutions of spiritual and physical growth.”23 Other African Americans in the first two decades of the twentieth century accepted this gentle idea of aesthetic universality. Arnoldianism, as the religion of the best, regardless of race, gender, or class, advocated an abstract humanity, a spiritual self not subject to the forces of contingency. As Arnold wrote in that famous passage from Culture and Anarchy: “This is the social idea; and cultured people are the true apostles of equality". They disseminate “the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time” and endeavor “to withdraw from knowledge everything that is hard, coarse, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive; humanize it, make it efficient outside the circle of the educated and learned”. By democratizing the culture, they preserved its essence and made it "therefore a true source of sweetness and light." Braithwaite cited Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk as a cornerstone of a modern poetic tradition because it "deeply affected the spiritual nature of the race" and "revealed to the nation at large the true idealism and high aspiration of the American Negro". Only through "intense, passionate spiritual idealism" can black poets "enter into the only total and complete nationalism he knows—that of American democracy". ignore the specific judgments and contributions of black people.26 African-American activists and intellectuals fought to advance the cultural cause while defending themselves against physical violence. Hubert Harrison, the leader of the Socialist Party in New York, who shared with Braithwaite a Caribbean heritage, an affinity for Latin, and a love of poetry, emphasized: "When the Negro enters fully into the intellectual life of the white American, the usual barriers that are based on assumptions of their inferiority tend to crumble.”27 However, Harrison maintained this belief throughout the campaign

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against racial prejudice and class injustice, as did Benjamin Brawley, a Christian idealist and minister who taught English literature. During his lifetime, James Weldon Johnson abandoned his belief in the transcendent universalism of art when confronted with the reality of a steady stream of lynchings. Nothing will do more to change that mental attitude and elevate his status than a demonstration of the Negro's intellectual parity through the production of literature and art.”28 Braithwaite's temperament and spirituality set him apart from public political struggles. He had to reconcile his desire to live a life of tranquility and decency, free from racial or financial strife, in a world filled with "the unrelenting competition and selfishness with which men pursue their possessions and advantages."29 As Edwin Markham, Braithwaite underpinned his quest for justice with religious belief. Preaching the brotherhood of men and the fatherhood of God, Christ embodied contemporary chivalry: "He was incomparably the first and true gentleman, endowing courtesy and manners with grace and beauty". Braithwaite appreciated the price of that equanimity achieved, so to speak, by "a man of sorrows" who was "shattered and bewildered by the perversities and violent lusts for material power in the world." Braithwaite envisioned the Garden of Eden as an idyll of beauty whose fleeting glimpses were balm: "This sadness is crowned with a joy that shines with vision, evoking and manifesting the golden city of the spirit where peace and beauty dwell." 30 In the Vision of Braithwaite. , poetry heralded a moral pact in which ethics and aesthetics come together; Text pleasure can evoke principled behavior. Rather than priests or prophets, Braithwaite claimed poets as the Savior's true descendants, and traced an ancestral lineage that had its origin in the Son of God: I placed him at the head of this hierarchy of visionaries and mystics who served the world. He[,] is the royal ruler of a spiritual dynasty. . . to unite the spirit of truth and beauty in the world; They become the key to unlocking the great poetic imaginations, harbingers of Shakespeare's passions, Dante's visions, Blake's crystal prophecies, Wordsworth's inner sense of cosmic unity, Keats' golden idealism.

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Braithwaite expressed his attitude towards beauty in 'Sic Vita' (c. 1898), a poem in strict meter that finds in nature the evidence of the immanence of God: 'All the world is to me/Is a wondrous place. . . Only a will of God to prove/Beauty, beauty, beauty!”31 Braithwaite's belief in the leveling power of culture was vindicated when he attempted to enter publishing with a perspective that promoted beauty over race. He turned to members of the Boston Authors Club, led by co-founder Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, for support. Higginson is a long-time campaigner for women's rights and was a founding member of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Assigned to command the all-black 1st South Carolina Volunteers during the Civil War, he fought for equal pay for African-American soldiers, who received only three-fifths the salaries and allowances of their white counterparts, and became one of the first to make black and spiritual records Folk songs.32 Higginson aspired to be a poet, but after Emerson rejected poems he submitted to The Dial and other publishers responded, he decided to champion more accomplished writers. The most notable recipient of this help was Emily Dickinson, whose work eventually saw the light of day in a volume edited by Higginson after his death.33 Higginson also helped his co-founder of the Boston Authors Club, Julia Ward Howe. Although Howe is primarily known as the author of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," she enjoyed a successful career as a poet and, along with her husband Samuel Gridley Howe, had a long history of activism for women and African Americans. Braithwaite needed help to get a published To become a poet, he received full support from this community. He had struck a deal with well-known cosmetics press owner Herbert Turner, who agreed to publish his collection of poetry in book form provided the poet secured a promise of two hundred buyers, a common agreement at the time. Higginson, Howe, Thomas Aldrich, Bliss Perry, and Louise Moulton each pledged a dollar subscription for the volume.35 While interracial friendships were not uncommon in this atmosphere of tolerance, there were exceptions. Caroline Ticknor, of the famous Ticknor publishing family, received Braithwaite with the utmost courtesy during club meetings, but ignored him when their paths crossed near the Boston Public Library, where she worked and he did research ("she saw me, but saw me, ' recalled Braithwaite) (see Figure 4.1).

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Figure 4.1 William Stanley Braithwaite, cover photo of his self-published lyrics, "Lyrics of Life and Love", 1904. Braithwaite noted that his light skin raises questions about his ethnicity. He was sometimes mistaken for Italian or Mexican instead of African American.

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With the initial success of his book, Lyrics of Life and Love, Braithwaite approached a publisher with an idea for another book. In true Arnoldian fashion, he decided to bring the virtues of great poetry to the public by compiling anthologies of English poetry, beginning with Tottel's 1557 Miscellaneous and ending with the Victorians. Braithwaite dedicated the first of the planned four-volume series, The Book of Elizabethan Verse, to Colonel Higginson "in recognition of a long life spent in the service of mankind and the letters". When it was published in 1906, Braithwaite received letters of congratulations from Edmund Stedman, William Dean Howells, Brander Matthews, and other kind authors. in the series.38 Higginson invited Braithwaite to become a member of the club, a move that opened many other doors.39 Through these connections, he realized his dream of interacting on an equal footing with literary dignitaries. At that year's banquet, Braithwaite introduced guest speaker Thomas Aldrich, and two years later, at a club meeting, he met author Mrs Humphrey Ward, the niece of one of his greatest heroes, Matthew Arnold.40 With little praise, Braithwaite published another collection of his own works, The House of Falling Leaves. Dedicated to the memory of Frederic Knowles, it contained sonnets about Thomas Aldrich and Colonel Higginson, and lyrics dedicated to their kind Boston supporters. The polite but reserved reception was proof enough that his real strength lay in endorsing poetry rather than writing it. Such a transition came easily. His experience in selecting competition entries influenced his next endeavor to promote poetry. In an article summarizing verse published in 1911, Braithwaite listed twenty-five poems worthy of forming an anthology. The Transcript Office received requests for the book, which of course did not exist.41 This prompted literary editor Charles E. Hurd to hire him to contribute biweekly articles on poetry. Braithwaite decided to use this forum to bring about a "renaissance" of poetry.42 To achieve this, he knew he had to change the American public's view of the value of poetry. As one critic of The Dial argued, with the birth of a "new belief in poetry," indifference would turn into interest. As his following grew, so did his copy space: from two to two columns

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Pages accompanied by photographs of the poets studied. The initial payment of fourteen dollars per article was also increased to one hundred dollars.44 Braithwaite considered the idea of an anthology of contemporary poetry only, but found no publisher willing to risk money on such an endeavor. Braithwaite used his own funds to contact authors and publishers for reprint permissions, hire printers, and market the volume. He produced The Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1913. Over the next sixteen years the "Braithwaites," as the volumes were called, presented what he considered the finest poetry published in magazines by living American authors. With no competitors printing only contemporary collections of verse, selections that contained both the traditional and the innovative, and with accessible writing that illuminated the value of poetry, his career as a professional anthologist took off. In an editorial outlining the principles underlying his own practice, Braithwaite defended the critic who did more than judge and distinguished his approach from that of the philologist: a more important and instinctive criterion must now be added—a broader one knowledge and sympathy for life . ; not just physical life registering the progress of the world in acts and events, but the broader and deeper spiritual existence of the race that lies beneath the fleeting manifestations of shared experience.45 Poets also had to retool their writing to capture the beauty of the world to explore Garden of Eden: "Poetry as an essential function of life . . . it holds what is vital to its existence, like the seed from which the perfect flower will grow. And that's where the critique went, changing its meaning into a creative process, trying to understand and express what poetry tends to embody and convey, rather than what it achieves in an effort to communicate. Theories of Matthew Arnold, who provided a model for literary criticism that eschewed detailed analysis of individual poems in favor of a broad interpretation of the poet's vision. Arnold believed that poetry should step in to fill the role that religion is increasingly abandoning. Thus, “more and more people will discover the need to resort to poetry for interpretation

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Live for us, to comfort us, to support us.”47 Arnold emphasized that criticism should complement this crucial effort. Rather than being overly harsh or destructive, it should be "sincere, simple, flexible, passionate" and "spread the best that is known and thought in the world". a model. A contemporary recalled: "Where she could not praise, she said nothing."49 Similarly, William Marion Reedy instructed his book critics to emphasize the positive. He told Sara Teasdale, "I like rave reviews and applause. You know Swinburne says that the only criticism worthwhile is criticism that praises.” Artwork and expressing it, that is the function of criticism. . . talk about how it works, how it makes you feel.”51 In this context, Braithwaite observed that Wordsworth and Coleridge had “captured the contagion of change” in the early nineteenth century, resulting in poems that marked the path of mankind for a hundred years long enlightened, but Victorian sentimentalism had "raised a dull moral standard reflecting the wan light of dreams removed from contact with fact". authors, so that poetry could once again exercise moral influence. Poets may be born, but good poetry needs nurturing and encouragement to find its way into the public domain, neither of which is possible "when criticism poisons art at its root."53 Braithwaite's anthologies reflect these concerns: reverence for the Tradition; respect for change; and a review that wowed and won over audiences. In the first edition of 1913, dedicated "To the poets of America who sing to-day/The soul of their land/Truth, beauty, brotherhood/Their names are torches," he laid down the reader's responsibility: "Our poetry needs more than any other other thing, encouragement and support to reveal your qualities. The poets do a satisfactory and absolutely superb job, and it is left to the American public to do its duty by showing considerable appreciation.”54 Here and in the following volumes he explained his method of making selections: The first test was the sense of joy communicated by the poem; then discover the secret or meaning of the pleasure felt; It is

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As you do so, you will realize how much richer you have become in your knowledge of life's purpose because of the poem's message. . . The ultimate test of poetry is its magic. . . Such is the haunting quality of poetry, something which has no web of argument and whose elements are so inexplicably mixed up that no man has yet discovered its secret.55 Pleasure has played a central role in most readers' appreciation of beauty; for Braithwaite, his sense of joy came from the immediate and lasting impact of the content and rhythms of the stanzas. Haunted poetry, not with goblins, skeletons or headless horsemen, but with glory, idealism and sacred truths. Committed to the 19th century concept of beauty, Braithwaite nevertheless wanted to make it relevant for the 20th century. This required the retention of certain principles of production as they embodied certain notions of aesthetic value. So poems had to be written to fit certain parameters. No longer fragile, overly refined, or escapist, modern beauty employed new forms and addressed social issues, but still evoked a "great common substance lying in the world beyond the threshold of [poets'] subjective experience" . In addition to poems in the traditional form on standard subjects, Braithwaite chose experimental verse on modern subjects so long as they offered beauty and insight; time-honoured lyrics stood alongside more progressive anthems. In the 1914 anthology dedicated to his close friends Louis Ledoux and Edwin Arlington Robinson, Braithwaite explained why he included such innovative poems by Vachel Lindsay and Amy Lowell56: "No matter how revolutionary they try to be in expression, there is always still in these writers a traditional note permeating substance that makes up the essential part of his work". They did not hesitate to address contemporary concerns: "Poetry endures because it is so thoroughly woven into the chain of man's real existence."57 This is one of the reasons why Percy MacKaye's The Immigrants received recognition. He sympathetically portrayed the inner workings of newly arrived immigrants, avoiding the trap of socialists who idealized the poor and demonized the rich, and capitalists who exploited workers and wallowed in riches. MacKaye acknowledged that appeals to the "fundamental divinity" of businessmen and industrialists offered more hope: "After all, at this stage of societal development, it is a matter of spiritual pressure, not physical violence, that brings a community like ours to sanity will be your responsibility

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and obligations.”58 In a review of Joyce Kilmer's poetry, Braithwaite emphasized another quality of this new beauty: robustness. Kilmer's To Certain Poets rightly posited poetry as a sacred duty, not "a mere flirtation with 'the heart and hair of women,' but with the wretched and roughest beauty of austere living". Like Markham, Braithwaite was wary of those who took physical liberties. The limitations this placed on his critical acumen were evident in his assessment of two women poets: Sara Teasdale and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Braithwaite applauded the lyrical qualities of Teasdale's verses and the sentiment expressed in "Love Songs," hailing them as "America's New Shelley" and "The Poet of Beauty." The Poetry Society of America voted "Songs Out of Sorrow" the best unpublished poem of the 1916-1917 season. The emergence of Love Songs was hailed by The New York Times as a breath of fresh air after the "verse libre invasion". Teasdale's "Sincerity" and "Beauty" provided a welcome respite from the "difficult" modern poetry.61 "Love Songs" quickly went through multiple editions and received a recognition from Columbia University, the precursor to the US$500 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. dollar prize. In an interview for the award, Teasdale told a reporter that students would benefit more from learning to write poetry than math because it counteracted the "morbid repression" inherited from Puritan ancestors and "deepened our sense of life." only receive reminders. Braithwaite first found his work when he served as a juror for the 1912 'Lyric Year' competition sponsored by Ferdinand Earle. After Braithwaite used his Transcript and Outlook connections to publicize the competition, over 10,000 manuscripts and letters poured in, prompting Earle to write, "Did you notice? This year poetry is toppled at every step: even politics is classified with hexameters and rhymes.”63 More than contention, the controversy provoked by Lyrical Year became a sensation. Orrick Johns took first prize $500 for "Second Avenue," a poem addressing the plight of the immigrants whose brute force built industrial America, whose labor deserved support, and whose "crying will" brought "the mighty back to good" Announced" was second, while George Sterling's "Centenary of the Birth of Robert Browning" was third.

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Though the 20-year-old poet Johns of Camden, Maine earned including Johns, Millay won for her mystical "Rebirth," which began with youthful simplicity: ; I turned and looked away. After being literally buried under the weight of the world's woes, she rose again, carried by "the many-hued, multiform/beloved beauty." The 214-line poem ended with the connection of soul and nature, self and universe.65 Publisher Mitchell Kennerley published the top 100 poems, including "Renasence" from The Lyric Year Anthology competition. In his preface to the volume, Earle praised the equal opportunity results of the selection, which contained more poetry by women than any previous mixed anthology - a result no doubt due to the influence of Braithwaite, who regularly revised and corresponded with many female authors. The book sold for two dollars a copy and quickly went into a second edition.66 Harriet Monroe, Rittenhouse, and Untermeyer published reviews praising "Renascence" for its simplicity of diction, originality, and fresh approach, and bemoaning that it wasn't first 67 Robert Frost was also so impressed that he forwarded the anthology to Lascelles Abercrombie in England, commenting on the economy and naturalness of the poem: 'I would like you to read 'Renascence' . . . It is a truly naive poem. . . but in my opinion it's an amazing thing someone wrote. . . the result of an unliterary and therefore sincere spirit. . . It's as if a child had walked into the room and said something intimate and elemental in a casual voice.”68 Edward Wheeler was one of the judges in the competition that produced the volume, and his appreciation for poetry reflecting themes of social justice was known. So it came as no surprise to the members when Orrick Johns' "Second Avenue" beat "Renascence". Rittenhouse explained: The social movement in poetry was then at its height; the catchphrase “zeitgeist” was on everyone's lips. Poets were asked to write about what was immediately important in the modern age

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Life. The twentieth century entered a wave of social consciousness inspired by Whitman and crystallized by Markham in The Man with the Hoe. . . It is not surprising, then, that a society poem has attracted attention out of proportion to its poetic value.69 For his part, Braithwaite chose Thomas Daly's To A Thrush for first place and George Sterling's Ode to Browning for second place. Although he later acknowledged the mixed quality of the book's content, he did not recant his views on the "Renaissance". Impressed that such a young woman could compose a poem of such length and intensity, Braithwaite nonetheless felt that the poem's value lay more in the suggested talent than in the demonstrated skill. He praised Millay's "seductive simplicity and freshness" but found too much redundancy in the long poem. ennobled and encouraged. In a 1916 review of the last volume of Louis Ledoux, Braithwaite protested the implications of the newly developed critical stance: There is no such thing as vital ugliness such as modern civilization produces through social ills and industrial tyranny. The strange notions that life can only be perceived and experienced under such conditions saddens our relationship to the world and to our fellow human beings, and rejects any attempt to heal our moods by holding up the mirror of imagination to this ancient world of beauty and Grace. , it is wrong. Every now and then, here in America, a poet speaks in defense of ancient beauty. Most steeped in the classic humor of younger American poets.71 Braithwaite went beyond Santayana's vision of poets as soothsayers of "pure intuition of essence" and Markham's vision of bards as midwives to the ideal, and placed writers at the service of the social gospel. The poets transcended materialism and competition by imitating the prophet Micah and the knightly Christ, and they raised awareness of suffering with poems that built empathy and promoted democratic principles. However, this ecumenical approach prevented him from appreciating innovative writing that did not attempt to attract readers or develop more harmonious and harmonious language.

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egalitarian community. Braithwaite's inability or refusal to change certain ideas about poetry was particularly prominent in his criticism of Edgar Lee Masters, who received lukewarm praise for his popular 1915 Spoon River anthology, an aspect of life the market doesn't like to spotlight ." Braithwaite endorsed Masters' efforts in the name of suffrage and child labor laws, but concluded that the poet had not achieved "pure poetry"; he must make many changes if he was "more of a character than a name in our ), confused passion with vice.73 When Moffat, Yard and Company reissued the German-American writer's four volumes of poetry in 1913, Braithwaite seized the opportunity to censure their carnality, which pushed the boundaries of sensuality into the forbidden transcended territory of vulgarity Braithwaite quoted Viereck as abandoning his civic duties: "A Warning to the rebellious youth who have no reverence for life, no respect for the traditions of poetic art. To squander power that could have been used in the good service of literature and life is a moral offense against the confidence of public opinion.”74 A poet who lived up to these responsibilities and standards was, in Braithwaite's view, Robert Frost. At his first public reading in Boston, Frost had to share the stage with a local celebrity, poet Josephine Peabody Marks, who, despite being Frost's age, annoyingly achieved much more fame. Frost presented his ideas on "healthy posture," a new technique developed to replace measured pronunciation with more natural speech patterns. While Marks read confidently and effortlessly, Frost's presentation was marred by excitement. The audience watched in unease as his mouth trembled and his hands shook.75 Embarrassed by his stilted and awkward performance, but eager to do whatever was necessary to garner the acclaim he had eluded for so long, Frost pleaded Braithwaite to print a version of the speech in his column. They met almost every day for two weeks, either at Braithwaite's in Cambridge or for walks in the Public Garden. To illustrate his 'everyday speech' with an emphasis on intonation, Frost gave the example of a person listening to a conversation taking place behind closed doors; unable to distinguish words, the listener can still grasp the essence of the discussion.76 The

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The same principle applies to the rhythms and placement of words in his verse. Braithwaite wrote two stories using excerpts from A Boy's Will and North of Boston, photographs of the bard and quotes about his innovative principles of prosody. Just as Braithwaite balanced old and new in his anthologies, so did Frost in his poetry. William Dean Howell observed this in a Harper's review: “Amid the many struggles and strains of new poetry, here old poetry is as young as ever; and new only in pushing the boundaries of sympathy.”77 Frost's poetry touched a wide spectrum of readers who hungered for lines that addressed contemporary sensibilities and situations in a shared, unbridled but evocative style. Poet Sarah Cleghorn described her reaction to reading North of Boston: “I began to feel the unforced intensity of emotion building in the stillness around me. Never before had I seen poetry so faithfully simple and so delicate and carefully beautiful at the same time. They reminded me of the few seventeenth-century poems I knew well; but these sounded colder, fresher, more natural and open than the former; also closer to the common lot and the 'wonderful hearts of common men'”. platform on which to carry out my crusade for American poets and the art of poetry, and I would feel like a renegade if I left.”79 The local literary elite had a major impact on his decision to stay. For the aspiring African-American poet of modest means, Boston's upper-middle-class poetic community compared favorably with the turbulent environment of New York. As a chief critic, Braithwaite enjoyed a prominent role in the literary institutions of the time and amassed cultural, if not real, capital. As the cornerstone of critical acumen, the pillars of the literary establishment now looked to his expertise. Harper's Magazine secured his advice on several projects, while Harper's and Huebsch Publishers hired him as a consultant. Smart Set returned Wright's favor by buying poems by Braithwaite). regular at the Players' Club and Twentieth Century Club,

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sometimes with Charles Lauriat Jr., son of the founder of the renowned bookstore, but more often with Louis Ledoux, heir to the Ledoux Chemical Company.83 Now, when Braithwaite visited New York, doors opened rather than closed. Publisher Huebsch told Braithwaite's friend Lawrence Gomme, "Well, Braithwaite is the first man we know who has broken down every social barrier in New York." and to resist male modernist pressures to display a particularly strong form of masculinity. Often regarded as a paragon of outdated sentimentality by the likes of H. L. Mencken, Princeton professor Henry Van Dyke felt he had found a compatriot in the Boston Critic and confessed his frustration at the narrow focus of Manhattan's "male" poetry circles: "You I would think that for gracious there is only one concern that man has in this life. And they look down on me as some sort of smug poet, don't they? By God, I'll let them know I'm just as masculine as everyone else!”85 Traditionalist Brooke More sent a letter condemning the cult of masculinity as a mere cover for pessimism and incompetence. He suggested commissioning poems from Carl Sandburg on the following subjects: “The smell of larvae; The Lazy Effect of Cancer; The frenzied idiots of planet Mars; The joy a cow feels when her throat is cut; The delicious twists and turns of a madman's guts. He also criticized Sandburg's method of word choice: "Hunt the dictionary for the crudest words in it. . . that makes him strong and manly. . . Anyone who can shock people as much as they can is not feminine.” He mused on the modernists' poetic method: “The other day I stuck my feet out of an eighteen-story window and had the inspiration to write a poem like Amy Lowell, like this one : The ocean is purple-grey, what is that ? It's old, it's green, its eyes are like crocodiles, they're yellow——!!”86 Braithwaite also earned respect for the scale of organization each volume required. The anthologies contained biographical data

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Author information, indexes of articles, volumes, and major critical works published in the last year, all associated with tons of approval requests, stamps, and organization. It became a kind of information center about poets and offered practical services from which writers, editors and readers benefited. Inquiries were received from across the country asking for dates, birthplaces, addresses, publications and awards for specific poets, and records of verses published by both African American and Jewish writers. Clubs asked for lists of poets suitable for lectures and readings, while publishers sent checks for printed poems, asking Braithwaite to find the author's address and send the money. Club of Boston and the International Contest of American Poets. Requests for lectures were received from libraries and sororities across the country, as well as from poetry organizations at Radcliffe College, Mount Holyoke College and other universities. Lay readers, along with established poets, wrote dozens of fan letters to Braithwaite, asking for his opinion of his work and asking for help in getting his work published. In February 1915, the Dial recognized anthologies as the linchpin of Braithwaite's achievements, stating: "He went on year after year until his annual report became an influential contribution to the cause of the best poetry in this country and even beyond its borders." 88 The year his closest friends, including Louis Ledoux, Robinson, Lindsay, Arthur Upson, Percy MacKaye, and George Sterling, held a ceremonial dinner in Manhattan to commemorate his achievement.89 Wheeler, Viereck, Peabody, and others attended.90 Markham thanked Braithwaite for the "great service you are doing to the cause of poetry in America" and invited him to attend an informal school to discuss poetry. standing Americans the best explanation for poetry and the best excuse for reading it. . . [it] has forced the whole country – or at least its readers – to acknowledge the fact that it is poetic through and through, despite its blushing protestations.”92 This letter from a fan, Horace Holley, represented widespread sentiment: No. The genius of one No other country, not even France, has ever coordinated its efforts at poetry the way modern America did through its 1915 anthology.

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it brings together youth and old age, tradition and revolution, the famous and the still unknown. . . blown by the vital breath of appreciation. Through the crowded streets of our cities you led a new procession, the singers; To the furthest field and to the loneliest hill you brought the vision of a nation's vision. For the first time all poets of a race can get to know one another and thus learn to regard poetry as an ever-expanding and varied ministry. . . the seed of creation falls on friendly ground. . . They have established a relationship with the very sources of life in our race.93 This year Braithwaite called on his newly created network of contacts to help start an organization for local poets. He recruited Amy Lowell and Robert Frost to help with the venture and founded the New England Poetry Club.94 Braithwaite also became the reference person in several other literary journals. The following year, with the help of Lowell, Untermeyer, and Joseph Lebowich, he launched The Poetry Review. The first issue highlighted the magazine's goals: "To accelerate and broaden the poetic pulse of this country, to sensitize the public to the creative genius of poets, to keep the flame of truth and beauty burning in people's minds, each and every one." to offer whatever help and encouragement to the poet." It contained Imagistic Poems, Sonnets and Critical Reviews.95 Also in 1916 Braithwaite joined forces with Henry Thomas Schnittkind and Isaac Goldberg to found the Stratford Journal: a forum for contemporary international thought. The Editors asserted that dismantling class lines and building cosmopolitanism required exposure to world literature."The best way to enable us all to broaden our sympathies," Schnittkind wrote in the first issue, "is to engage the audience in a Magazine to subordinate the best thoughts and feelings of the best ze embodied in fellow minds of the world.” They believed that extending Matthew Arnold's vision to writers from around the world would increase harmony. Alongside poetry, the bimonthly essays, dramas and "fiction that's manly and moving but interesting at the same time". a harmonious, democratic, race-blind community devoted to beauty, but in the year of its greatest success it faced reproaches from a contingent of modernists. In 1915 Conrad Aiken started his annual campaign

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deplore the emergence of anthologies. A Southerner transplanted to Boston after a family tragedy, he shared with Braithwaite his appreciation of romantic poets, particularly Keats ("probably the most lasting influence on me"), and occasionally suffered from "Whitmanitis". Aiken's experiences at Harvard, particularly two courses at Santayana, changed his tastes. The poet and philosopher's book The Sense of Beauty, Aiken recalled, was required reading for members of university literary clubs and student publishers. Reading Nietzsche and a friendship with T.S. Eliot (who was ahead of him in class) further changed Aiken's ideas about poetics. When Poetry published "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in 1915, Aiken recalled: "Prufrock has defiled us all." 97 While most critics dismissed, or worse, ignored, Aiken's first volume of poetry, Earth Triumphant, Braithwaite praised it Author indeed for his "steady, independent technique" and for "revealing the heart of modern life at various stages of youth." . . It is an excellent first volume of poetry.” Braithwaite reprinted a selection from The Romance in his 1914 anthology, placing an asterisk next to it, indicating “special poetic distinction.”98 Pleased and relieved to find at least one commendatory note, Aiken wrote to the anthologist, expressing his gratitude. The two met over the next few years when Braithwaite invited the young poet to become a founding member of the New England Poetry Club. This association did not prevent Aiken from denouncing Braithwaite for praising mediocre poetry in a "persistent and sometimes flamboyant" manner. thanks to mr. Braithwaite and Miss. Monroe, well recognized in this country. There's a dead-end of outside praise and acclaim that muddles the issues, that erases all distinctions, that makes it difficult, almost impossible, for the really good to break through the chaos.” Instead of providing evidence of wealth, dissemination was of poetry during the current Renaissance, says Aiken, embarrassing. The following year, Aiken again criticized "confectioners", "embellishers", "those who brighten life" and "the merry ones". With equal fury, he chastised certain readers, "those who seek in poetry veracity and an ever more subtle awareness of life." Braithwaite and members of the Poetry Society of America, he wrote, acted as

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complicit in this literary offense by collecting "pygmies" in anthologies and then celebrating their work. Like Pound, Aiken preferred a small community of intelligent writers and readers to a larger community of impotent dilettantes. Poetry, he believed, provided a forum for struggle to wash life's dirty laundry; only interpretative nuances could help separate meaning and value. Braithwaite defended himself against Aiken's attacks, accusing him of attempting "to rob poetic inspiration of its mystery, and to rationalize its origin according to definite psychological formulas in which the elements of thought and emotion may be precisely grounded". Aiken, he wrote, "imagines that poetry is something as real and concrete as a rod of iron ore that can be analyzed by pure science." For Braithwaite, understanding poetry was like a Telic quest that required dedication and emotion, not dissection or abstraction.100 Harriet Monroe made similar accusations even as she entered the realm of anthology-making. She contacted Edward Marsh at Macmillan's with an idea for a collection called The New Poetry. Just a decade earlier such a proposal would have been rejected outright, but Braithwaite transformed the publishing environment and expanded audiences. As a result, Marsh tentatively approved of the idea, on the understanding that the Chicago publishers should "take in the best of schools to adequately represent every poetic effort of the day" to ensure both wide appeal and sales.101 Braithwaite had introduced this formula , which sets the standard for anthologies of contemporary poets. Monroe, who worked closely with Henderson on the project, resisted, insisting that twenty-nine pages of the anthology be dedicated to Ezra Pound, twenty-four pages to Vachel Lindsay, and twenty-two pages to Edgar Lee Masters. While modernists like Aiken belittled Braithwaite as a soft-hearted and indiscriminate amateur, African-American critics have accused his success of ignoring his race and conforming to racial stereotypes. The publication of Vachel Lindsay's The Congo and Other Poems brought to the fore conflicting strategies for the rise of races. When the book first appeared, Braithwaite wrote a favorable review, believing he had found a kindred spirit in the homiletic poet who lectured on the achievements of African Americans in Springfield, Illinois, after the riots broke out in 1908 . Lindsay combined beauty with a delicate sense of spiritual humanity - poetry's call to a better world.

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himself - although he departed from the more refined beauty religion with a version that was more passionate and less reasoned. Additionally, Braithwaite admired Lindsay's total dedication to poetry and believed that the country would be a better place if more people followed her example. As he wrote years later in a eulogy, "A true understanding of man's necessary obedience to this ideal will solve many of the most perplexing problems of faith and race which have obscured and troubled our social and economic relations." New York in 1913, the two men became friends; Whenever she was in Boston, Lindsay made sure to visit Braithwaite. Imbued with new currents of vitalism, Lindsay brought his Billy Sunday-style "vaudevillian rhapsodies" to audiences across the country in dramatic readings.103 The eight-page poem, subtitled "A Study of the Negro Race," included delivery instructions ("A deep, steady bass,” “more deliberate, solidly sung,” “with a philosophical pause,” “with a hint of dark dialect”) and the chorus “Boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.”104 Lindsay added voodoo, Stanleys, references African exploration, Joseph Conrad's novels, race riots and Du Bois. Harriet Monroe praised Lindsay's "tangible touch" and her ability to "bring delicacy and strength together." "Extremely alive and vital," she wrote, Lindsay's "creed of optimistic sincerity" expressed an "instinctively national" sentiment. Du Bois noted in The Crisis that although "color readers may be repelled at first" the Kongo was "in its spirit a magnificent homage with all its imperfections of spiritual perception". Joel Spingarn had a less than generous read. In a private letter, he explained to a perplexed Lindsay why black readers might be offended. “No colored person doubts his good intentions, but most doubt his understanding of his hope. . . You look around and see a black world full of strange beauty, different from the white world; You look around and see other men with exactly the same feelings and desires who refuse to acknowledge their resemblance. At the heart of the problem was Lindsay's delineation of a separate type of beauty based on skin color. Spingarn wrote: His poetry is wonderfully beautiful, and the poems about black men and women are no less beautiful than the others. How can I stop being thankful for all this beauty? But somehow we feel (and I say "we" because I share the feelings of the colored race). . . What

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You don't write about black humanity as you write about white humanity. . . to them black men and women are not like others who have been ridiculed, despised and hurt, but different beings from other sufferers.106 Lindsay's poem and Braithwaite's reviews must be seen on a different continuum, one that includes modern authors whose visions go further on a personal level, were intentionally and much more overtly aggressive. Poets and publishers who shared Braithwaite's goal of popularizing poetry were nonetheless quick to respond with racist reprisals when he exercised his independence. Braithwaite had to deftly maneuver his way through the literati. Ambitious, assertive, and confident, Amy Lowell wanted to gain the poet and publisher's friendship to further her own fame and agenda, and also to gain him as an ally in her many territorial struggles. She knew Braithwaite through his Transcript writings and anthologies. He wrote a favorable review of her 1912 book of poetry, A Dome of Many-Colored Glass, and made favorable comments on her 1914 book Sword Blades and Poppy Seed. With a bit of elitism, she initially hurled insults at the African-American with little formal education, until more respected writers changed their minds. She wrote to Braithwaite's rival Monroe: "It never occurred to me that the man with his magazine anthology had any standing until Edwin Arlington Robinson and Louis Ledoux told me in New York the other day that they thought his opinion carry weight. great weight.”107 During a luncheon at the Twentieth Century Club in Boston, where Braithwaite was reading the preface to The Poetic Year of 1915, she asked Nathan Haskell Dole, poet and brother of Charles Dole, the club's president, for an introduction. 108 The friendship between Lowell and Braithwaite seems strange. Her African-American ancestry, humble demeanor, and conservative tastes contrasted sharply with the wealthy, smoking, lesbian brahmin with regal manners and experimental poetry. Braithwaite used her position to help the aspiring poet, providing Lowell with a place to publish her verse (she had been rejected by Atlantic Monthly and Harper's), suggestions as to where to send her poetry, and allowing her to write her Use names as leverage when corresponding with editors. He also served as a staunch ally in their efforts to reshape Boston's literary community to rival New York's supremacy. As he later recalled, "I brought 'Patterns' out of its obscurity, into the public eye

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Recognize and accept her as a potentially important figure in American poetry. For three years, from 1914 to 1917, Lowell relied heavily on Braithwaite: "I am sure that no one rescued her from so much depression and discouragement during this period, when she struggled so hard to gain the recognition and admiration which she so desired.”109 Braithwaite, in turn benefiting from Lowell's extensive contacts in Boston society, enjoyed lavish biweekly dinners at his estate in Brookline, Sevenels, and financial support as Lowell helped fund several of his publishing projects. Robert Frost also maintained a relationship with Braithwaite to further his own career, but used racial epithets behind the scenes. The anthologist granted Frost's request for a presentation at Robinson. They went to the poet's modest apartments in Cambridge, where Braithwaite declared: "Frost, when one thinks of poetry in America, one always thinks of Robinson as our greatest poet."110 A few weeks later, Frost wrote to Robinson: "I owe Braithwaite a bit much for our meeting that day.”111 However, that day Braithwaite inadvertently made himself the enemy of Frost, who had been jealous of Robinson since 1905, when Theodore Roosevelt's admiration for the Tilbury Town poet made national history.112 Braithwaites Shows of support, which included replacing Frost at the last minute when he was unable to attend a Harvard lecture, increasingly angered Frost at what he perceived as Braithwaite's unruliness.113 He resented Braithwaite's acceptance of invitations to the Visit to the family estate in Franken, New Hampshire, and for a public disagreement at a meeting of the New England Poetry Club. Braithwaite discussed narrative in verse and insisted that all poems tell a story, while Frost, visibly "irritated", argued that the poet must consciously construct a story.114 Frost's anger rose again when Braithwaite wrote four more poems alongside "The Road Not Taken" in his 1915 anthology as the best poems of the year. In 1916, Braithwaite would not accept any work from Frost. Frost confided to Untermeyer: "In a worse time I will tell you what I think of Negroes, and having said so much to pollute this letter I shall stop here and begin a new sheet, which I shall publish in a will send separate envelope. 115 In response to the 1918 anthology, Frost feigned indifference to its absence: 'I have not shown a poem to a publisher since I gave The Ax Helve to The Atlantic the summer before last. So that lets the nigger out," he wrote to John Bartlett, a former student of Frost's at Pinkerton Academy. "Not that I absolutely would have

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stopped writing. I earn a little and leave it lying around where I can enjoy it for its own sake and not what some nigger might think of it."116 Noting his omission from this anthology, George Sterling promised to write a letter to Braithwaite saying "who will unravel your twist wool."117 HL Mencken felt that "Braithwaite's Raccoon should play with Sam T. Jack," founder of the Creole Burlesque Company, which featured black minstrel performers. "It's amazing how seriously he's taken."118 Frost's ally, Untermeyer, also withdrew his support from Braithwaite, dismissing him as "the cataloguing Othello". he resented the power Braithwaite wielded. Pound, who had previously expressed disdain for Braithwaite's Poetry Journal, took a London perspective on the state of poetry in the United States, declaring it a "Boston bucket" that "will serve from our leftovers" and calling it a "the black man from Beacon Street," wielding "a Negroid whip" — now bluntly acknowledged the anthologist's stature: "America is gone. What does it matter if you send your books there, read them there or edit them? It's Braithwaite's country, not mine. Why shouldn't he have it. If you like it. His racism exploded when he learned from Henderson that Braithwaite was African American: "Sorry [to know that] Braithwaite is a Negro. I took the trouble to be more contemptuous of him than I ever thought I would be of anyone other than a man of the same race. . . A Boston Coon!! That explains a lot.”120 Harriet Monroe had several reasons for opposing Braithwaite. In the first decade of Poetry and her first foray into producing anthologies, she was up against Braithwaite. For example, when John Gould Fletcher wrote to protest Monroe's exclusion of polyphonic poetry from his anthology, he warned that without a comprehensive selection of contemporary verse the collection would be derided as "reactionary" and "boring". "Just remember," he admonished, "you already have Mr. Braithwaite in the market ahead of you and want to outbid him."121 As a final insult, Fletcher said he would be sending his next polyphonic poem to the Century, suggesting that the conservative stronghold, more than poetry, supported imagination and daring. Braithwaite's criticism of Monroe's verse further aggravated the relationship.122 It was of no help when he published poems that first appeared in Poetry without giving them the credit they deserve. poet

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With strong ties to his Chicago office, they were regularly subjected to Braithwaite's mildly sarcastic criticisms of the craft and themes. Sandburg's "expressions violate all rules of art," and Pound was "neither simple, nor sensual, nor passionate," Braithwaite wrote.123 He viewed much of the content as the unsettling shock troops of a revolution. While the Poetry team maintained a cordial expression in public, privately they brandished racist epithets against their rival. His 1916 anthology, with its assertion that "poetry's radical influence has waned," was "the instrument of Ezra Pound's radicalism," and the idea that Sandburg "did not fulfill the prophecy" was the final straw.124 Henderson wrote to Monroe from her new home in New Mexico: Braithwaite writes in "dark" English throughout. When I was in high school I entered a public speaking contest where I won 2nd place and $10. Moody won first place and $15. He spoke about the future of the "Cullud" race, and he spoke exactly as Braithwaite speaks about poetry - hardly a trace of logic or sequence and almost less than the spirit of an idea. My family never got over it.125 She continued: Tell Carl Sandburg he's too big a man to put himself on Brait[h]waite's level. Sandburg will be remembered when Braithwaite is forgotten. You couldn't cut the black. This is justifiable. B. called him a Swedish immigrant. And of course, it's quite amusing to think of B posing as a Pilgrim Father!126 Henderson urged Monroe to ignore the "slanderous" criticism of "that fool" full of "rotten leftovers." Henderson accused Amy Lowell of being the true puppeteer: "B is her tool. . . Amy will definitely bounce back, be it rotten support like B or solid support like Pound or Fletcher; and once on top she will kick the pillar aside. . . she could never bear to see Boston's supremacy replaced by Chicago. Henderson added Braithwaite's sketch of Sandburg. Although Sandburg eventually wrote a sympathetic portrayal of African Americans in The Chicago Race Riot (1919), here he referred to Braithwaite as the "footman" with "Boston's bizarre ears" and criticized the anthologist's "incoherent, incoherent, and cheerless commentary." " What

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"sound like the murmur of a Pullman porter making the bed of a bunk dweller who didn't give him the requisite twenty-five cents." Sandburg continued, "Why should the writings of a Chicago Swede give every black man from Boston a headache? . . B has a tapeworm? Or is he ashamed of his blood? Henderson ended the writing with a poem: It's like Boston, Accept as a poetic arbiter In the cradle of liberty Here in a land where all men are created free and equal, One obviously disabled by nature: But tell me this, o their keeper heavy moral fiber — Have the arts no rights? Sandburg outlined his animosity towards Braithwaite in another letter, in which he vowed, "If I had time for it, I would make war on him." Drawing on gossip and cliches, Sandburg wrote: "From various sources I definitely understand that there is shame in him about his blood, and it is always my aim to reinforce the shame of my enemies, to close them in their secret dislike of themselves." encourage ." He continued, "There are two things I genuinely hate, a nurturing hatred for Braithwaite. . . He has a cunning mongrel treason, a gift for intrigue. . . and is regarded in American literature as the safest and most unequivocal kind of snob and footman.” critical acumen and repelled his accusations of decline and radicalism: “Poetry remains the organ of 'progressivism' in verse.”128 She defended the association with Pound because of his innovations and efforts to attract new poets. In a letter to Pound, Henderson stated that he had unsuccessfully tried to get the editor of Poetry [Mr. Hamill] to sue "the black man of Beacon Street" for defamation. She joined the Author's League, which acted as a legal and financial advocacy group for writers, specifically to get them to sue Braithwaite for using one of her poems without permission. She then tried to organize poets in an anthology boycott.129

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Monroe also hit back, calling Braithwaite "Sir Oracle" in a 1917 poetry editorial to revise The New Poetry anthology, which she co-edited with Henderson. Braithwaite could endure long-range combat, but interfering with his transcription duties was against all decency. He resigned from the paper in protest.132 Braithwaite eventually resumed his duties at the Evening Transcript and continued to publish its reviews and anthologies, and worked for a color-blind community for another decade, despite this insight into the frontiers of the gospel. Of beauty.

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Amy Lowell was their militant leader. . . a born promoter, as masterful as his ancestors, and the smartest of salespeople. . . When she saw that America was producing a world-class product, she put her shoulder behind the wheel and brought it to market. The product was American poetry. . . As for literary militarism or literary statecraft, America had never equaled Miss Lowell. . . she was Prime Minister of the Republic of Poets. . . Poets had reason to thank their stars for having behind them a Lowell to whom editors and publishers were factory hands and clerical boys.1 - Van Wyck Brooks On a cold winter's day in 1913, Amy Lowell picked up the last issue of the Revista Poesia and she found her true identity and calling in life between the covers. With little enthusiasm, she read Vachel Lindsay's opening poem, General William Booth Enters Into Heaven, Madison Cawein's elegiac Waste Land, and verses on happiness, compassion, love, and heaven. Then, late in the summer, she stumbled upon a vividly imagined moment in these lines from a poem called "Priapus": I saw the first pear as it fell. The honey hunter with the golden ribbons, the yellow swarm was no faster than me, (spare us the beauty!) and I fell down, 161

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Weeping, you skinned us with your flowers; Spare us the beauty of the fruit trees! . . . Instead of adjectives, abstractions, archaic word forms or descriptions of feelings, the poem presents concrete objects and plays with the senses of sight and touch. It ended in a hail of overripe and uneaten: The drooping hazelnuts, Recently stripped of their green hulls, The grapes, crimson, their berries dripping with wine, Pomegranates already cracked, And wilted figs, And untouched quinces. . . 2 In these simple, rhyming verses and juxtaposition of vivid images, Lowell discovered a keen sense of the beauties of nature, which devised the kind of precise, concise, and evocative poems free of unnecessary flourish and full of relevant detail that he had attempted to create to produce. in his own poetry. Interestingly, the author was only known as “H. D. then Lowell consulted the notes at the end of the journal to learn more. Poetry editor Harriet Monroe wrote: “H. D., "Imagiste," is an American expatriate whose identity is unknown to the editor. His sketches from the Greek are not presented as exact translations, nor as finalities in any way, but as experiments in delicate, indescribable cadences that sometimes achieve a haunting beauty.3 Lowell closed the diary and in a moment of self-revelation that went down in literary history and declared, "Why, I'm an Imagista too!"4 Although Amy Lowell went down in literary history, she was largely portrayed as a caricature: an obese, cigar-smoking lesbian.

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with a herd of German shepherds that “stole” the imagistic movement of the heroic Ezra Pound. Few biographies have been written about Lowell, and where she draws attention is for her gender or geography, sexuality or scandals.5 Indeed, she was one of the most respected and astute writers of her time. While others viewed the literary market as a contradictory union of material and ideal, she saw that public relations, lectures, and marketing campaigns did not compromise the authenticity of literary authorship. She challenged poets to approach their careers as commercial enterprises: to see their productions as commodities in a market economy; Develop marketing and PR strategies to sell your work; know how to manage money and behave like a pro to gain legitimacy; and the encouragement of poetic production through the awarding of monetary prizes.6 The exploration of ideal beauty did not preclude wooing an audience or making a profit. Contemporaries recognized his contributions. T.S. Eliot called her the "demonic saleswoman" of modern poetry. Lowell herself proclaimed, "I have made myself a poet, but the Lord has made me a businessman."7 "Even my enemies like [William Carlos] Williams," she wrote, "admit that I have business acumen." 8 As with other progressives as a poet, Lowell maintained a position in two worlds: the circle of late 19th-century brownstone editors who focused on publications such as The Century Magazine and The Atlantic Monthly, and the contingent of modernist writers who, beginning in 1912 growing in importance with other poets, Lowell himself conjured up the image of a rebel storming literary walls; Despite her genuine delight in controversy, she eventually struck her lot with continuity rather than open rebellion. She claimed that for every futurist who celebrated the beauty of speed, knives, machine guns and war, there were dozens of poets who cared about the gospel of beauty and cared about the arts alongside ethics and the public. Rather than simply seeing a crucial break with the previous generation of poets, Lowell also highlighted his similarities and continuities with them. She worked until her early death - in conjunction with an accident that caused a recurring hernia and a series of failed surgeries - writing a two-volume biography of Keats and comparing the poetic enterprise to religion rather than politics. In doing so, she gained the attention and eventual support of more traditionally minded readers, thus widening the audience for modern poetry.

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Up until this epiphany, Lowell's poetry reflected the sentiments and stanzas of the British Romantics. She was the youngest daughter (aged eleven) of Lowell's famous textile magnate. The Lowells were one of the wealthiest and most respected families in New England, with a family tree dating back to 1639 when British merchant Percival Lowle arrived. In the late 19th century, Francis Cabot Lowell founded a cotton mill in a town north of Boston (later named Lowell in his honor).9 Such was the near-royal status of the family that a popular New England saying went: “Lowells only talk Cabots, and Cabots speak only to God. Amy grew up on the Sevenels family estate (named after two parents and five children) in Brookline, Massachusetts. She left school at sixteen and spent her days roaming the expansive backyard gardens and studying the extensive collections in her father's library and the Boston Atheneum. Books were an integral part of her upbringing: "I always found the life of imagination more vivid than that of reality," she later wrote. and of retired women (her mother was an invalid suffering from Bright's disease) attending to traditional domestic duties, Lowell haughtily looked forward to the opportunities available to her older brothers. In a world where femininity was largely associated with weakness and privacy, Lowell sought ways to recode her gender to enable strength and public fame. Compositions in free verse rather than strict lyrics also suggested to Lowell and her readers an intellect beyond the usual feminine questions and metrics. She viewed most of the fin-de-siècle production of the 1890s as archaic and effeminate curiosities, and viewed the new poetry "whether written by men or women" as "essentially masculine, manly, very much alive". Where the '90s chirped, they'd probably scream.”11 The books may also have served as an escape from an increasingly trying reality. A teenage glandular disease took hold of her five foot stature and weighed down 500 pounds. As a teenager, she was considered by the Boston Brahmin to be the quirky younger sister of Abbott Lawrence, who later served as President of Harvard from 1909 to 1933, and Percival, who, after living in Asia for several years, turned to studying medicine and astronomy. , founded and popularized the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona

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The theory of intelligent life forms on Mars.12 Amy's obesity often provoked private and public criticism. Louis Untermeyer recalled being "shocked by her appearance". To soften any surprised reaction, Lowell greeted him with the greeting, "Sir, I'm a walking spectacle."13 A private letter Untermeyer received from author Edna Ferber illustrates the type of comments Lowell made throughout his adult life received. “I overheard Amy Lowell reading your poetry today. I wish God had made her like bread and butter and smoked breast of goose or whatever makes her so fat less; fat or thin, she reads and knows her stuff beautifully."14 In letters to the editors of Poetry, Pound routinely downplayed Lowell's height: "My chair has never been the same since she sat in it, or rather bounced it for joy at a little humor.”15 Aware of her size, she had draped black cloth over every mirror in Sevenels and clung to her poetry and lectures as the basis of her identity. Throughout her childhood, Lowell wished she were a boy so she could share in her brothers' exploits.16 She was not encouraged to pursue college education or a professional career. As the rigidity of gender coding in the United States began to loosen in the first decade of the 20th century, Lowell's sense of possibility also began to change. She lived in Boston and had many female role models who worked as professional artists. In 1854 the city held a congress in support of women's rights, and legislation passed in 1874 gave women the right to serve on city school committees. The city was home to the Arts and Crafts movement, whose beauty appeal was linked to moral and social reform rather than the antiseptic walls of museum galleries. During the period 1879–1940, the number and power of female artists increased dramatically.17 These sculptors, landscape designers, architects, painters, and metalworkers formed a close-knit community that supported emerging female artists and established an educational network dedicated to their work for public led school classes. Across the river at Harvard, Ruskin student and art historian Charles Eliot Norton propagated the Arts and Crafts philosophy to students in his Fine Arts classes and gave instruction on the value of art in cultivating the "skills of observation and discernment human experience and its value”. as an important vehicle for the culture of the imagination.”18 None of these developments was lost.

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in Lowell. In 1902, at the age of 28, she began to devote herself to poetry after attending a performance by the actress Eleonora Duse. Lowell went home and stayed up all night writing "Eleanora Duse" (which she later described as "seventy-one lines of bad blank verse"). When she saw the actress, she later recalled, "it turned a screw in my brain and I knew where my true role lay." With little luck getting her first poems published in mainstream magazines, she took other paths. She became a poetry guarantor, promising fifty dollars a year for the first five years and placing several of her poems there. She traveled to New York to meet with the editors of The Century and Scribner's, as well as some of the newer magazines like Viereck's The International. She wrote to Monroe in Chicago about her triumphs in Manhattan: I was very lucky in New York. My "Waltz" was taken over by The International, and "Century" and "Scribner" got many people thinking. Mister. Court of the "Century" and Mr. Varick [sic] of The International were so flattering that my head is spinning and I feel like the only natural way to go is backwards Children and the Stars, with themselves being smaller boy appears in several poems. She commissioned Houghton Mifflin in Boston to edit a volume of this first book, A Dome of Many-Colored Glass, at her expense.21 The title comes from Shelley's homage to Keats, Adonais: "Life, like a dome of much- Colored glass. colored glass, / Stains the white glow of eternity.” Lowell modeled the book's format after Keat's first edition of Lamia.22 In addition to the traditional verses, Lowell added some more experimental offerings. These lines from “J—K. Huysmans” suggest the sense of color and texture that was soon to emerge in his work: a flickering glow through a pane of glass, a crimson glow through mud-splattered glass, clearing a path between walls of sleet over uneven pavement sunk in slime and off and then delete in the fog.23

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"A Japanese Wood-Carving", "A Colored Print By Shokei" and "Petals", inspired by travels and gifts from his beloved older brother Percival, all point to his later efforts inspired by haiku and oriental themes. And the main free verse poem, "Before the Altar," echoed the French Symbolist and Post-Symbolist verse libre that she had begun to read.24 Despite Lowell's enthusiasm for the content, the book sold only eighty copies in its first year.25 Louis Untermeyer expressed the general critical reaction when he wrote that Dome presented "an oddly unpromising first book", with "conventional" themes, "banal lines", a "soft and sentimental tone" and a sheer "trait of character". . . 26 To further develop his craft and increase his literary reputation, Lowell set out to discover all about Huntington's disease and imaginism. The March 1913 issue of Poetry contained an article by Arthur Davison Ficke outlining the main tenets of Imagism: direct treatment of the object; Only use necessary words; metric phrase rhythm instead of metronome. The issue also included the now famous "A Few Don'ts By An Imagist", in which Pound listed the principles of pictorial composition: "An image is that which in a moment creates an intellectual and emotional complex". The contribution of such poems to individual fulfillment, he argued, was invaluable because they halted time and space and offered meaning amidst complexity, conveying "that sense of sudden release"; that sense of sudden growth we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art.”27 This differed from writing, which was inspired only by the imagination, in that Imagism combined the skills of the craftsman with those of the scientist. Lowell decided to spend the summer in London to meet this circle of writers and learn their technique; the experience would change his life and transfigure his poetics. The history of Imagism, from the first meetings of the Poets' Club in London in 1909 to the Imagist anthology in 1917 and Lowell's subsequent enmity with Pound, is well known.28 The movement began with the British poet and philosopher T. E. Hulme, who against it rebelled romantic optimism. and Victorian excess. Hulme combined French Impressionist painting and Henri Bergson's conception of reality as fluid and penetrable only by intuition to depict specific moments of a poet's mind. Free verse helped evoke the immediate presence of human consciousness because it reproduced the rhythm of everyday speech; Poets don't have to string words together to satisfy scandal rules or make every line rhyme. Imprecise words and decorative adjectives

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they were banned, like some bourgeois trinkets, and current and private concerns replaced the vague affairs of the past. Certainly an offshoot of the French symbolist movement allied with music, Imagism found its counterpart in the meticulous contours and solid materiality of sculpture. Although by 1912 Pound had published six volumes of poetry, one scholarly work and one volume of translations, it was only after reading Hilda Doolittle's poetry that his theories of poetic language, form and structure became firmly established. 29 His influence can be seen in Pound's 'In a Station of the Metro', a poem of originally thirty lines, reduced to just two. The title advertises a hectic city location, while the opening line turns passengers into sad shadows rather than observant citizens. In contrast, the second line shows a solid, lively branch draped with beautiful flowers: the appearance of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet black branch. Literary scholars debate the meaning of the poem, but agree that jumping from one line to the next is an art. Just as Georges Seurat juxtaposed colors, knowing that a blue dot next to a yellow dot would appear green, so Pound juxtaposed finely etched images to achieve an effect that delivered more than representation. static; in just fourteen words he managed to evoke a flood of sounds, images and emotions. Explaining the genesis of the poem to a friend, Pound recalled stepping out of a Paris train station and seeing one pretty face after another. "I've been trying all day to find words for what this meant to me and I couldn't find words that felt worthy or as beautiful as this sudden emotion. And that night. . . Suddenly I found the expression. I won't say I found words, but an equation came up. . . not in the language, but in small patches of color. Pound combined Bergson's challenge to transcend the temporal "stream" with an experience of synesthesia to escape conventional perception and capture something more elemental.30 No wonder Lowell realized he had found something powerful. In London, Lowell approached Pound, the self-proclaimed leader of the Imagist movement, with a letter of introduction from Monroe. Once there, she befriended H.D. and Aldington, and Pound included Lowell's In A Garden in her bad book.

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sponsored pamphlet-sized anthology Des Imagistes (1914). One evening she invited John Gould Fletcher to her penthouse suite in the Berkeley Hotel in Piccadilly, where he read aloud her collection of 36 free verse poems, Radiations, because the author radiated his joy in nature, using words chosen for their sound and color as much as their meaning. She immediately declared Fletcher a genius and promised to find him a publisher. As Lowell recalled that afternoon, "the poems seemed to open to me a door that had always remained closed." Fletcher also grew up in wealth, in the home of a Confederate veteran and banker from New South, Arkansas. Shy and slightly built, Fletcher found refuge in books, particularly those of his "first idol," Poe. On the front page of his journal, which he began as a teenager, he also expressed his admiration for Baudelaire's poetry, writing, "There is only one true religion in this world—the religion of beauty." In another entry, Fletcher considered himself " essentially a theologian". then to London in search of a literary community. His reading of Nietzsche, Freud, Durkheim, and Bergson convinced him that the nature of knowledge is fluid and subjective, not a fixed repository of objective information, and that art is not a didactic subject designed to bring moral elevation like it the Victorian positivists did. they would have that, but a play of sights and sounds that could give meaning to everyday life.33 Like Lowell, Fletcher found few publishers receptive to his literary endeavors. His vain attempts to get poetry published in literary magazines left him desperate and embittered. In 1913 he divided his poetry into categories and self-published five books, aware of their derivative character but unsure of how to make improvements. Approach: “Description is banished so that beautiful things can be magically conjured up; the regular meter of verse is broken to allow the words to fly on more subtle wings.”35 Fletcher combined this technique with the rule-breaking methods of Post-Impressionist painters seen in Parisian galleries such as Cézanne, Gauguin and van Gogh; Literary Impressionism would be

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reproducing isolated experiences intended to illuminate hidden realities.36 After seeing the historic staging of "L'Après-midi d'un Faune" with Stravinsky's atonal music and Diaghilev's flat-footed choreography performed by Nijinsky, Fletcher set about determinedly "to risk everything" and "accept all kinds of experiments. . . do not shy away from novelty, no matter how strange and rude it may seem. tedious moralizing game" and that he now "claimed with Morris and Dostoyevsky that it is not through morality or dogma, but through beauty that man can achieve perfection and the world can be saved". that inspired "moods" such as "Radiation VII": Sparkles of Ceaseless Rain On Luminous Sidewalks: Sudden Rush of Umbrellas: Bending, Bending Flowers of the Storm. . . "Irradiation V" combined sight and meaning without saying it outright - it celebrated the acoustics more than the spoken: moments of lacquered tangerines, palanquins swaying and balancing Between the red pavilions, against the jade-colored balustrades. . . 39 Lowell persuaded the editors of Houghton Mifflin to publish Fletcher's work, wrote favorable reviews in newspapers and magazines, provided him with lodgings during his stays in Boston, and loaned him large sums of money with no expectation or hope of repayment. Often their goodwill came in the form of encouraging letters. "There is no living poet from whom I draw so much inspiration as I do from yourselves," she wrote to the always tormented Fletcher, whose hurt feelings had an even longer afterlife than Lowell's.40 But her exuberance often interfered more conflicting feelings devotion. Misunderstandings led to feverish accusations, shrieks and shouts, followed by long periods of silence. Moody and insecure, Fletcher eventually left the most important literary friendship of his life.

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The same patterns of fullness and sadness manifested themselves in Lowell and other collaborators, most notably Pound. When Lowell recruited several of the contributors for his own Imagist anthology, Pound backed down. He saw their initiative as a threat to his central position in the concentric circles of poetry experimenters. In a fit of resentment, he derogatorily dubbed the movement under Lowell's leadership "Amygism" and transitioned to what he called "Vorticism," which differed from Imagism in that it aggressively disrupted contemporary culture and attempted to harness the dynamic energies of machine to replicate. . Alter (which Pound, along with Wyndham Lewis, called the "vortex"). Relevant to this study is the way Lowell characterized the argument with Pound and the methods she used to promote Imagism. In a letter to Monroe, Lowell insisted the break with Pound was not the result of a "fight" but of "schism". legitimate leader in a great crusade.42 "She believes in the power of words as her ancestors believed in the power of prayer," wrote one commentator. "And her faith nearly moved mountains, as did hers."43 It must have delighted Lowell when a writer for The Sun newspaper called her "the high priestess of the new poetic cult."44 When Lowell took office, Mantle as As leader of the Imagist movement, she used her position to advance into territories traditionally reserved for men. Her ambiguous relationship to the feminine surfaced in The Sisters, as noted by scholar Cheryl Walker, where Lowell acknowledges the contributions of female poets but dismisses their attempts as belonging to the realm of men: a strange lot of us women poets . And considering how few of us were, it's even weirder. I wonder what drives us to do this. He chooses us to scribble as men the fragments of ourselves.45 In his private life, Lowell kept one foot in the sophisticated world of the Boston Brahmins and the other foot in radical circles. Dressing conservatively, wearing a beaded turtleneck and a pince-nez on her nose, she looked a lot like the fashionable lady of the 1890s, although it was the 1910s with former actress Ada Russell. No doubt she felt

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Bolstered by the lesbian literary tradition collected in the works of Sarah Orne Jewett, Natalie Barney and HD46, calm and it was wet With green splashes from the sea, and the salt and sweet mingled in a faint weary scent Like one softly played harp in a large room at sunset. . . In "The Foreigner," she declared "my heart/It's a man's heart," while "Fool O'The Moon" spoke of desire that "beats feebly in my eyes" in "a single bare breast."/The apex his stud/Urgent to a lover's lips.”47 One of Amy's favorite Thomas Hardy poems, “Clear, with Light Variable Winds,” erotically elevated a woman's body: her breasts outward and her nipples like peony buds. Her sides ripple as she plays, And the water ripples no more than the lines of her body.48 "The Weathercock Points South" begins provocatively: I lay down her leaves, One by one: The stiff, broad leaves outside ; The smallest, pleasant to the touch with violet veins; The inner sheets are glazed. One by one I separated you from your leaves until you arose like a white flower gently swaying in the night wind. "A Bather" follows a naked lady walking through a garden: a knee or a thigh suddenly glimpsed, then instantly obliterated in the shimmering, transparent forest. . .

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Fresh, perfect, with rose rarely coloring her lips and her breasts, Swelling with green in the opulent curves of ripe fruit. Lowell's homosexuality was well known in literary circles. William Braithwaite's editor in the Boston Evening Transcript, for example, commented on some erotic lines from Lowell's Pictures of the Floating World addressed to and by a woman: By the way, Braithwaite, what does this lesbian foray into modern art mean? It is the opposite movement to Wilde, Lionel Johnson, Dowson et al.; or it is America's analogue in this great age of forced decay. Her dear friend Amy is so shameless about it that even I - who does the verbatim reports on the trial of such "causes célèbres" as the Oscar case and the Crossland trial etc. things like the Madonna of the Evening Flowers for example - and also in the North American Review!!49 Despite her boldness, Lowell remained oddly puritanical in her attitude toward fashion's overt references to sex and gender norms. This became clear when she attended a poetry recital in Mabel Dodge's drawing room. George Sylvester Viereck and Edwin Arlington Robinson were invited to chair the event. Lowell abruptly departed after Viereck's "amazing verses" had her "soar and move like a well-loaded frigate." Because she was wearing men's clothing, Lowell sent a reprimand, warning her that American custom forbids such impudence: "The speed with which you would find yourself in prison would really surprise you." Love Songs,” published in Others in 1917, Lowell threatened to withdraw his support for the magazine.52 Lowell also condemned attic life, free love, and artistic posing. Proud of her lineage, she wrote: "I am Amy Lowell, for better or for worse and for all that means, and I will not fool myself or the public by pretending what is the most serious thing in the world for me - mine Art . . . My experience is that people who play in Bohemia, dress like artists, speak like artists and are conscious artists every minute, never produce art.” While dazzling for them

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As a young man, Greenwich Village remained home to "a very mean, vulgar, evil breed of bohemian."53 That didn't mean Lowell was afraid of fear. She referred to her cohort as “that little handful of separated souls, all quietly born in that America that sighed with Richard Watson Gilder, cried with Ella Wheeler Wilcox,” who were finally breaking free because of the new poetic communities.54 In particular, she discussed in correspondence the need for poets to write and act more vigorously. "I do not believe that the poet is made of sweet sugar and melts at the slightest touch," she wrote to Aldington. "If he's worth something, he's strong enough to take it no matter what happens to him."55 "Of course we need more beauty in the world," she told the young poet Donald Evans. “But let us not spill this creed in a kind of dying languor; let us cry out loud and dare to be happy, dare to be sturdy, and dare to be a thousand things that mean poetry in the same way.”56 In his collection of parodies, A Critical, published anonymously in 1922 Fable, which provided a tongue-in-cheek preface to The Gentle Reader, referred to her exploits in the poetry world as "bronco-busting rainbows" - suggesting that she was less inclined to beauty like Little Bo Peep and more like Buffalo Bill Cody .57 This masculine attitude found resonance in contemporary female writers. . Elizabeth Sergeant, a childhood friend, spoke of "her open buccaneer manhood". "Originality," "vitality," and "courage."60 The adoption of male themes, perspectives, and attitudes enabled Lowell, at least in his poetry, to give voice to the diverse subjectivities of his life: female, homosexual, obese. Likewise, Untermeyer went from critic to admirer, praising "the vigor, combativeness, and vigor of the well-cut line," which he coded as masculine, which stood alongside great delicacy, which he coded as feminine. Lowell, he said, blended the two perfectly: "The intellectual form of his work is hermaphroditic rather than sapphic. He takes on both sexes with equal skill.” He, in turn, praised the “all female” concept found in “A Gift” and “the lace and lavender wickedness” in “Apology”. seventeen-year-old boy at Brookline High School

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regarded his work as “strong and beautiful poetry; and when something beautiful is strong, it is not only for this generation but for generations to come.”63 In the midst of preparing Some Imagist Poets, Lowell published Sword Blades and Poppy Seed in 1914. The book's foreword began by contradicting the popular romantic notion that poets were born, not made, and that poetry was the product of violent emotion. It emanated from Markham and Braithwaite, who viewed poets as vessels of divine inspiration and poetry as an entity removed from the market. "Indeed," she wrote, "the poet must learn his craft in the same manner and with the same meticulousness as the carpenter." Poems were the subject of inspection: "A work of beauty that does not stand scrutiny is a poor and improvised thing.”64 Similarly, Lowell assured Little Review editor Margaret Anderson: “We Imagists are serious people, and diligence in our theories is not a passing fad, but a belief for which we sacrifice our lives. . . Imagism is not a salon trick or a hoax, it is a serious effort in the pursuit of an ideal.”65 Poet Marguerite Wilkinson wrote a column of poetry in the million-circulation Farm Journal, attempting to dispel similar perceptions. She wrote to Lowell, "I have stressed the working side of her success because I wrote this series for an audience that believes that poetry can be plucked from thin air and put on paper as easily as raisins from a jar. . Cake." Wilkinson noted how she was reprimanded "for associating the word 'work' with poetry." ' she wrote.67 Lowell envisioned a more fluid role for beauty, one that represented the diversity of nature, diverse and no less terrifying from modern life: 'I wish to express my firm belief that poetry is not should try to teach, but that it should exist simply because it created beauty, even if the beauty of a grotesque gothic is sometimes claimed: “Art is as much a function of the universe as an equinox storm or the law of gravitation; and

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we insist on considering it only a small work in arabesque, of no great importance, unless it is studded with nails from which beautiful and sublime sentiments may hang!'69 She proposed a poetics in which stanzas and individual words were valuable in themselves. itself and where experimentation in form was just as important as experimentation in content. Likewise, the "vigorous" experiments undertaken by the French verses (which greatly influenced their later writings) arose from intense study and resulted in robust manual work. In addition to the standard forms, Lowell composed many of the poems in Sword Blades in ver libre, which she defined as "an unrhymed cadence" — a rhythmic scheme based on "voice spoken with its need for breath rather than on a strict metrical system." . ." While such a line may appear arbitrary or simple, she emphasized that it was "built on mathematical and absolute laws of balance and time." The effect, she claimed, was another echo of Walter Pater: "The Desire ... To direct an emotion until it burns red hot seems to be an integral part of the modern temperament, and certainly the 'rhymeless cadence' is unique in its expressiveness. new, the same happened with the jumble of images; the juxtaposition replaced exposition to convey a poet's impression of an emotion, event, or object.Lowell combined this technique with the I innovations of other contemporary poets. "Miscast I," for example, blended the panache of Sandburg's Chicago poetry with the delicacy of Pound's early lyrics: I've honed your brain until it becomes like a damask blade, so sharp it slices the floating fringes of passers-by, so sharp that the air would turn its edge if twisted in flight. Licked passions have bitten their arabesques in him, And their imprint lies within and without, Like a worm, With the beauty of white steel patterned with corroded copper. My brain is curved like a scimitar, And sighs at its cut Like a scythe cutting grass. . . 71

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"After Hearing A Waltz By Bartok" invoked the incantations and theatrics of Vachel Lindsay: But why did I kill him? Why? Why? In the little golden room by the stairs? My ears pound and pound at her scream, and her eyes widen beneath her hair as my fingers sink into the clear, white skin of her throat. It was me! . . . One! Two! Three! Oh, the terror of the sound! . . . 72 Lowell wrote poems that attempted to emulate the movements and dissonances of contemporary composers, such as Stravinsky's Three 'Grotesque' Pieces for String Quartet and Max Brueck's The Great Adventure. On "A Lady," Lowell achieved the poetic compression that has become her trademark: You're beautiful and fade like an old opera song played on a harpsichord; Or like the sun-soaked silks of an eighteenth-century boudoir. Your eyes burn with the fallen roses of bygone minutes, and the scent of your soul is vague and diffuse, with the sharpness of sealed spice jars. Its halftones enchant me and I go insane looking at its mixed colors. . . 73 Sword Blades and Poppy Seed also introduced American audiences to "polyphonic prose," a form invented by French poet Paul Fort and adapted by Lowell. This style incorporated the many ("poly") ("false") voices of poetry, including rhyme, assonance, alliteration, and repetition of an idea or image, and scattered standard formatting, which appeared on the page more like prose than poetry. Lowell likened the rhythmic effect to "the long, flowing cadence of oratorio prose" and the succession of different notes in an orchestra.74 "A

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Forsaken” applied this technique to address the issue of extramarital pregnancy: . . . Beautiful holy woman, take my shame from me! . . . I didn't tell anyone but you, Santa Maria. My mother called me a "whore" and spat on me; The priest wanted me to repent and spend the rest of my life in a monastery. I am neither a prostitute nor a bad woman. . . You were a virgin, Holy Mother, but you had a child, you know there are times when a woman has to give it all. There is a call to give and nothing to hold back. I swear I obeyed God then, and this child living inside me is the sign of it. . . 75 The publication of Sword Blades and Poppy Seed in 1914 established Lowell's reputation. Like Markham and Braithwaite, she now received her share of fan mail. Many of the writers were housewives who aspired to become published authors. While some critics claimed that Lowell's focus on objects and objectivity eluded emotion, the letters she received suggested a different effect. One woman wrote: "I love you for what you have done for poetry, so refreshing, so fresh and most of all, so soul-satisfying. That is the main thing, to be able to satisfy the cravings of the human soul.”76 After reading Lowell's 1917 Can Grande's Castle, another woman declared, “It takes my breath away with its color,” while another reader went to bed “ bright eyes and dreamed of sudden splendor and beauty' after reading Sword Blades and Poppy Seed.77 Another reader commented on a different work. He "has made my heart beat much faster than usual, and the world seems brighter, the sky bluer than ever."78 Those who heard Lowell's talk expressed their gratitude. “Although I am fairly familiar with contemporary poetry,” wrote one Washington woman, “I have never been able to understand or appreciate rhythm; I never came across the cadenzas – which you revealed to me for the first time last night, and which will enrich all my future reading.”79 Lowell capitalized on his popularity with a number of anthologies, critical works and lectures across the country. She immediately recognized the flaws in Pounds Des Imagistes, which was selling poorly, and decided to put together a collection of Imagist works that would become a critical and financial success. She opted for an even distribution of space for each poet, arranged alphabetically and prefaced with a clear explanation of goals and methods. Any poet would

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decide on their election—a scheme Pound derided, “democratized”—while Lowell worked to secure publication by a reputable firm.80 Despite Pound's bans, she was joined by six poets from the original anthology: Richard Aldington, Hilda Doolittle ( "H.D. "), Ford Madox Hueffer, John Gould Fletcher, F.S. Flint and D.H. Lawrence. "The fate of Imagism stands or falls with this anthology," Lowell believed.81 When Some Imagist Poets appeared in 1915, it contained the now-famous inventory of Imagism principles that required precision, concentration, new rhythms, and contemporary themes.82 For commercialization of the volume she formulated a comprehensive strategy. conspicuous places rather than the dimly lit corners where poems were typically placed.84 She also promoted the collection in The Poetry Journal, Poetry, The New Republic, and Boston Evening Transcript. As the book sold well, Lowell took full credit for Imagism's eventual success. In his mind, the movement wavered between darkness and meaninglessness until it appeared. The Imagists under Pound's tutelage, she wrote to her confidante Louis Untermeyer, "were unknown and derided, if not entirely ignored. It wasn't until I entered the arena and Ezra surrendered that Imagism began to be considered seriously. . . If I hadn't done everything I did and worked earnestly and hard to prove the movement's worth, the thing would never have gotten the recognition it has now." Lowell shared visions of greatness with Pound and both suffered paranoia attacks. Pound, a man of humor, vacillated between exhilaration and despair, while Lowell vacillated between triumph and despair. In addition to her extremely strong sense of entitlement, supported by her family fortune, she had an additional advantage that gave her a stronger foothold in the American literary scene. Though Pound publicly criticized her opponents, she knew how to keep a low profile. As she wrote to a friend, Pound's "violent rants against everyone and everything served to make him a laughing stock." For Monroe, for example, Lowell Pounds considered poetry "too indecent to be poetic".

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and "often just slanderous," and she had a sneaking suspicion that tuberculosis had attacked her brain and impaired her ability to think. Pound 86, she claimed, had a reverse Midas touch: "He ruined everything he touched," in her opinion according to him, Imagism's popularity was entirely to her credit: "The name is his, the idea was widespread, but the change in the whole public attitude from ridicule to consideration came from my work."87 At the age of forty, Lowell began a national lecture series to expand audiences for experimental poetry. She wrote to Pound: "I feel it will be necessary to create an audience no longer bound by Victorian tradition in order to receive the recognition I deserve."88 She explained the merits and nuances of Imagism and analyzed the works. by Frost, Robinson, Masters and Sandburg. She lectured in Philadelphia on "The New Poetry" to the conservative Contemporary Club and the more liberal University Extension Society. In New York, she taught at the Poetry Society of America, Columbia University, St. Marks in the Bouwerie, and offered a four-lecture course at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences (which were so popular that she offered them several times). His travels took him south through Richmond, St. Louis, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Austin, and west of Buffalo to Cincinnati, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Des Moines, and Omaha.89 Lowell hired a close friend, the musician, to accompany his poetry readings Carl Engel to compose and play background music. Like Lindsay's version of "The Congo", Lowell's recitations of "The Bombardment" (1914) with bass drum accompaniment were among the most popular. For fees ranging from fifty to one hundred and fifty dollars—Lowell refused to speak for free, arguing that poetry was a legitimate profession that paid as much as any other career—she lectured on the Harvard campus, Mount Holyoke, Dartmouth, Wellesley, and Schmidt. The lectures were a complete success. "Coming from a long family of speakers, public speaking comes naturally to me," he said sonorous. "That's one side of my genius."90 She often found the graduate students more hospitable than the faculty.91 They certainly appreciated her adept way of dealing with difficult questions posed by professors who adhered to conservative and idealistic recipes of friendliness. Future poet and critic John Peale Bishop hailed them for a "complete" "victory": "Princeton students are, for the most part, open to new ideas. But the college - the college fought hard - and it was demolished for a man. I want to thank you. I'm not

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I think anyone else could have done it.”92 A Bryn Mawr administrator testified, “Students feel that you have done more to promote poetry writing in the college than any other guest star.”93 Lowell bragged about his reputation to friends. only at the University of Washington, despite the fact that Count Tolstoy was lecturing in a nearby hall, and at Columbia, where so many people were turned away, she had to plan extra appearances.94 With so much contemporary poetry terra incognita, Amy Lowell decided to quit the arrival of the new poetic community by writing his own critical volume, a move that further cemented his literary reputation. In 1917 she collected and expanded her lectures and reviews for the public in Tendencies in Modern Poetry. She showed those she touched through lectures exactly what kind of awakenings and developments were taking place. In mapping the emerging shores of 20th-century poetry, she charted three distinct currents, each of which provided "hints of a new beauty" that was "simultaneously realistic and romantic." “a rebirth of the spirit of truth and beauty. It means a rediscovery of beauty in our modern world, and the originality and honesty of asserting that beauty is in some way inherent in the poet.”96 She grouped the poets in pairs to explain how their works “represent a marching order old to new ’, again emphasizing constant evolution versus radical departure.97 Two New England writers, Edwin Arlington Robinson and Robert Frost, marked the first trend that expanded the discursive field of poetry by considering everyday experiences with clear and direct language. While Robinson was intellectual, passionate, and a realist, Frost was intuitive, simple, and pessimistic. While Robinson "analyzes the psychology of his characters down to the smallest fraction, he slices and dices the emotions," Frost, a sort of dark prince-guard, paid homage to the "remnants of the old stocks." . . slowly sinking into madness" in a "Latter-day New England, where a civilization is in decline". Dealing with current issues, it ended up spoiling the full range of its innovations. Hailing from the Midwest, Masters and Sandburg came second , more revolutionary trends in modern American poetry, honing their craft in "multiracial" America.

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"a world of change and regression, a world of experiments and changes" and does not want to duplicate this dichotomy, but rather "consolidate the chaos, order it". Feeling: A poet's way of putting things in order is to throw a strong light on it. To facilitate that when seen it could be attacked and altered or cherished and protected, whichever the case may be. A revolutionary poet, a poet committed to re-evaluating the civilization in which he finds himself, has no weapon more potent than this flash of vivid words. rudeness, brutality, cynicism”. Both drew outrage for their bluntness, but Lowell assured readers that the craftsmanship reversed the rigor of his remarks: Life is the stuff of art. But raw life is not art; In order to become art, it must be fused and transmuted. In addition, professing realists forget that idealism, a sense of beauty, and the striving for delicacy and nobility are also real. Mankind would have perished long ago and would have killed itself out of desperation if it weren't for these insights into the poetry of existence. To let all these endeavors end in disillusionment and death is to have a distorted view.101 However, she condemned the more explicit sexual episodes. "Sir. Masters deals more with sex than any other English or American author,” she lamented.102 The Spoon River Anthology was “a long chronicle of rape, seduction, liaison and perversion”. the volume's importance "can hardly be overstated" because the author's vision distilled indigenous perspectives.104 Lowell's unique ideological interpretation of the new poets also influenced his portrayal of Sandburg. Like Masters, Lowell described Sandburg as an "apostle of beauty" who was gifted is in tender, gentle verse as much as raw, masculine poetry: in Sandburg's Chicago Poems, with their crude portrayals of the city's hardships, Lowell saw "a powerful imagination that plays with its realistic themes and constantly ennobles them".

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and the Factories "all take on a lyrical quality under his touch". which obscures that beauty by using it for purposes for which it is unfit.”106 Although some critics have questioned whether Sandburg's work should be considered poetry, Lowell praised the writer for his “beauty” more than any other poet in history. He was "a true poet, observer of beauty" whose poems contained "hints of great and primal beauty" and whose work was permeated with the "spirit of beauty". The last stage of the new poetic movement (though by no means the best, as Lowell pointed out) was Imagism. She found H.D. "unsentimentally strong and succinct" and "thoroughly sincere," comparing his poetry to the poise, calm, and charm of classical sculpture. Words stood out with the "coolness of marble" and "the clarity of fresh water", while high consonants provided contour and unusually curved cadences conveyed harmony. before the artwork, certain passages declared too beautiful to dissect and verse pages left unanalyzed. She had written the book in part because it lacked solid literary criticism. When asked by a reporter what American poetry needed to fulfill its potential, Lowell said she hoped to fill a void: "What we need most is informed and authoritative criticism."108 In a letter to Masters asked her: “Are there any critics? ? I provoked the wrath of the entire New York Poetry Society last winter by saying there weren't any. We have critics, but unfortunately we have no critics, and those that are have not drawn their attention to the new work.”109 In Tendencies, Lowell mentioned but did not examine Lindsay or Eliot. Pound's omission led Harriet Monroe to remark that such omission would be tantamount to writing Hamlet-without-Hamlet. Sensitivity. She found Eliot's The Waste Land not evidence of genius, but evidence of sterile cleverness. Likewise, she saw no future for Marianne Moore: "a poor de[s]edged New England spinster, full of inhibitions, with points and nooks of the mind where she should have curves and curves." It is because of a lack of emotion, of humanity, of life that she writes the way she does. She works in ashes and sand.”111

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Cummings had to stop "rising up against Cambridge and her Unitarian Father of Ministers," and Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams (although she published the New Jersey doctor in her anthologies) received similar unfortunate verdicts.112 After Tendencies came out, Lowell continued to publish Reviews and essays in Poetry, The Dial, The New Republic, North American Review, The Boston American and The New York Times (where she became a regular critic in 1920). In every medium - lectures, reviews, readings - Lowell emphasized his view that new poetry was a logical outgrowth of old poetic traditions. "Art must change or die," she said.113 For her, the new was as much a reorganization of the old as it was a mere invention. She went to great lengths to disentangle the strange notion that most of the new poetry represented a dramatic departure from tradition. She assured the public that admired the old masters: "Long ago, in my youth, I sat critically at Matthew Arnold's feet and read everything he wrote." Shown in "reverence" by new poets for the "great poets of the past," Lowell dismissed the claim as unfounded, emphasizing continuity, particularly with the "two great poets, Whitman and Poe," rather than change.115 She warned socialist writer Clement Wood that the poet's main role was not as the voice of protest, but as "the servant of beauty". between the old poetry and the new, and no one expects one to replace the other, and no one ever has. until her death she sent works to fine publications as well as the “small” magazines. Lowell turned his critical eye far and wide to warn writers who were ignoring the new poetry. For the Boston Evening Transcript, for example, she protested against a list of books popular with librarians that largely excluded contemporary poetry. "If ever a country needed the refining and softening effects of the arts," she pleaded, "we are that country. But how to get them when even the custodians of our collections don't see the difference between art and mechanics in literature? Do you prefer the latter?”118 When the Massachusetts Library Club newsletter reported on books

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Cooking and citizenship, but not poetry, she wrote to the club's president, John Adams Lowe: I urge you to use all your influence to teach the country's librarians that one of the functions of the book is that of a container for literature pure. I find reviews of the book here to help me learn this and that. . . I hardly find a phase of the library's usefulness unregistered, other than the fact that its primary function is to guide the character through contact with what Matthew Arnold "the best thing ever thought and said in the world, thought and said." said” to soften and enrich. Poetry had no place in the modern world ("Very good is all our sentimental elevation, indeed!") and challenged Lowe to help librarians see the insights inherent in the new strong and direct poetry. Lowell worked behind the scenes to promote poets and poetry. She gave H.D. Line by line of feedback on her poetry, advice on publication ("Putting things in regular magazines is no joke," Lowell warned), and doling out much-needed dividends from book sales. Imagistic anthologies.120 For Aldington, Lowell secured a position as English correspondent for a local poetry magazine, where she also placed her poems and found publishers for her books. She supported her close friend and collaborator William Braithwaite financially in his editorship of the Poetry Journal and defended it against critics. For example, in a letter to Little Review editor Margaret Anderson, she wrote: "I like Mr. Braithwaite and I admire his attitude of absolute devotion to his work."121 Lowell sent the impoverished D. H. Lawrence a typewriter (on which he wrote Women in Love composed) and finance, and gave literary criticism, constructive book reviews, contacts, encouragement and . not infrequently money for young poets beginning their careers, including William Rose Benet, Maxwell Bodenheim, e.g. It is. Cummings, Malcolm Cowley, Barrett Wendell, Robert Hillyer, and Eunice Tietjens. She won new subscribers to Poetry and Little Review, found sympathetic critics for poetry collections, and provided cover letters to aspiring writers. She wasn't afraid to go public with her efforts. Lowell wrote directly to New Jersey opponent Dr. Williams: “Few people have tried to do more for young, unknown writers than I have. . . I often have

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Recommended Poems for Publishers. . . [and] I did everything I could to show people who were less informed than me that they were worthy among the younger crowd. She recognized early on that new communities had to be built in order for poets to find audiences. With money, talent, and willpower, she meticulously recruited writers, readers, and critics for her company. As her many fan letters showed, the nascent poetic community was built through the medium of new magazines, personal speeches, and personal correspondence. It depended on imaginative and original answers - mediations between poets, critics and readers - in a new language. His contribution was to make formal revolutions socially acceptable, to partially change the genre codes of poetry and to professionalize authorship. Lowell's efforts earned her widespread recognition. Fletcher called Lowell "the most colorful and popular pioneer" of the new poets.123 Clement Wood marveled that she had "almost unrivaled talent for publicity, a sense of publicity. She was more than anyone else who put 'new poetry' 'on the map'.”124 A close friend wrote: “She loved poetry and championed it at a time when poetry was generally unpopular. It always seemed to me that she was serving as a circus announcer for the poets of her day, because from the podium, in the press and almost on the street corner she shouted, 'Poetry, poetry, this way to poetry!' "125

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6 Romantic Individualism, Radical Politics: Lyrical Solidarity in Peace and War

The nation in time of war achieves a unity of feeling. . . other values such as artistic creation, knowledge, reason, beauty and appreciation of life are immediately and almost unanimously sacrificed.1 – Randolph Bourne (1919) Editor of the influential socialist monthly The Masses since 1912, Max Eastman felt he had to act as a mediator in meaningless battles appear. In keeping with the spirit of the times, poetry should play a central role in every issue for all team members. However, some wanted to promote social justice through realistic depictions of slums, factory conditions, and racism. However, plays that focused on the darker side of life generated worrying letters. Edward J. Wheeler, for example, wrote to a columnist for The Masses: “I certainly believe in poetry that comes first hand from life rather than from tradition and books. The trend I condemn seems to confuse brutality with vitality. . . The most enduring poetry is that which conveys a sense of beauty. . . Many of our modern writers seem to confuse life with mere excitement – agitation – licentiousness – clamor.”2 Others wanted to publish uplifting content that showcased the wonders of the world, but these works were met with scorn. The “gentle anarchist” Hippolyte Havel complained about one of the poems sent to the magazine: “Nature! Mountains! Scenario! What have they got to do with economic determinism!”3 Along with other progressive poets, Eastman believed that beauty might facilitate the reflection required to create a moral vision leading to individual virtue and social justice. Emotion and imagination combine with reason and politics to bring the mighty 187

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to recognize the need for justice in offering protection to the vulnerable. In fact, many editorial staff felt that "perhaps the artist's function is to correct, but above all to conceive, to sharpen the sensibility so that life may have a more vivid character, active color and energy." 4 In this context one might think that Leo Tolstoy's activist aesthetic in What Is Art? would have served as an inspiration, but for this group of "sentimental rebels" (as Louis Untermeyer called them), the Russian writer provoked nothing but trouble. Eastman explained that Tolstoy "wrote without a ray of poetry or joy. The first task of a reformer is to convey in his personality the impression that life is worth reforming.”5 For these writers, romanticism was not a quiet retreat from life, but a literary rejection of modern capitalism and bourgeois society.6 The late Victorian sensibility, which fostered a new literary modernism, also spawned radical politics; Beauty acted as a catalyst not only for creating an authentic self, but also for promoting solidarity on multiple fronts. Among the people involved in instituting this transformation was a group of poets devoted to the socialist cause. Unlike the radicals of the 1930s or 1960s, whose dogmatism and orthodoxy rejected beauty as bourgeois frivolity, these writers employed a strategy of awakening rather than exposure. That is, they wrote verse that appealed to the heart and prose that appealed to the intellect. In it, Waldo Frank agreed with his colleague James Oppenheim: "I agree that the people we are trying to reach are better served by literary, well-rounded, and expressive methods than by representational methods."7 Oppenheim, Eastman, and Louis Among other things, Untermeyer saw modern poetry as the first step in a two-stage process of change because it was “inspiration”. Examining his verses, a reader would have a hard time finding an ideological statement. Neither culture nor politics alone could lead to the solidarity necessary for a liberal and democratic society. For the first two decades of the 20th century, Romantic radicals believed that art could be linked to advances in science, worldliness offered a firmer basis for knowledge than academic scholarship, and a policy of non-participation in the erupting European war of 1914 offered it the best Hope to protect liberty and seek liberty and justice at home. Eastman expressed how important that feeling and emotion was to his group, who worked with him to make the change happen: "This is us

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excellent, we writers and artists, for our ability to perceive, feel and express the quality of things. We live vividly the existing facts, the revolutionary ideal, and the long and bitter days of struggle between these two.”8 Poetry has proved essential to cultivating this sensitivity in others: “The defining purpose of poetry, like all art , is consciousness-raising.”9 Connections between emotion and experience, long neglected in historical discourse, and a commitment to beauty were values that shaped the anti-war movement and modern American culture in the progressive era. Louis Untermeyer was a particularly effective literary instigator. In a memoir he described his influence on American literary life in the first two decades of the 20th century: “I did not initiate 'movements', inspired schools, or defined the lives and times of my friends. I see myself . . . as the point of contact that triggers the mechanism.”10 Untermeyer was involved in many major literary movements. He wrote poetry, published articles in radical journals, wrote weekly literary criticism columns and edited successful anthologies. In a 1919 letter describing his son, Untermeyer inadvertently described himself: "He has a good chance of growing up into some kind of combination of Karl Marx, Percy Bysshe Shell[e]y and Huck Finn." social justice, aesthetic beauty and individual spontaneity. Born into a wealthy family of jewelry merchants in New York City, Untermeyer's parents prepared him for a career in business. In elementary school, however, he "fell in love" with the poetry of Heinrich Heine and began writing imitative lyrics that reflected a "heart torn by unreal but immediate troubles". His mother, a resettled Southerner, encouraged his efforts in this regard, discouraging "anything that questioned sentiment, platitudes, and the status quo." A casual reading of Shelley's The Mask of Anarchy - a commemorative poem about the British government's massacre of citizens at Peterloo, Manchester, in 1819 - led to an 'epiphany' that revealed not only the content of his poems but also the course of them changed your life. life too. Shelley's poems revealed that "the good and the beautiful. . . we are one . . . Feeling and purpose must be — united.”12 The more than four hundred poems that Untermeyer wrote in the next five years, 1904-1909, met a fate similar to that of Braithwaite, Monroe, and Lowell, with only twelve finding circulation .

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Untermeyer took advice from B. Russell Herts, editor of Moods, a new magazine that supported the work of young writers. Herts introduced him to established poets - he hosted a dinner that also included Markham and Viereck - and provided feedback on certain poems.13 Herts also served on a jury for a poetry competition sponsored by The International, which won Untermeyer's sonnet "Mockery" at 50 -dollar first prize.14 In exchange for five shares of The International, Untermeyer became the magazine's poetry critic, an endeavor that soon earned him a similar position at the Chicago Evening Post. After his cover debut with To Chloe and The Poet in The Younger Choir (1909), Untermeyer received further rejections. After the publisher B. W. Huebsch rejected his first collection of seventy-two letters, First Love: A Lyric Sequence, because they left the publisher "indifferent," Untermeyer persuaded his father to take over the book's publication and hired Sherman, French, the Boston Vanity Press, 1911.15 The volume received limited praise from readers and peers. In The Century, William Rose Benét gave weak praise to the poems, deeming them "fresh and unedited" with "surprisingly little impact". . PSA member Charles Hanson Towne appreciated the tape's "simplicity" and "direction", highlighting the lines, "If he had swept the stars like sand / Into a corner of the night" to comment, "This is poetry". Birmingham, Alabama state Socialist Party organizer Clement Wood saw in the poems a "lyrical intensity" that gave "a glimpse of the new social consciousness that was emerging" and inspired others to "try to understand our... proletarian sentiments into a literary expression of their own." ."18 A letter from the publisher Dudley Sicher summed up the poet-reader mutual relationship conveyed by Untermeyer's poems: "I scarcely know how to tell you what joy and what a feeling of friendship his poems inspired in me. I say friendship because the true poet's test is being able to communicate intimately with his distant but closely sympathetic reader.”19 Other readers still resented violations of the standard form. For example, G. A. Peckham, professor of Old Testament languages and literature at Hiram College in Ohio, wrote to point out Untermeyer's inaccurate rhymes. a width provided

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Income. His work at Untermeyer, Robbins and Company enabled him to live a privileged middle-class life on the Upper West Side with his wife Jean Starr (whom he married in 1907), in an apartment decorated with Polynesian batiks, Secessionist artworks the people of Munich and Paris. Pointillists and jade jewellery. Her taste for the modern and anti-formal extended to theatre, where she attended Liberal Club rehearsals, and to dancing, where she attended shows by Isadora Duncan, who once told her that the decision to become a ballerina came after her In Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn," the characters are "brought to life," according to him.21 Untermeyer also became a fixture on the burgeoning literary scene in Greenwich Village, which was not yet developing into a bohemian Mecca had solidified. In the first decade of the 20th century, the district attracted people with low rents, good accessibility and a distinctly village flair in the middle of a large metropolis. Untermeyer made important contacts while visiting Polly Holladay's, a restaurant in the basement of the Rand School of Social Science that was "a hybrid bar and saloon" and provided a forum for "all the utopians, whistleblowers, young intellectuals, and old disaffected" , he recalls. Piet Vlag offered a sneer at “bourgeois pigs” along with a plebeian-only menu of stews, spiced eel soup, haringsla (raw herring, apple, beetroot) and potato salad.22 As editor of The Masses, the Dutch immigrant received a grant from a senior New York Life Insurance clerk who was also a committed socialist. Vlag operated the magazine as a non-profit cooperative, limited advertising to other collaborations, paid no fees to contributing authors or artists, and maintained a favorable title price. In its first year, The Masses combined incisive reporting on labor and social reform movements with quality drawings by a group of Ashcan artists including Art Young, Stuart Davis and John Henri, and fiction by leading European left-wing writers such as Tolstoy. and Emile Zola. When finances faltered and Vlag headed to Florida, the board turned to writer, academic, and founder of the Men's League for Woman suffrage Max Eastman to help revitalize the magazine. The appointment – which took the form of a telegram: “You have been elected editor of The Masses. No pay." – came as a surprise to Eastman, who had then just retired as a professor in Columbia University's Department of Philosophy. He was looking for a part-time paid editing job that would give him more opportunities to pursue his own uncontroversial literary writing to pursue, but

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What he found in The Masses was a full-time unpaid job at a socialist newspaper covering politics and economics. The magazine's masthead proclaimed that it was "a revolutionary, not a reformist, magazine" that "calls for the seizure of power by those who do not possess it". Floyd Dell summed up the newspaper's motto: "It stood for Fun, Truth, Beauty, Realism, Freedom, Peace, Feminism, Revolution". Socialism as an alternative to capitalism. The son of Congregational ministers - Eastman's mother and father both spent years touring the "burnt districts" of upstate and west New York - attended Williams College, where he absorbed Emerson's idealism and Goethe's romance and decided to pursue a life of " activity and experience" to lead ". Law. Through a friend of Crystal's, Eastman was recruited by John Dewey to fill in and teach "The Principles of Science" at Columbia University after a professor died suddenly. The two men became close friends - they saw philosophy as a tool for improving life rather than a place for endless abstractions - where direct perception, spontaneous living and scientific methods could enhance the human experience. Inspired by his mother, Eastman read Nietzsche and Marx and in his spare time wandered the East Side, attending meetings of socialists, unionists, single taxpayers, "everyone," he wrote, "who sought to improve the system." 25 He did Author of articles for leading journals on contemporary social and cultural developments, including Christian Science and Cults, Psychoanalysis and Industrial Disputes. Eastman devoted his greatest passion to poetry. As he recalled in a memoir published decades later, "[I] romanticized the whole field of poetry." He managed to get only one poem published, 'To A Tawny Thrush' in The Forum, which he himself admitted was 'an imposing mausoleum' with old-fashioned poetry resting in its pages. In his philosophy lectures, Eastman presented Whitman as the consummate ideal man who lived a life devoted to poetry, nature, and the natural sciences. Richard Gilder rejected two of Eastman's articles in Leaves of Grass that analyzed morality on the grounds that The Century was "one family".

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Magazine.” Whitman might have been included in the pantheon of poets, but his sensuality and persistent lack of tact eventually kept him from the heights of Parnassus. Eastman viewed such views as evidence that poetry was withering due to sloppy aesthetics. Due to the need for optimism, Eastman avoided what he saw as sensationalist writing by whistleblowing journalists such as Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, and Ida Tarbell. The titles of three of his books convey the fact that pleasure rather than exhibition best expresses his approach: joy in poetry, joy in laughter, joy in life. Eastman shared his love of poetry with other The Masses staff. Seeing her work as “vital and real” in Louis Untermeyer’s essays on music, literature, and politics for the Chicago Evening Post’s Friday supplement A Kindred Soul Praising, Eastman hired Untermeyer to contribute monthly book reviews and plays Metaphysics accepted as an aid in everyday life, so does the poet, a "lover of the adventure of life". . . innocent of the smell of old books" brought sensible help, but Eastman never pursued it with determination. As he wrote in his autobiography of his decision not to live off his poetry: "The first requirement, I thought, is to be a man , and a man must make a living. Next thing is to be a good man, and a good man does not live entirely for himself."28 Much as he romanticized the poet's character, Eastman cast a cold gaze on it precarious life in the attic, which is why he concentrated more on writing about poetry than actually composing it. To this end, Eastman published Enjoyment of Poetry in April 1912, which combined his affinity for scholarship, verse, and pleasure. In fact, that became Book so popular that it went into a second edition within six months and the publishers brought out a "school edition" which sold very well Eastman saw the Bu ch as a summary of poetry, stating that it offers an intimate exploration of all the senses, alleviates sadness, and has a vehicle function by conveying ideas through persuasive imagery.29 Images, he argued, have value at the same time, as opposed to practical language, symbols and evocative language acted as a conduit to help readers "learn through experience"; otherwise, routine, habit, and familiarity threatened to foster alienation and boredom.30 Through “vigorous idleness” and “the power to dwell with energy,” the reading of poetry might regenerate tactile awareness of everyday life, an ability children naturally possess out, but adults - in their zeal for material comforts - have lost it. Poetic expression for writers

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provided a forum for tried-and-true, resonant words like "Wraith," "Guard," "Night-Wandering," "Putz," and "Simoom," as well as standard techniques. As Eastman argued, "No book of poetry is acceptable without a citation of these lines" from Tennyson: "The howl of doves in timeless elms,/And the murmur of innumerable bees."31 For these reasons, socialist activist Mike Gold (who steered also contributed poems to the mass) advised Untermeyer to ferment the materialism of his poems. "Your dreams are a little bumpy and overdue without enough fog," Gold wrote. “No one can be an artist without an overwhelming and pervasive sense of the cosmos. . . Nor does it cover up rebellion, but amplifies it and makes it more sacred.”32 For Gold, alleviating the suffering of individuals first required an aesthetic understanding of harmony, order, composition, and empathy; Because of their innate sensitivity and devotion to the arts, poets had a unique ability to cultivate that moral sensitivity in others. "What kind of instinct can one have that isn't seared and hurt by the sight of poverty?" asked Gold. “It is a violation of the sense of beauty and love over which the poet should have a monopoly.”33 Untermeyer finally found his aesthetic orientation in the poetry of James Oppenheim. Oppenheim, like Shelley, used poetry to address essential issues of modern industrial society in a style free from hypocrisy. In the opening sentence of The Mystic Warrior, his autobiography in verse dedicated to Whitman, Oppenheim identified his main motivation: "The world was a dream of beauty, a pain of beauty", as well as his main inspiration, blades of grass: "I looked in, shocked, repelled, attracted : an explosion of health seemed to envelop me”. Whitman improved his well-being as the lives of other great men shaped his vocation: "Gradually I fused my Napoleon, my Lincoln, my Shakespeare, my Wagner/and Jesus/into a Messiah to conquer and save the world of music. . . / No, more: a messiah who should be a song.”34 Oppenheim's poems combined, as one critic wrote, an “unorthodox sense, fresh phrasing, free form and spirit” with standard meter and rhyme. In Oppenheim's 1914 Songs for the New Age, Untermeyer identified traces of Old Testament psalmists, Whitman and Freud, recognizing: “I have made up fantasies; Jimmie wrote about things.”35 In addition to psychoanalysis, Oppenheim's interest in Nietzsche influenced the first part of the book We Dead.

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with paeans to self-divinity (“Let Nothing Bind You”), the search for an authentic self (“Self”, “Patterns”) and the creative imperative to embrace fear (“Too Human”, “The Pure”). The poet's socialist beliefs appear in only two poems. "Transfigurations" derided prayer as a solution to social ills and promoted practical public action: "End poverty: then hell will be emptier." In “Civilization”, which became one of his most famous poems, Oppenheim rubbed off bourgeois morality like a varnish: “This civilization is mostly a very finely applied varnish. . . / Pick up any newspaper every morning: leaf through it . . . /Rape, murder, villainy and theft:/The mob who tore a Negro to pieces, the men who raped a young girl.”36 Oppenheim continued these themes in War and Laughter (1916), which covered hypocrisy and greed as , unbridled values criticized "with an appeal to love for mother, for children, for the country itself". . Gladys Baker, after reading Oppenheim's collection of poems The Sea, wrote: "Two nights I thought about it, until dawn came through the window. I am struck by the silence. One can only feel the immensity of the work and stand before it with bare hands, with a great humility of spirit and an even greater gratitude for having received it.” “It is,” she continued, “as if someone shamelessly entered the soul of a man - completely naked, fearless and shameless. Those words were born of an experience too bitter and dear to be born."39 After reading the same book, Beverly Kaye wrote, "Often I turn to one of my most prized possessions, 'The Sea,' and lose myself in the panorama ... of the beauty you [wrote] with so much skill and understanding."40 Oliver Jenkins, editor of Tempo, after reading The Golden Bird exclaimed: "I'm writing this one letter in a state of joy. Only poetry with great rhythm, great emotion, great fire can make my nerves tingle in this way.” repeatedly to me: “Can words – everyday human words – be brought into such rhythmic power and sensual sweetness?” There is an internal rhythm in the verse and each note is one with meaning. . . What a joyful communion with the sun, the winds, the sea, and the spirit of beauty that lies beyond the barrier of mortal mind!”42 Various enlisted soldiers stationed in France

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as part of the American Expeditionary Forces contacted the author after reading "Song of the Uprising" in the September 1917 issue of Seven Arts. Edward Townsend Booth wrote: "I have just finished reading it and was quite entranced by its storm and magnificence. Two others in the unit had the same experience. . . We salute you, sir!”43 William Braithwaite also appreciated the fact that Oppenheim, while rebelling against prevailing social norms, did so with “a mystical quality that made his speculations on democracy and individualism somewhat more refined than usual”. as a vehement revolt against idols. of sentimentality and conservatism; it elevated its substance to a place of vision that caught the light of a state of mind that came from the eternal.”44 Braithwaite likened Oppenheim to Shelley, Whitman, and Poe, and declared Songs for the New Age the “most significant” volume of 1914 to "combine wisdom and a beauty reduced to the simplest statements in a language more widespread and universal than any other collection of poems". "The New World," which might make one more sensitive to the plight of the foreign-born poor and more angry at the "greedy representatives of international business interests" who preyed on them.46 For similar reasons, Braithwaite came to appreciate Untermeyer's work. When Untermeyer addressed the ills of the industrial world in the 1914 Challenge collection, he believed that beauty was just below work. For him, beauty calmed, enlivened, and helped soothe the excitement of contemporary life: Beauty, the passion of the universe, arose in all its forms, and beauty was and sharp, compassionate joy that fueled the vast and energetic earth. Even as he condemned the "torn and tossed" society in "Affirmation," he declared, "I will embrace the world/With joyous ferocity and undying enthusiasm." Braithwaite applauded Untermeyer for remaining resilient and respectful in the face of the tribulation, and for poems that showed sincerity and passion and no instances of pain or dogmatism.47 An encounter with the work of Robert Frost further cemented Untermeyer's literary claim. In 1913 he read in the London

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Poetry & Drama Frost published The Fear and A Hundred Collars quarterly and was impressed by the "new slang" that was "unfailingly accurate and unmistakably American." For years, while publishers dismissed Frost's manuscripts as overly simplistic and "unpoetic," Untermeyer found in these works an authenticity and form that shaped American discourse and set a new direction for American poetry. Frost explained his method: There are two kinds of realists - the one who offers a lot of dirt on his potato to show it's real, and the other who settles for a clean potato. I tend to be the second type. What art means to my life is to tidy it up, to throw it out of shape.48 Untermeyer began a friendship by writing a positive review of North of Boston and soon became one of Frost's most ardent supporters, writing his poetry in marketed to several magazines. , wrote positive reviews, scheduled and bought lectures, lent money when needed, and helped set up the Bread Loaf Writers Conference at Middlebury College, where they eventually taught together.49 Frost acknowledged Untermeyer's efforts to jumpstart his fledgling career: "I am your campfire , which you lit without the fireman's permission and left it burning as you turned to go to lunch." for us". Unity in his poetry. He accused professors and anthologists of diminishing poetic value by using encounters reduced to banalities with poetry.As a student in the 1890s, he recalled, learning poetry required writing paraphrases, as teachers asked him, "Say what the author means, in your own words." Colleagues "then reduced poem by poem ('the best words in the best order') to the worst words in the greatest possible jumble". beha Change texts with more respect and rigor. And when he was able to provide feedback to aspiring poets, he, like Markham, Braithwaite and Monroe, chose constructively

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Analysis and encouragement would foster community rather than an overly critical and coldly objective approach. In the 1916 preface to --And Other Poets, he outlined his philosophy towards literary criticism, emphasizing that his point of view was "personal, not the indifferent and Olympian attitude toward art so often assumed to be the true critical one." pose. “. hits a note of confidence and encouragement that was inspirational." She agreed with his suggestions of grounding her verses in real events to make them "heartfelt": "When I wrote them, I really felt them from my heart and mine Soul; but I notice it when I read the poems again. . . which, to an outsider, must seem more like extravagant expressions from a chimeric realm than from real life. The difficulty was that he used poetry as a place of refuge rather than a place of negotiation between reality and ideal: 'I also find so much dirty and mean. Sometimes I get so impatient with the tight monotony of business that I just have to get out of it, and so I try to forget about it in the few precious moments I have to myself. As a result, her literary output has been "a sort of safety valve for a bubbly romance that practical experience hasn't destroyed," she admitted. about the new poets in various magazines and newspapers. For some he was too generous, for others Untermeyer was too impersonal. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, who had made a name for herself in the 1890s with Poems of Passion, Poems of Pleasure and Poems of Power, blamed Untermeyer for promoting modern poets. "You can only experiment with words," she told him in 1915 at a PSA meeting. "The great thing in poetry lies beyond them". they are his own personal impressions and not solemn oracular purposes.”56 For more radical critics like Randolph Bourne, on the other hand, aesthetic criticism had to forge a clear philosophy and be a source of resistance to state and war.57 Untermeyer chose a middle ground.—Weg, traveled the country , lectured on new poetry and was invited to work as a poet-in-residence at the University of Michigan.

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It helped that Untermeyer not only had the right CV, but also the preferred behavior. The question of gender and poetry has sparked concern across the cultural landscape, which is why Untermeyer's figure—as a businessman, fine handwriting, and to some extent a celebrity—has allowed him to travel in separate but overlapping circles. : respectable New York society and avant-garde cadre; academics and lay readers inside. Lew Sarrett, a professor of literature at Northeastern University, offered Untermeyer an appointment as poet-in-residence, a position modeled on Robert Frost's $5,000 salary at the University of Michigan that required no teaching commitments, just his presence the campus (Percy Mackaye held a similar position at the University of Miami). "Many universities are watching the Michigan experiment with interest," wrote Sarrett. The plan was to encourage poetry by "acknowledging art in this way and stamping it by signing it". Untermeyer's authority did not stem solely from his level-headed and benevolent criticism: 'You combine admirably what a man needs: a reputation for real achievement in poetry (plus an asset - your literary criticism); ability to meet college men in their own subject, literature; you are a blender; and they are devoid of the idiosyncrasies which make some poets seem a little odd to the corn-fed layman's mind.”58 Willard Wattles (1888–1950), professor of rhetoric at the University of Kansas, whose work is included in the anthologies Poetry and Jessie Rittenhouse appeared from the He also approved of Untermeyer's behavior: They are not fooled by amateur antics and posturing. Deliver us from these things, O Lord, the skeptic, the cynic, the sophist, and the amateur! Hermann Hagedon was here in January just to confirm some of my opinions about 'green plush' ladies and 'manly' young men. I bet there was quite a stir when Reginald Wright Kaufmann, or whoever he was, spoke before the Poetry Society about "The Virility of the Poet". I see Witter Bynner writing green and someone else writing pink. . . You know, people never start talking about manhood until they feel like it's slipping away from them.59 Alfred Harcourt of Harcourt, Brace and Howe commissioned Untermeyer to create a "pioneering collection of American verse" for high school and college assemble students. The result was the hugely successful The New Era in American Poetry. In preparing the anthology, Untermeyer had to please many voters, including one

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Editor who wanted a representative selection of recognized standards alongside modern poets. Ultimately, Untermeyer's selection criteria revolved around what he believed to be the enduring qualities of poetry: delight, "the pleasure of recognition, the pleasure of surprise"; Arrangement, "how common words made the familiar seem strange or the strange familiar"; and memory, including the associations the poem evoked. For both Untermeyer and Frost, choosing a poem was like love at first sight. "The proper reader of a good poem can say, the moment he realizes, that he has suffered an immortal wound," Frost wrote to Untermeyer. "That he'll never get over it. In other words, constancy in poetry, as in love, is perceived immediately.” Attempts to analyze a poem were just as futile, as Untermeyer confirmed: “We cannot explain the essence of a poem in the same way that we cannot explain a color or a able to translate perfume”. Art and Politics, a choice evident in the opening pages of A New Era.”61 Published in the year of Whitman's centenary, verses from The Bard of Democracy introduce the volume: “ . . . this and more branches into / myriad branches. / Always free will and diversity! / Always the continent of democracy!' erred than "beauty". Stedman and his colleagues at The Century felt a personal responsibility to protect the morals of their mostly female audience. Any hint of immorality or inconvenience led to an avalanche of protest letters from these women, as well as from members of the clergy, teachers, newspaper editors and civil servants. limited forays into the provinces of realism, conflict and sex. After all, culture served as a necessary accompaniment to life, conveying harmony, security and familiarity, not fear, excitement or provocation. Meanwhile, Untermeyer's selection avoided preaching and moralizing; Though "human, lustful, and powerful", the poems contained in New Era, drawn from the lives of the poets rather than from books or legends, were "closer to the ground" and therefore "closer to the soul". old words or myths to enjoy the content. And in the post-war world of industrial action and urban race riots, Untermeyer redefined nationalism by emphasizing "inherent Americanism" and the US's democratic spirit and discourse

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contributors. His inspiration was Whitman, "who broke the bonds of the contemporary poet and opened to him the doors of America". Just as Whitman established "the American character" by throwing "action, theory, idealism, business" into a melting pot, and Frost freshened up colloquialism by simplifying language and form, these poets located beauty in the "casual and commonplace." . The volume's modern poets dealt with fascination, not fear, with the diversity of races and ideals of the nation, advances in science and liberal thought and movements towards social democracy, "all the confusion, struggle and beauty of the modern world" . Aiken, who has championed the need for serious literary criticism for several years, criticized the anthology's balance of old and new. Untermeyer, Aiken complained, contained much "old school" poetry and very little avant-garde. "I think you overrate confectionery, caviar, supernaturalism, and romantic traditionalism." When Untermeyer defended his decision not to include T.S. Eliot because of his negativity, disillusionment, and lack of emotion, Aiken replied, "Of course I disagree with you; I think there are so many carefully stored, perfect emotions."66 Aiken gave this advice for later editions: "No easy generalization. . . not many stripes, not many stars; less of E Pluribus Unum and more of the pluralistic universe. Even if the judgments didn't match his own, Sandburg admired that Untermeyer "always opened windows in the house of American literary arts—there's a surge of hope, an Edison expectation of the future, and a Henry Ford belief that the river is flowing." As humanity rides toward greater goals, it will somehow find enough gas, gasoline, or some other type of dynamic juice to keep it going. Sandburg's only caveat was that Untermeyer expanded his tastes to include more geographic diversity, including voices from outside Manhattan, and that his peers included "machinists, inventors, engineers" and labor activists as well as "the Literary Gang." This would give his judgments a "revitalizing" power.68 Sandburg assured Untermeyer that the book had a large and appreciative audience in small towns and state colleges across the country.69 Sales figures and the judgment of others supported this claim. John Gould Fletcher identified the anthology's mix of old and new as one of the main reasons for its success. "I totally agree with you there

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Public (in America at least) seems to have enough new stuff for now," but he criticized Untermeyer's own poetry and encouraged him to examine his psyche more deeply. "You need to eliminate the Keats from your lineup. As do I make the most of my facilities at Shelley 71 Letters of thanks came from obscure writers alongside the most notable ones like Hart Crane, Edwin Muir, Leonie Adams, Maxwell Bodenheim, James Rorty and John Crowe Ransom. Like other progressive poets, Untermeyer worked behind the scenes, to help these poets find places to publish and secure public readings, in addition to paying for writing performances.Untermeyer and his colleagues at The Masses saw their bill less as law lobbyists and more as an "alarm clock," a term Max Eastman used in his 1918 book of poetry, which attempted to explain the struggle between social justice, to which he was undeniably committed, and individual freedom, in which his “undivided essence” resided entirely.72 Eastman rejected the notion that an interest in aesthetics diminished his commitment to the socialist struggle and persisted insists that in individual experience alone, “this faculty of living life—beyond the ultimate and absolute value it has in itself—contributes something indispensable to practical movement. It contributes what we might call inspiration.”73 This approach was in line with the strategy of others in the sophisticated modern literary community. He united leftist, politically engaged writers with Boston's most conservative Brahmin, Amy Lowell, who believed that in the struggle to improve social conditions, a relentless focus on problems promised a one-way street to despair, while "idealism was a perception of beauty, a quest for finesse and noblesse" illuminated a path to individual fulfillment and social harmony.74 It also conformed to Braithwaite's credo. A poetics that curbed writing about social ills and industrial tyranny "by holding up the mirror of the imagination to the old world of beauty." , could promote fellowship and healing.75 Braithwaite lauded poets who appealed to middle-class humanity and compassion.To varying degrees, Markham, Monroe, Rittenhouse, and Viereck also developed authorial strategies while undertaking practical work to solve modern problems.In doing so, d These reformers the blind orthodoxy of later radicals. They stayed alive

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Acts beyond political ideology to promote solidarity with those left behind on the path of industrial capitalism's progress.

When war broke out in 1914, the poetic community initially and overwhelmingly supported American neutrality, a position shared by most of their American compatriots. In fact, some members have castigated the poets for past efforts to tolerate fights. Alice Henderson spoke for many when she wrote in a poetry editorial that "the American attitude to war is a real revolt against war." Monroe called the war being waged in Europe "a sudden destruction of hope, a brutal denial of progress, a bloody anachronism" and published an editorial proposing an aesthetic explanation for the origins of the war, insisting that the Poets shared the blame for inciting war: Poets have fought more wars than kings, and war will not stop until it has taken its spell from people's imaginations. What is the fundamental, essential cause of war? The feeling in men's hearts that it's beautiful. And who created this feeling? . . . [Poets] transform their savagery and terror into sounds, colors, and forms of beauty to give their irrationality a heroic appeal, their anger and lust a heroic apology.76 For these writers, beauty was a powerful force that served as a means Battle cry that moved hearts and minds as well as dreams of imperialism, nationalism and ideology. Poets were deeply divided over how best to fulfill their dual duties as writers and citizens, as an unbearable tension arose between the freedom to write and the duty of being an American poet - a tension that led to the articulation of a nationalistic aesthetic standards led. Monroe commended Sandburg for shedding light on the horrors of war. His poem "Ready To Kill" expressed a desire to crush the bronze monument of a famous general on horseback, equipped with a flag, sword and weapon: "Ready to run the red blood and slush the enterals of men all over/ the sweet new new”. Prairie Grass.” “The war will end,” concluded Monroe, “when such a sentiment seizes the imagination of men.” war" as "a real revolt against war".

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The poet's supreme duties were "to keep man in his place, to rebuke his intense and absurd preoccupations with business or power, with love or war or fame, and to remind him of infinity". Replace it with "more beautiful and heroic dreams" and a "beauty demand."80 George Sylvester Viereck's actions during World War I provided a crucial test case, showing how poets negotiated conflicting loyalties. Beginning in 1914, Current Opinion reprinted a spectrum of responses to the conflict, ranging from moderate support to anti-war diatribes. Most of the war-related lines that made it onto the pages of the poetry section first appeared in Die Messen.81 This was largely due to the efforts of Viereck, who was in Berlin as a relative of Kaiser Wilhelm II and concerned for his living parents closer ties between the two countries were desired at the time. Although Viereck publicly professed his loyalty to America, he also worked to balance negative images of Germany in the press, which he saw as "British-controlled". European news from a German perspective. The first three years were successful, with circulation hovering between 60,000 and 70,000.83 The newspaper became Viereck's main source of income and took up a lot of time, leaving little time for his duties at The International and Current Opinion. While Homeland brought him money and personal satisfaction, it also caught the attention of the Secret Service. William H. Houghton was assigned early in 1915 to maintain control of German-American activities. Two months after the Lusitania sank in May 1915, the agency had a stroke of luck by pursuing Viereck when he was with Dr. Heinrich Albert, lawyer and advisor to the German Ambassador to the United States, Count von Bernstorff. When Viereck got off at the 23rd Street station, Houghton followed. Luckily the agent called backup. Twenty-seven blocks later, deep in a book, Albert almost missed his stop. He quickly jumped off the train, only to remember leaving his briefcase behind. He was very late. Agent Frank Burke grabbed the bag and ran off. When Albert discovered his briefcase, he unsuccessfully pursued it. The documents were soon in the hands of William McAdoo, Secretary of the Treasury, who shared them with his boss, President Woodrow Wilson. The contents became known when the New York World ran an August 15, 1915 cover story with a photograph of Viereck underneath.

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the headline "How Germany worked in the US to form opinion, blockade allies and get ammunition for itself, told in letters from secret agents." Viereck's photo appeared alongside excerpts from his correspondence with Albert. Another Washington Post article, "Embassy Members and Prominent Germans Named in Striking Campaign to Conquer American Thought," featured a portrait of Viereck alongside images of von Bernstorff and Dr. by Bethmann-Hollweg, the Reich Chancellor. The scale of German propaganda activity shocked Americans. Albert's newspapers revealed that Germany was spending $2 million a week trying to influence public opinion. Viereck received a not inconsiderable share of this allocation. Worse, the documents detail that in addition to propaganda, these men had planned other possible, more insidious actions. One of the plans involved the clandestine takeover of a munitions factory and encouraging strikes among workers. Another idea was to buy large quantities of chlorine gas and take over the Wright Company's aircraft patents.84 The American public reacted with anger; some citizens even called for the publisher's execution as a traitor. However, the government could not initiate legal proceedings against Viereck, who openly admitted receiving funds from the German government to publish articles, pamphlets and books in defense of Germany.85 He considered such actions justifiable and argued that his French colleagues did not Also, acts were well-paid and a necessary response to Britain's disruption of transatlantic cables, which led to a near monopoly of information supply to the Allies during the war, and to similar publicity campaigns by British officials and Anglo-American citizens. However, front-page articles revealing the extent of Viereck's efforts (and the size of the fee) divided the PSA community.86 Undeterred by the public exposure, Viereck continued to work on a more conciliatory American policy towards Germany. All seemed well as the initial public unrest subsided over the next few months and PSA members continued to welcome him to meetings. Markham expressed the sentiments of many members in "Outwitted," an epigram that Viereck donated as a comfort: He drew a circle that excluded me - heretic, rebel, something to despise. But Love and I had the wits to win: we drew a circle around it.87

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Viereck's close friend at Harvard University, Hugo Münsterberg, fared less well. Munsterberg attended the first meetings of the German-American "Propaganda Cabinet" (of which Viereck was a member), where he urged secrecy about his activities and helped raise funds. He also tried to revive the German-American alliance. After the sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915, Munsterberg reduced his pro-German activities, but lifelong friends deserted him for supporting Germany, and Harvard President Abbott Lowell reprimanded him for unworthy conduct.88 Munsterberg's death in 1916 resolved the controversy . In a letter to his mother in Berlin, written after attending the funeral, Viereck aptly wrote of his late mentor: Although he was one of the oldest members of the faculty, one of the men who founded the psychological faculty for the first time in the United States made , United if not the world, he's never been to a faculty meeting since the war. I asked him why. "Because," he said, "I don't want to sit between two empty chairs." He was socially ostracized and publicly insulted. Even his family felt the wickedness of New England. For example, several women left the chapel at Harvard when they saw their two daughters praying there.89 Viereck attributed the animus to jealousy and anti-German prejudice.90 He wrote this in a statement that may reveal more about Viereck's perspective and situation Munsterberg “had the gift of journalism and his many friends never forgave him for that. Their success alone has made them their enemies.” The “small private persecution” campaign was waged against his “strongly pro-German stance” because of the prevailing chauvinism “especially in Boston” with its strong Anglocentric traditions and sympathies. Viereck assured his mother that he had not been subjected to similar treatment. Like a dutiful son who didn't want to give cause for concern, he bravely said, “But don't think that I will face such persecution. I'm not as sensitive as Münsterberg and I can take good care of myself. In fact, I only surrounded myself with friends and admirers. The enemy respects me because I know how to take care of myself. I can snap my fingers at them because

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I am spiritually and financially independent. Unless they revised my book [Songs of Armageddon], they didn't hurt me too much. You cannot take away from me whatever genius I possess.91 Viereck's pro-German attitude, expressed in pacifist rhetoric, earned him little reproach from his villagers. Most avant-garde writers, poets, and artists advocated American neutrality. Randolph Bourne, Untermeyer and their colleagues at Seven Arts wrote passionately against the war. The more conservative members of the Poetry Society maintained their neutrality. The May 1916 issue of Braithwaite's Poetry Journal also took stock of the temperament of the poetic community. Aiken, protesting the war, wrote an editorial denouncing a much more serious opponent: Free Verse. The editors wrote one of the few reviews of Viereck's war poems collected in Songs of Armageddon. Characterized by a "Teutonic force and aggressiveness that cannot be ignored", the "powerful screams full of irony and derision" hide "a deeper note of sincerity and emotion". Critics praised the author's lightness, with words full of "colour, panache and imagery". others "should be viewed as persons 'operating in essential sectors.'" A New York Tribune editorial welcomed the decision. "In the sincerity of feeling, in the felicity of construction, in the beauty of expression," the poets demonstrated diverse technical skill, but nonetheless had "a very real effect in lifting up hearts" and "hardening the courage of thousands of readers." . . That's not all. The artisans of this important industry did not ask for relief from the burdens of the day.”93 After the United States entered the war in April 1917, Congress passed the Espionage and Sedition Acts aimed at destroying pacifist writings and the activities of dissidents to contain . This legislation had a major impact on the literary community, which faced the hysteria and subsequent threats to personal liberty. Masses were suppressed and publishers put on trial. Emma Goldman and other outspoken anarchists were arrested. Poetry became a widely used medium to debate the conflict, with poems being published daily in newspapers, magazines, and books, and recited in classrooms, public protests, and political speeches. The

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It was used on the left by members of the Women's Peace Party, Industrial Workers of the World, and the NAACP, and on the right by the US. Food Administration and George Creel's Committee on Public Information.94 Frost, Untermeyer and their cohort took positions in this discursive terrain. They located their disagreement in a rhetoric that mixed notions of justice and authentic individualism with the free play of the imagination; for them the war represented European decadence and American war speculation. Through prose, poetry and short stories, The Masses provided a forum for alternative perspectives on the war. The ensuing clashes between the magazine and government officials are well known. In 1917, the Postal Service stopped shipping the magazine, bankrupting the publication financially.95 The federal government subsequently filed charges of violating the Espionage Act by "conspiracy to insubordinate and/or mutiny in the armed forces and naval forces of the United States." and for “conspiracy to obstruct draft and recruitment.”96 There was no evidence of conspiracy and the government's case devolved into a free speech issue. The trial was, as Floyd Dell later described it, "like a scene from Alice in Wonderland rewritten by Dostoyevsky," with a middle-class jury and a Liberty Loan Band performing military marches outside the courthouse windows. The judge declared a mistrial, and Untermeyer spent the second trial writing poetry and exchanging verse with Jack London, while Edna St. Vincent Millay quoted Elizabethan sonnets and Floyd Dell composed free verse steeped in psychoanalysis. The lawsuit ended in an inconclusive jury. H. L. Mencken, a war opponent who as a German-American had to be particularly careful in his public statements, wrote to Untermeyer in 1917 in the trial of The Masses in a consoling manner: “In wartime, democracy always falters with such extravagances. . . to argue anything at such a moment seems as impossible as stopping a stampede by playing a clarinet in E.”97 A similar fate befell Seven Arts, a magazine Oppenheim founded to promote a new national culture. He viewed the materialism of modern America, devoted to business, to machines, and to enlargement, as "a new fact on earth" in need of repair: "Perhaps we cannot imagine your culture. The old tricks might not work.” Untermeyer served on the advisory board along with Smart Set editor George Nathan, Van Wyck Brooks and Amy Lowell, who, although they were

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a Brahmin from Boston, appreciated the magazine's efforts to rekindle readers' imaginations.98 Oppenheim explained the editorial intention: "All of us here search our hearts, strive, seek that which you say to seek—that we are one are nation. The Seven Arts are dedicated to the task of birthing a national soul. And across the country there is unrest, confusion, longing.”99 But the longing was not for “historic America,” with its exploitative labor practices and dogged pursuit of wealth. As the first edition mission statement proclaimed, "We are living in the early days of a renaissance, an age which will mark for America the advent of that national consciousness which is the beginning of greatness." Despite the original intent to avoid politics, the great broke war on. Included in the opening number was Frost's "The Bonfire", which contained the controversial line: "War is for everyone, for children too". Randolph Bourne published his anti-war essays The War and the Intellectuals and Below the Battle, along with A War Diary and Twilight of the Idols. These articles provoked the ire of the magazine's patron, Mrs. Rankine. "I don't agree with the magazine's war policy," he lamented. "And don't support the Articles of War that have appeared in recent issues. I wish to withdraw my support and sever my association with the company as soon as possible.”100 When Untermeyer then requested support from his friend Lowell, who had contributed poetry and reviews, she sent two hundred dollars along with the caveat that “She must sticking to the arts and abandoning their policy of criticizing the current war policy of the government. From the beginning she supported the magazine's cultural mission: “Your magazine is a great cause; In fact, I can't overstate my excitement for it. . . The honest, no-nonsense idealism you infuse into this role is what makes it what it is." She responded to that request with another letter asking for a simplified focus: "If, like me, you're into the believing in the saving grace of the arts, and poetry in particular, you will not allow it to express your personal opinion on matters outside of this scope to interfere in its mission to keep the spirit of poetry and beauty alive in this sorely tried country.” funding discontinued.

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As editor of the pro-German magazine Das Vaterland, Viereck was also the target of official and unofficial criticism. Sales and paid advertising fell quickly, despite repeated claims that The Fatherland was "100 percent American," and he refused to accept charges that his activities to balance reporting conflicted with his loyalty to the United States. As a token of his loyalty, he reserved space for the government to advertise Liberty Bond campaigns and reproduce articles provided by George Creel's Committee on Public Information. Viereck claimed that he helped nearly 5,000 veterans find employment, a number that was probably inflated.102 Despite these efforts, the mob regularly surrounded his apartment and forced him to move his family from Manhattan to his father-in-law's Mount Vernon home to be published.103 Viereck's position in the Poetry Society also suffered as a result. Unlike Aiken and other poets who advocated neutrality, Viereck openly sympathized with the enemy. He was unaware or unwilling to accept that his hyphenated American status increased scrutiny of his loyalty. Other German-Americans practiced strategically transparent and aggressive patriotism. Untermeyer advocated American intervention, while poet Hermann Hagedorn helped found the "Watchers," a group of poets, authors, and artists who distributed nationalist pamphlets and patrolled the literary community in search of writers who would support the demands of a country in the ignored war. For Volksdeutsche, partisanship became the litmus test of patriotism. In the literary community, other poets have used this test. Normally tolerant of free love, experimentation, and open expression, the Poetry Society adapted to wartime pressures to promote correct, clean, and patriotic verse. Hagedorn and Lowell monitored the PSA and waged a campaign to defeat Viereck. Hagedorn, a Harvard graduate whose family was still in Germany, published a poem, "Portrait of a Rat," while Lowell maneuvered behind the scenes to destroy Viereck's reputation.104 By 1914, Lowell had championed American neutrality, but his Sympathies were clearly with Great Britain. When European hostilities broke out in August 1914, she was in London offering her services as a volunteer on Herbert Hoover's Belgian War Aid Council. She guided foreign arrivals into the country to the appropriate authorities, helped Americans secure their passage home, and donated $10,000 to Hoover's agency

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compositions). Patterns, however, became one of her best-known poems, especially these lines: Summer and winter I have to walk up and down garden paths stamped on my stiff brocade dress. . . And the softness of my body is protected from the embrace by every button, hook and lace. For the man who should have lost me is dead, fighting with the duke in Flanders, in a pattern called war. Christ! What are standards for?106 Up until now, Lowell has tracked the movements of his nephew, Major James A. Roosevelt, across the French battlefields, including the Argonne. His death, caused by meningitis, hit her just as hard as the revolutions of 1917 in Russia and the waves of domestic strikes, which hit the textile industry in particular. She took her name from the great industrial town of Lowell founded by her great-grandfather and prided herself on being "the last of the barons", but she slept with a revolver under her pillow and surrounded by her seven sheepdogs out of fear before the mob workers would invade the city, their house. The confusion that followed the 1919 Boston police strike—part of a nationwide protest that affected 20 percent of the country's workforce—further fueled his paranoia.107 Lowell was convinced that the poet Leonora Speyer's husband was a Jewish aristocrat from England who was pro-German, became a German spy agent. When Braithwaite published an enthusiastic review of Leonora's poetry, accompanied by a photograph of the poet, Lowell so aggressively challenged his judgment and tact that it contributed to a lasting rift in their friendship.108 Lowell joined his efforts with the Americans who supported President Wilson in the War for Democracy. She believed that humans naturally need poetry as much as they need food. The conflict reinforced this need: “I think the world needs poetry more than ever. Keeping the beauty going is absolutely necessary.”109 In a letter to Aldington, who fought on the Western Front, she outlined the contributions women could make

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do for the war effort: "We must keep a functioning world for the rest of you when you return. We must keep alive the spirit of beauty, kindness and idealism.”110 Lowell did his “part” by responding to Hagedorn's request to become a member of the Watchers and contributing a series of war poems.111 Several newspapers published a selection from her Phantasms of War collection, which she later rationalized as purely pragmatic action: "I've never had patriotic fervor. I felt it imperative to go into the backyard and kill that skunk.”112 At his home in poetic parish, Lowell cold-heartedly attacked another intruder. Viereck's disrepute threatened to tarnish the position of the fledgling Poetry Society, which had built a solid reputation against all odds in the seven years since its founding. Lowell's intervention explains the actions of Society President Edward Wheeler, a friend and collaborator of Viereck's since their time on the Current Literature staff together. Lowell helped inspire a letter from Wheeler to Viereck. On April 10, 1918, Wheeler wrote asking Viereck to avoid embarrassment of the society as well as "serious desertion" of members by quietly resigning. The Washington Post reported that the executive committee also cited his pro-German statements, his support of pacifist candidates for public office, his promotion of Germany's peace offerings, and his alleged blood ties to the Kaiser as reasons for the renunciation request. 113 When Viereck then protested his innocence, Wheeler, spurred on by a deluge of letters from Lowell, became even more insistent. He demanded that Viereck withdraw his membership for "unpatriotic remarks."114 Reminding Wheeler of his work for the Agricultural and Industrial Relief Project, Viereck insisted that resigning would undermine his patriotism. He also expressed concern that poetry, "the most liberal of all arts," might become a "servant of intolerance," insisting that "I have just as justly to accept the resignation of the Executive Committee and the members who are could be hostile to me.”115 The Society had no legal basis for expelling a member. According to the statutes issued in 1913 (which Viereck helped to draft), mere non-payment of debts was sufficient grounds for termination. However, Wheeler found justification for his actions in Section III, which he subordinated to the Executive Committee

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"the administration of the affairs of the Society."116 At a monthly meeting, Markham pointed out the injustice: Our Constitution contains no provision for such a procedure. Why? Because this is a poetry society and only cares about poetry - not about politics at all, not about wars between nations. If Mr. Viereck would have written a bad poem, then we would be responsible. . . [the Poetry Society] has other problems that are more difficult to solve—problems related to rhyme, meter, and new sentences.117 Wheeler tried to back up his arguments by proposing an amendment to the PSA constitution that would allow such action , only to be stalled B. by an appeal by William Churchill, a staff member of George Creel's Committee on Public Information in Washington, D.C., who indicated that the U.S. government had plans to use Viereck's writings as American propaganda in Germany to use.118 This initially prevented any action to identify Viereck, but then, when it became public knowledge, Creel denied all official plans to use such writings.119 Viereck responded to renewed hostility against him with an appeal to reason: resist, don't give in to hysteria. That is the position of the Attorney General of the United States and President Wilson." His pain and anger, however, came through in the last sentence: "The Executive Committee does not speak for the poets of America, but allows itself to be a tool of private resentment and unbridled emotionalism abuse.”120 While Viereck was fighting this fight, he was losing others, and he was expelled from the Authors' League and the New York Athletic Club, and Who's Who crossed him off their list.121 Lowell, who exchanged in a her had read the copy of Viereck's American Weekly sent by the editors, was offended. Although the newspaper had a small circulation, she feared the publicity would tarnish the PSA. In a letter to Wheeler, she denounced the publication of the correspondence as "vulgar," "flagrant," and "proof of German tactlessness." Viereck's insistence on "intellectual independence," she argued, "contradicts the purposes for which an association was formed." More importantly, she viewed Viereck's continued presence in the society as "a threat to the entire organization". Lowell lamented that Viereck did not understand the implications of remaining a member: "I feel so deeply involved with the issue

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Unfortunately for society to have someone so outright incompatible [sic] (to put it in its mildest form).”122 A few days later his attitude remained bitter. She responded to Wheeler's expressions of sympathy for his old friend by writing: "I feel sorry for him, as I agree with you that this country will not be a comfortable place for him to live, but since he has made his bed, so I am afraid , he will have to lie.”123 Viereck correctly predicted that associates could not take away a “genius” he might have possessed, but they could certainly take away his status. The Irish poet, playwright and nationalist Shaemus O'Sheel, blacklisted for his support of the 1916 Easter Rising against the British, made an ill-fated attempt to protect Viereck.124 He wrote privately to PSA Secretary Rittenhouse Viereck's Contributions to the Organization: “I know of no member of society who has championed liberalism as consistently in government, politics, and membership as Mr. Viereck. He, my martyr friend Joyce Kilmer, and I have often advocated for broader policies.” The three men acted when the Executive Committee attempted to expel a member known to have a drinking problem, pointing out that a such policies would have barred Poe from membership. Action against Viereck would "make it fundamentally impossible for this society to act as a torchbearer of art and enlightenment, of culture and liberalism." from a letter addressed to Wheeler, along with a power of attorney authorizing the members of the Society to permit him to vote at the December 28 meeting when deciding on Viereck's membership status. O'Sheel accused Wheeler of "undermining the law and creating anarchy" in the PSA, and complained about members of the executive committee trying to block his attendance at meetings by withholding the bulletin (where those who seized against Viereck actions of the PSA were not mentioned) and the notices of the meeting. O'Sheel further charged that when Clement Wood asked for full attention on the matter at the Nov. 18 meeting, the committee called in an extra guest to limit time. Wood, who moved to New York from Birmingham, Alabama, and was an outspoken supporter of African American civil rights, argued that they "used the lessons learned from my attempts at assimilation to conspire with others to suppress free discussion."

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The Executive Committee tried desperately to avoid a public confrontation. The kind of rousing reunion Wheeler had been looking forward to four years earlier, however, took place on November 29th. To prevent discussion of the matter, the committee established a "rule" whereby any matter could be considered except by majority vote. When O'Sheel stood up to request a discussion of Viereck's status, Wheeler shouted, "Out of order!" Wheeler used this decree to overshadow Wood's attempt to remind the congregation of the Society's bylaws. Amid the turmoil, Wheeler took it upon himself to conduct a vote denying O'Sheel's appeal. O'Sheel accused Wheeler of "waking up the mob spirit from night-gown thugs to a lynch-law tone". Several members questioned Viereck's illegal expulsion, but a motion to call a special session to discuss it lost by one vote.126 The Executive Committee did not accept powers of attorney given to O'Sheel by Russell Herts, Ivan Swift, and Marjorie Allen Seiffert , who would give the majority. Guthrie then rose and called for O'Sheel's arrest, while Arthur Guiterman, author of humorous verse, aggressively approached O'Sheel "with the bravery of his German ancestry". Wheeler didn't call in a cop, but instead called in a "heavyweight boxer, believed to be a member of the Gas House Gang" to get O'Sheel out. He left dejected: "Saddened to see a hundred 'polite' people, many of my old friends, turned by fanaticism into a mob who howled at me as I stood up for justice and honor. I left.”127 At the December 28, 1918, convention from which O'Sheel was formally expelled, Viereck was summarily expelled from the organization that had played such an important role in its founding. In exile he was joined by other poets who resigned in protest. The Honorary President of the PSA, appointed by Viereck, Edwin Markham, visited Viereck at his home to express his solidarity.128 Witter Bynner wrote about his disappointment at the events and inquired about plans to start a new society. Discouraged, Viereck replied that it was impossible to compete with the Poetry Society. Because of the influence he exercised, "everyone who associates with me may have to share the taboo!"129 Lowell wrote to Rittenhouse expressing concern for the Society. She had read from Brookline of an exodus of members but believed they were not major poets: "I don't think we'll miss most of them."130 She reduced the event first to a whisper, then over the years Years of silence almost entirely, Rittenhouse responded by noting so

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O'Sheel's letters were misleading because only he and Conrad Aiken had left the Fellowship. The whole issue should be dropped because, after all, "everyone is disgusted with him". O'Sheel watched the renovations with disgust. In a private letter to Rittenhouse, he described an ossified poetry society that resembled an autocratic regime rather than an association whose members advocated experimentation and open expression. He criticized society's development into "self-appointed dictators of opinion and norms" and denounced the "secret and clandestine machinations of a lawless directory". This is ironic, Monroe noted, given the poets' highly individualistic nature. The incident raised questions about freedom of thought, expression and the press, as well as "artistic and spiritual" concerns. Monroe ended with a plea for "more tolerance towards conscientious objectors and other unruly opponents". ." In fact, the "Guardians" formed a "Never Again Square" crusade to erase his name from memory. Several literary institutions also contributed to his name being removed from literary circles. His poetry stopped appearing in anthologies, Yard and Company returned all plaques to his books, and the Poetry Society of America reports that have been published over the years make no mention of Viereck and his role in founding the organization. 134 members rushed to link the poetry to pure patriotism in order to win the respect of a skeptical American public demanding a clear stance on enemies. Viereck threatened this project with his pro-German sympathies. The project of democratizing poetry, while increasing publicity, had an unhealthy effect on freedom of expression and tolerance. The post-war backdrop of nativism, race riots and calls for "a return to normal" hardened this stance.

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Till change fades All things but Beauty.1 - Ezra Pound, "Envoi" (1919) Edwin Markham stood between two fluted Doric columns on a platform of snow-white Colorado Yule marble and gazed at the National Shopping Center. About 50,000 people gathered, including Civil War veterans dressed in blue and gray, and an estimated two million others listened to the ceremonies over the radio. He recited Lincoln, Man of the People, originally composed in 1899 and revised for the occasion. Behind the poet that day in May 1922 sat the sixteenth President's only surviving son, Robert Todd Lincoln, who as a young man served on the staff of Ulysses S. Grant and witnessed the surrender of Robert E. Lee. at Appomattox Court House, just days before his father's murder. Other speakers included President Harding and Chief Justice William Howard Taft, who chaired the ceremonial committee. Members of this panel also edited the speech of the only African American speaker on the platform, Dr. Robert Moton - who took over as director of the Tuskegee Institute after the death of Booker T. Washington - quenched his criticism of persistent discrimination across the country and toned down his defiant tone.2 The event was in many ways a high point for progressive poets. Just five months after Markham read his bourgeois poem to a national audience in the company of political leaders, the poetic landscape changed irrevocably with the publication of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. In modern times, the tectonic shift created by the poem in the various poetic manifestations went unnoticed by many.

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communities. Harriet Monroe, who favored nature as a source of artistic inspiration and spiritual renewal, thought the poem was "the hyper-urban thoughts of one who had never left home."4 Amy Lowell wrote to Gilbert Seldes, editor of The Dial, who wrote the poem published : "The man is undoubtedly intelligent, but I cannot find him poetic. It's as if he took infinite care to start a fire but forgot to light a match.”5 She wrote to Richard Aldington that “The Waste Land” was evidence of pathology, not poetry.6 Eliot had “his mental anemia overcome," she wrote to another friend, which "seemed to be a real malady for him," if he had any hope of attaining greatness. As for the other reasons why Eliot's poem did not delight the general readership: “When I recited Walt Whitman, the workers always applauded his freedom songs; When I read Ezra Pound or T.S. Eliot aloud, they would squirm in their seats and look out the windows of the Rand School auditorium.”8 Despite this misunderstanding, the literary modernist sensibilities embodied in The Waste Land evoked the postmodern mood up .-War of Disenchantment. Instead of sincerity and exaltation, Eliot was ironic and profound. He avoided easy solutions, offered no moral security, but rather paradoxical and disturbing questions. Modernist writers were even more vocal about their disdain for the stanzas and sensibilities of progressive poets. Guest editor of the last edition of Others in 1919, William Carlos Williams found Henderson, Untermeyer and Braithwaite dull, empty and irrelevant. "The mark of a great poet is the degree to which he is aware of his time, and NOT," Williams wrote, "the weight of beauty in his courts." Williams refuted the essentialist notion that a writer must be a good man , to do worthwhile work, and the notion that the best way to approach modern problems is to conjure them up in the performing arts, and advocated more succinct interrogations of the modern state of affairs, whether male or female is passionate or tender towards his children or his wife or she loves his husband or if he is dramatic, lyrical, if his lines are short or long, if he writes about Tahiti or Back Bay, if he represents the black race, the Chinese, the river rat? BUT he has a vision of the desolate PRESENT. . . I don't give a fuck about airplanes and

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Airplane poetry, but I care no less for the troubled brain that must find its salvation by building gas engines and balancing them on cloth wings in its agony. . . After diagnosing the problem, Dr. Williams prescribed as a solution to examine the complexity of the human mind: Ancient poetry is NOT enough. . . I am not at all interested in socialism or anarchy, but I am very interested in the brain that demands and brings to the surface socialism and anarchy.9 However, these works used to be difficult to read. Margaret Widdemer rejected this development and pitied critics who saw the poems only as objects of study. She believed: "That a simple impact of beauty and understandable emotion on a first or second reading was wrong. What omissions, allusions, and cryptic references to little-known things and people must be accepted.”10 Looking back on this development in 20th-century art, which prioritized difficulty and rigor over transparency and pleasure, scholar Wendy Steiner observed: “In Modernism , the eternal rewards of aesthetic experience—joy, insight, empathy—were largely withheld, and its lofty goal, beauty, was abandoned.”11 While the Great War and the poetic transformations inspired by Eliot represented a death sentence for style and progress, poets, his Works continued to be read in classrooms and magazines. Markham, Vachel Lindsay, Sara Teasdale and Edna St. Vincent Millay appeared regularly on stage and in magazines throughout the decade. But the gap among readers widened as reading of poetry gave way to radio series, movie theaters, dance halls, and a new sensual world of billboards and shopping, and modernist critics took positions in colleges and universities. While progressive reformers achieved important goals by expanding the government's role in the economy, changing the tax code, company regulations and tax policy, the post-war years saw a rupture in much of their agenda. The poets of the progressive era continued their efforts, forming new alliances and offshoots. In 1920 Markham became an adviser to the Poets' Guild founded by Anna Hempstead Branch, which established a settlement home for immigrant children. At Christadora House poets, including several founding members of the PSA - Charles

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Hanson Towne, Cale Young Rice, Witter Bynner—along with Witter Bynner, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and Margaret Widdemer, they brought poetry to the immigrant children of New York City. Whenever Markham came to concerts, they rushed over to greet "The Man of Poetry." Eventually the American Academy of Poets, founded in 1934, applied for a scholarship, and he held a grand celebration at Carnegie Hall in honor of his eightieth birthday.13 After the departure of Alice Corbin Henderson and the rise of competing journals, Poetry magazine published less experimental verse and failed to realize Monroe's dream of a self-sustaining subscriber base.14 However, the federal government recognized their efforts in October 1948 with the launch of the troopship USS Harriet Monroe.15 In the years that followed, the Poetry Society of America (PSA) grew into something sober, became more conservative. After George Sylvester Viereck was expelled from the PSA, he was able to make a living writing non-fiction, novels and interviewing leading political figures for Hearst newspapers and medium-sized magazines. In 1923 he traveled to Munich to meet a young political upstart. Over tea at the home of a former naval admiral, Viereck became the first American journalist to interview Adolf Hitler. Viereck concluded that the man was "an idealist, albeit a misguided one," and predicted, "If he lives, Hitler will surely make history."16 Viereck continued to write about politics and poetry throughout the decade. . In the 1930s he resumed public relations work for German interests and foreign authorities. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, when the United States entered World War II, Viereck was arrested for failing to fill out proper paperwork regarding his foreign work work.17 His two sons served in the US Army: the eldest, George Jr. lost his life fighting in Italy, while the youngest, Peter, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1949. The Poetry Society of America voted to reinstate Viereck shortly before his death in 1962, at the request of Irish writer Padraic Colum.18 Meanwhile, Louis Untermeyer anthologies continued to sell well. In 1923 he resigned as vice president of his father's company to devote his life full-time to writing. During World War II, as part of his duties with the Office of War Information, he selected, printed and mailed books to troops overseas, ensuring that at least one of the forty

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the titles selected each month were a book of poetry.19 Toward the end of her life, Amy Lowell was finally honored with untold literary honors. His later books, including Pictures of the Floating World (1919), became bestsellers, forcing publishers to keep up with demand. She has responded to numerous requests to speak and has received numerous honorary doctorates. An unsuccessful operation in 1921 left her debilitated, after which she turned to her first love, John Keats, “my greatest inspirer and teacher,” to teach her verse to a younger generation.20 She carried the third-largest collection of letters and manuscripts of Keats together in the United States and completed a two-volume literary and historical biography shortly before his death.21 On March 2, 1925, Time Magazine featured Lowell on the cover and an article about his work.22 For the general public, Lowell made the new form of modern poetry legible; now she tried to re-inscribe the influence of an old master. Even Conrad Aiken, who took great pleasure in criticizing Lowell's personality and poetry, had to acknowledge his contributions. When she died in 1925 he wrote: Amy dead! It's really impossible. In her absence we will find how much we all relied on her; how spiritually it sustained and stimulated us. It was reassuring just to think of her in Brookline, where she would set out and prepare for earthquakes or head to Texas in July for a worthless degree. A heroic creature.23 William Braithwaite's reputation and anthologies did not fare so well. The younger generation of the Harlem Renaissance saw another twist on old-school cowardice in Braithwaite's brand of aesthetic universalism. In 1920 even W. E. B. Du Bois publicly criticized this position, writing in a sequel to The Souls of Black Folk: "The charm of beauty is so strong that there are those who, contrary to their own knowledge and experience, try to say that everything is beauty. They are called optimists and they lie. Not everything is beauty. Ugliness, hatred and evil are here in all their contradictions and illogicality.”24 Braithwaite, however, held on to the promise of poetry's emancipatory power. His contribution to Alain Locke's New Negro (1925) stated: "He who enslaves and burns with beauty is a conqueror more triumphant than he who enslaves with a sword capable of breaking the victim."25

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After a decade of collaborating with other companies to edit the annual anthologies, he formed his own company, the B. J. Brimmer Company, and began printing it himself in 1923. By this time, shifting tastes and his growing reputation for non-payment and disorganization with the Herculean task of publishing annual anthologies caused more established writers to refuse permission to include their poetry. Brimmer went bankrupt in 1927. Two more volumes appeared, but in 1930 the venture ended. Letters and threats from collectors filled Braithwaite's mailbox, and the bank mortgaged his house. Through the intervention of James Weldon Johnson, the historically black University of South Atlanta offered Braithwaite a position as professor of English and creative writing. Until his death, Braithwaite believed in the gospel of beauty. Isolation, combined with the misfortunes of the global economic crisis of the 1930s, convinced many progressive poets that they could not afford to toy with outlandish notions of beauty; they had to push for reform more seriously, scientifically and directly. They could no longer submit poems in the vague hope that they would somehow inspire a sense of justice in the readers. Hippolyte Havel's protest years earlier - "Nature! Mountains! Scenario! What do they have to do with economic determinism!” – was finally heard. To those who once believed that reading poetry evidenced some elevation of character, this distinction now became suspect, a mark of class rather than an indication of moral values. Richard Rorty, growing up in the late 1930s and early 1940s, recalls how the gulf between aesthetics and ethics became ingrained. His father, James Rorty, had years earlier contributed poetry to Poetry and included works in a Braithwaite anthology. spend your life fighting against social injustice.” He was taught that in an effort to liberate “the weak from the strong,” the arts, in their present incarnation, evoked not liberation but bourgeois levity. Richard's discovery of wild orchids while exploring the forests of northwest New Jersey, home to over forty different species, created an epistemological dilemma. He loved these orchids, but they played no tangibly useful role in the fight against oppression. How could he justify spending time and emotional energy enjoying "Wordsworth moments" of wonder?: "I felt touched by something numinous, something

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indescribable meaning, something truly real.” This impasse sparked a lifelong search for a philosophy that would allow him to admire beautiful flowers while being “a friend of mankind.” As a passage by Yeats Rorty, once read, puts it, he wished to "preserve reality and justice in a single vision". Eventually, he found a way towards realizing a democratic community by accepting the contingency of language, individuality and liberal community, an ironic attitude towards knowledge and a "moral obligation to those who suffer". Commitments to other people need not be combined with idiosyncratic passions into a unified vision to achieve solidarity.27 After World War II, modernist poets and critics had their own reasons for separating poetry from political beliefs. After sixty million casualties and in the face of images of cultured Gestapo officers reading poetry in concentration camps, claims that poetry heightened moral sensibility were rendered hollow; Sensitivity to literature does not automatically imply empathy for human suffering. Cold War imperatives further reconfigured the design and texture of ideology and literary relationships and institutions. In 1949, the principles and poetics of the communities formed during the progressive era clashed with the New Critics and New York intellectuals during the Bollingen Prize controversy when the Library of Congress gave Ezra Pound a literary award for The Pisan Corners, despite volume competence . -Fascist and anti-Semitic passages. Added to this was the irritating fact that the former poetry foreign correspondent had just arrived in St. Elizabeth on charges of insanity and treason for radio speeches given on Radio Rome during the war. The controversy highlighted the distance between modernist authors and the general reading public, and between ethics and poetry. To preserve the modernist project, New Critics adopted a sola scriptura methodology that effectively isolated the poems from discussions of author intent, ethical merit, or emotional impact. In addition to creating the conditions that allowed modernist writers to become canonical, the institutions and publications that created progressive poets endure. The Poetry Society of America and Poetry Magazine continue to provide forums for new work and debates about the role and function of literature that have periodically resurfaced in subsequent decades, including the "culture wars" of the Reagan era. The talismanic presence that pervades each of these episodes

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it was the belief - carried by the propagators of the gospel of beauty in the progressive era - that the epistemic encounter with words, rhythms and ideas in literature is important to our sense of possibility, our everyday experience, our understanding of others and our identity as individuals and as a nation.

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Notes Introduction 1. Frost to Harcourt, Aug. 12, 1915, quoted in Thompson, Robert Frost, 56. 2. The Critic, 46 (January-June 1905), 263-278. 3. Cited in Lawrance Thompson, Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 1915-1938 (New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1970), 3. 4. Cited in Amy Lowell, Tendencies in Modern American Poetry (New York: Houghton Mifflin , 1917), 131. Ezra Pound published the first American review of A Boy's Will in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, 1 (May 1913) 2, 72–73, by Frost. 5. William Braithwaite, "A Poet of New England: Robert Frost, A New Exponent of Life," BET, April 28, 1915 and May 8, 1915. Jessie B. Rittenhouse, "North of Boston," NYT Book Review (May 16, 1915), 189. 6. Louis Untermeyer, "Robert Frost's 'North of Boston'", Chicago Evening Post (April 23, 1915), 11. 7. Clement Wood, Amy Lowell (New York: Harold Vinal, 1926) , 4. 8 Quoted in James Hoopes, Van Wyck Brooks: In Search of American Culture (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977), 77. 9. There is little consensus among historians as to the exact meaning of the term “progressive”. I am using it here to denote an era, approximately 1893-1920, when reform movements across culture were reshaping American society, dealing with major problems of industrial organization as well as issues related to the rights and duties of the individual concerned. While progressive reforms fell under the ideological rubric of liberalism, they affected a middle class that sometimes embarked on conservative measures. See Daniel Rodgers, "In Search of Progressivism," Reviews in American History, 10 (December 1982) 4, 113-132; John Milton Cooper, Pivotal Decades: The United States 1900-1920 (WW Norton, 1990); Maureen Flanagan, America Reformed: Progressives and Progressivisms, 1890s–1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) and Susan Curtis, A Consuming Faith: The Social Gospel and Modern American Culture (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991) . 10. Vachel Lindsay, Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1928 [1914]), pp. 15-17. 11. Lindsay, Adventures, 15-17. 12. Lindsay, Adventures, 184. 13. Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defense of Poetry (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1904 [1815]): 34-35. 14. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1913 [1868]), 528; Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (New York: Penguin, 2003 [1889]), 89. 225

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15. Jeffrey Sklansky, The Soul's Economy: Market Society and Selfhood in American Thought, 1820-1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). 16. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet," Emerson's Prose and Poetry. Ed. Joel Porte and Saundra Morris (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001). See also Robert D. Richardson, Emerson: The Mind on Fire (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994). 17. The phrase "lived experience" and the notion of examining poetry to access what people thought and felt about ideas in the past originated with Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, who read this introduction and provided critical advice. Ratner-Rosenhagen uses the term and methodology in her essay "Conventional Iconoclasm: The Cultural Work of Nietzsche's Image in Twentieth-Century America," Journal of American History, 93 (Dec. 2006) 3, 728-54. 18. Darnton, “The Great Cat Massacre,” 216. 19. See Leah Price, “Reading: The State of the Discipline,” in Book History, Vol. 7. Eds. Ezra Greenspan and Jonathan Rose (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 303-20. 20. Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). 21. My understanding of the close relationship between reading and self-transformation was profoundly influenced by Barbara Sicherheitman, "Reading and Ambition: M. Carey Thomas and Female Heroism," American Quarterly 45 (March 1993) 1, 73-103, and Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, "'Nous Autres': Reading, Passion, and the Creation of M. Carey Thomas," Journal of American History 79 (1992), 68-95. These essays appear in Sicherman, Well-Read Lives: How Books Inspired A Generation of American Women (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). 22. Kate Flint, The Woman Reader, 1837-1914 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1993). 23. Daniel Wickberg traces the history of sensitivity in What Is the History of Sensibilities? On Cultural Histories, Old and New,” American Historical Review (June 2007), 661–84. 24. Elizabeth McHenry, Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002). 25. Deborah Gray White, Too Heavy A Load: Black Women in Defense of Thameselves, 1894-1994 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), Sarah Ruth Offhaus, "Mary Talbert and the Phyllis Wheatley Club," Buffalo Rising, 19. June 2010 and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, vol. 2. Cary D. Wintz and Paul Finkelman, eds. (New York: Routledge, 2004), 903. 26. Du Bois, Souls, 109. 27. I am grateful to Daniel Albright for his interpretation of this passage. 28. James Oppenheim to James Weldon Johnson, December 18, 1930, JONY. 29. Braithwaite, "Arcturus", 3 (1942) 1, 40 and 3 (1941) 2, 186. 30. Some book historians speak of unworldly reading and reading logs to challenge the passive connotations of reading's 'reception'.

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31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

See Tabitha Gilman Tenney, Female Quixotism, eds. Jean Nienkamp and Andrea Collins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 2–14. Barbara Sicherheitman makes this point in "Sense and Sensibility: A Case Study of Women's Reading in Late-Victorian America," where she analyzes the subjective use of reading by upper-middle-class women in the late Victorian era during the progressive era through transgression of the traditional ones gender expectations. Sicherman quotes Raymond Williams' "Structures of Feeling". About Reading in America. Ed. Cathy Davidson (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 201-25. Michael Bell discusses the importance of feelings—assessed through an examination of responses to the literature—in understanding the past and outlines the fate of sentimentality in Sentimentalism, Ethics, and the Culture of Feeling (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). Angela Sorby, Poets in the Schoolroom: Childhood, Performance, and the Place of American Poetry, 1865–1917 (Durham, NC: University of New Hampshire Press, 2005). Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Justice (New York: Princeton University Press, 1999); Martha Nussbaum, Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life (New York: Beacon Press, 1997); Alexander Nehamas, Only A Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art (New York: Princeton University Press, 2007); Denis Donoghue, Speaking of Beauty (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003); Dennis Dutton, The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution (New York: Oxford, 2009); Daniel Borus, Twentieth Century Multiplicity (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009); Jane Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics (New York: Princeton University Press, 2001); George Levine, Darwin Loves You: Natural Selection and the World's Re-Enchantment (New York: Princeton University Press, 2006); and Eleanor Belfiore and Oliver Bennett, The Social Impact of the Arts: An Intellectual History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). Martha Nussbaum, "Education for Profit, Education for Freedom", Liberal Education (Summer 2009), 12 [6–13], Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999 [1989]), xv. Cary Nelson, Repression and Recovery: Modern American Poetry and the Politics of Cultural Memory, 1910-1945 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989). See also Leonard Diepeveen, The Difficulties of Modernism (New York: Routledge, 2002); John Timberman Newcomb, would poetry go away? American Verse and the Crisis of Modernity (The Ohio State University Press, 2004); Michael Thurston, Making Something Happen: American Political Poetry Between the World Wars (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Mark Van Wienan, Partisans and Poets: The Political Work of American Poetry in the Great War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); and Geoffrey Jacques, A Change in the Weather: Modernist Imagination, African American Imaginary (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009). See also 20th Century Poetry. Ed. Dana Gioia, David Mason, Meg Schoerke (New York: McGraw Hill, 2003). Suzanne Clark, Sentimental Modernism: Women Writers and the Revolution of the World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); Paula

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38. 39.

40.

41. 42.

43. 44.

Notas para Bennett, Poets in the Public Sphere: The Emancipatory Project of American Women's Poetry, 1800–1900 (Nova York: Princeton University Press, 2003); Jane Tompkins, Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction 1790–1860 (Nova York: Oxford University Press, 1986); e Cheryl Walker, Masks Outrageous and Austere: Culture, Psyche, and Persona in Modern Women Poets (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991). Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (Nova York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), 5. Floyd Dell, Homecoming: An Autobiography (Nova York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1939), und Hutchins Hapgood, A Victorian kein Mundo Moderno (Nova York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1933). Desde então, vários estudos revisionistas que examinam a formação do canon apareceram, incluindo Paul Lauter Canons and Contexts (Nova York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Barbara Foley, Radical Representations: Politics and Form in United States Proletarian Fiction, 1929–1941 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993); e Walter Kalaidjian, American Culture between the Wars: Revisionary Modernism and Postmodern Critique (Nova York: Columbia University Press, 1994). Nelson setzt eine Überarbeitung einer Violação von seiner Website „Modern American Poets“ an der Universidade de Illinois, Urbana-Champaign fort, einschließlich als obras de vernachlässigte Dichter von 1900 bis 1920. Lawrence Rainey, Institutions of Modernism: Literary Elites and Public Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999); Susan Friedman, „Definitional Excursions: The Meanings of Modern/Modernity/Modernism“, Modernism/Modernity, 8 (seit 2001) 3, 493–513; Peter Nicholls, Modernisms: A Literary Guide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) und Modernisms: 1900–1950. Ed. Steven Gould Axelrod und Camille Roman (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005). Henry May, The End of Innocence: A Study of the First Years of Our Own Time, 1912–1917 (Nova York: Columbia University Press, 1992 [1959]). “Fealdade” tornou-se umstritten des berühmten Prefácio von Victor Hugo im Jahr 1827 für “Cromwell”, que expôs seu fascínio pelos vários tipos de fealdade. Na década de 1860, Baudelaire continuou esse fascínio, incitando os escritores a olhar não para os antigos, mas para a vida contemporânea em toda a sua estranheza; para ele, criar beleza significava criar feiúra também. Für weitere Informationen siehe Virginia Swain, Grotesque Figures: Baudelaire, Rousseau, and the Aesthetics of Modernity (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). Robert Crunden, American Salons: Encounters with European Modernism, 1885–1911 (Nova York: Oxford University Press, 1993), xi–xii. Siehe auch Malcolm Cowley, After the Genteel Tradition (Nova York: W. W. Norton, 1937); Van Wyck Brooks, America’s Coming-of-Age (Nova York: B. W. Huebsch, 1915); Howard Mumford Jones, The Age of Energy: Varieties of American Experience, 1865–1919 (Nova York: Viking, 1971); Willard Thorp, „Defensores da Idealidade“, in der História Literária dos Estados Unidos. Ed. Robert Spiller et al. (Nova York: Macmillan, 1963), S. 809–826; e John Tomsich A Genteel Bemühung: Amerikanische Kultur und Politik im vergoldeten Zeitalter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971).

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Anmerkungen zu den Seiten 13–14 229 45. George Cotkin, Reluctant Modernism (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992). 46. Joseph Freeman, An American Testament (NJ: Quinn and Boden Company, 1936), 85, 270, vii. 47. Siehe Frank Kermode Romantic Image (New York: Macmillan, 1957); Robert Langbaum, The Modern Spirit: Essays on Continuity of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); George Bornstein, Transformationen der Romantik in Yeats, Eliot und Stevens (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976); Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973); Albert Gelpi, A Coherent Splendor: The American Poetic Renaissance, 1910–1950 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Louis Menand, Discovering Modernism: T. S. Eliot and His Context (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) und Carol Christ, Victorian and Modern Poetics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 48. Jerome McGann, The Textual Condition (New York: Princeton University Press, 1991); Pierre Bourdieu, Das Feld der Kulturproduktion (Columbia University Press, 1993); Terry Eagleton, Literaturtheorie (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); und Peter McDonald, „Buchideen und Literaturgeschichten: Dann Theorie?“ PMLA (Januar 2006), 214–28. 49. William Charvat, Literary Publishing in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959), und Robert Darnton, "What Is the History of Books?" in The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History (New York: WW Norton, 1990). Roger Chartier argumentiert gegen die Vorstellung, dass Texte eine „stabile, universelle und feste Bedeutung“ haben, und besteht stattdessen darauf, dass die Leser ihre eigene Bedeutung konstruieren. Chartier zeichnet in The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University), Press, 1994). 50. Joan Shelley Rubin, Songs of Ourselves: The Uses of Poetry in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). Siehe auch Lisa Szefel, „The Creation of an American Poetic Community, 1890–1920“ (Doktorarbeit der University of Rochester, 2004). Siehe auch Daniel Kane, All Poets Welcome: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 1960s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Michael Davidson, The San Francisco Renaissance: Poetics and Community at Mid-Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Steven Behrendt, Britische Dichterinnen und die romantische Schreibgemeinschaft (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); Michael Harrington, Poetry and the Public: The Social Form of Modern U.S. Poetics (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002); und Christopher Beach, Poetische Kultur: Zeitgenössische amerikanische Poesie zwischen Gemeinschaft und Institution (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999). 51. Ver New Directions in American Reception Studies. Ed. James Machor und Philip Goldstein (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 52. George Sylvester Viereck, „Recent Poetry“, CO (früher CL), Juli 1913, Seite 56.

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Notes for pages 15-21

53. Van Wyck Brooks, The Confident Years, 1885–1915 (Nova York: EP Dutton & Co., Inc. 1952): 120–21. 54. Citado in den Briefen von Robert Frost an Louis Untermeyer. Ed. Louis Untermeyer (Nova York: Holt, Rinehart e Winston, 1963), 24. 55. Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1890–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992 [1978]), 263– 67. 56. Jayne Marek, Women Editing Modernism: „Little“ Magazines and Literary History (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995); Ann Massa, „The Columbian Ode and Poetry“, Journal of American Studies 20 (2001) 86: 51–69 und „Form Follows Function: The Construction of Harriet Monroe“, in A Living of Words: American Women in Print Culture (1995 ), Hrsg. Susanne Albertina; Robin Schulze, „O modernismo pioneiro de Harriet Monroe: natureza, identidade nacional; e Poetry: A Magazine of Verse“, Legacy 21.1 (2004): 50–67. Verfasst von John Newcomb, „Poetry’s Opening Door: Harriet Monroe and American Modernism“, American Periodicals: A Journal of History, Criticism, and Bibliography 15.1 (2005), 6–22. 57. Ezra Pound für Alice Corbin Henderson, 14. Juli 1916, Pasta 7.14, Caixa 7, AHUT. Cartas dos Papéis von Alice Corbin Henderson, erneute Eindrücke mit Genehmigung des Harry Ransom Center, der Universidade von Texas in Austin. Veröffentlicht in The Letters of Ezra Pound to Alice Corbin Henderson. Ed. Ira Nadel (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), 170. 58. Ezra Pound: Selected Prose, 1909–1965. Ed. William Cookson (Nova York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1973), 8, 23–26. 59. Como escreveu Eastman, eles Consideravam „os livros inimigos da verdadeira alegria da vida“ und „rejeitavam o cultivo da mente em detrimento da emoção“. Max Eastman, Enjoyment of Living, 33–34, 58. „Experiência é tudo“ Oppenheim escreveu em Songs for the New Age (1913), 57. Nisso, eles construíram a tradição dos românticos anglo-americanos que evidenciaram a superioridade da experiência Vivida sobre o conhecimento do livro em sua poesia e correspondência. Lord Byron escreveu: „O grande objetivo da vida é a sensação – sentir que existimos, mesmo que sintamos dor.“ Em uma carta de 1817, Keats escreveu: „Oh, por uma vida de sensações em vez de pensamentos“. In „The Tables Turned“, Wordsworths Reflexion: „Um impulso de uma floresta vernal/Pode ensinar-lhe mais sobre o homem,/Do mal moral e do bem,/Do que todos os sábios podem. . . Basta de Ciencia e de Arte; . . . /Venha e traga com você um coração/Que observa e recebe.“ Citado von Jerome McGann, The Poetics of Sensibility: A Revolution in Literary Style (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 43-45. 60. Ver Thomas Strychacz, Modernism, Mass Culture, and Professionalism (Nova York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

1 Sophisticated Designs, Modern Renovations: Poetics and Poetic Community from Home to Dynamo 1. Santayana to Thomas Munro (1928). Quoted by Arthur Danto in the "Introduction" to George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory. Ed. William Holzberger and Herman Saatkamp (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986 [1896]), 110.

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Notes on pages 22-25 231 2. Leslie Butler, Critical Americans: Victorian Intellectuals and Transatlantic Liberal Reform (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 128-42. 3. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1869), 48-9. See also John Henry Raleigh, Matthew Arnold and America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957). 4. Cited in Hilary Fraser, Beauty and Belief: Aesthetics and Religion in Victorian Literature (New York: Cornell University Press, 1986), 112-13. 5. As Ruskin wrote: “Those who have the greatest compassion are those who look closest, penetrate deepest, and hold most securely; and on the other hand, those who have so penetrated and seen the melancholic depths of things are filled with the most intense passion and compassionate kindness. Individuals attained this insight through imagination, not intellect. Ruskin himself kept two diaries: one for "intellect" and one for "feeling". Cited in Fraser, Beauty and Belief, 117, 132. 6. Cited in Fraser, Beauty and Belief, 118. 7. See, for example, Jose Harris, “Ruskin and Social Reform,” in Ruskin and the Dawn of the Modern. Ed. Dinah Birch (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) and John Batchelor, John Ruskin: No Wealth But Life (London: Chatto & Windus, 2000). 8. Pater cited in Fraser, Beauty and Belief, 199. 9. Cited in Linda Dowling, The Vulgarization of Art: The Victorians and Aesthetic Democracy (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996), x–xi. 10. Arthur John, The Best Years of the Century: Richard Watson Gilder, Scribner's Monthly, and the Century Magazine, 1870-1909 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 174. 11. Ellery Sedgwick, The Atlantic Monthly, 1857 –1909: Yankee Humanism at High Tide and Ebb (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 7. 12. Sedgwick, Atlantic Monthly, 16. 13. John, Best Years, 257. 14. The historian Arthur John characterized the beliefs by Gilder in Best Years, 174. 15. John, Best Years, 147. 16. John, Best Years, 174. 17. Later years of the Saturday Club. Ed. M A DeWolfe Howe (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927), 236. 18. Susan Coultrap-McQuin, Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 28-45. 19. Richard Watson Gilder, Grover Cleveland: A Record of Friendship (New York: The Century Co., 1910), pp. 16-7; John Tomsich, A Genteel Endeavor: American Culture and Politics in the Gilded Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971), 17–8. 20. The book originated as a series of lectures on poetry at Johns Hopkins University sponsored by Lawrence and Francese Turnball. It was originally the first endowed chair of poetry in the United States

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232 notes for pages 25–31

21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

dado ein James Russell Lowell, mas ele morreu pouco depois de receber a homenagem. Edmund Clarence Stedman, The Nature and Elements of Poetry (Nova York: Houghton Mifflin, 1920 [1892]), viii Stedman, Nature, 72. Rufus Griswold, The Female Poet of America (Filadélfia: Carey & Hart, 1847). Griswold’s Poets and Poetry of America (Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1845) für die Veröffentlichung bis zum Schluss. Stedman, Nature, 127, 128, 131. Veja, zum Beispiel, Lionel Stevenson, Darwin Among the Poets (Nova York: Russell & Russell, 1963) und Bernard Lightman, Victorian Science in Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997) . William Wordsworth und Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lyrische Balladen und verwandte Schriften. Ed. Richey und Robinson (Nova York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), 401. John Keats, Lamia (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1885 [1819]), 60. Matthew Arnold, „The Study of Poetry“, in Poetry and Criticism of Matthew Arnold, 306. Stedman, Dichter, xii. Stedman, Nature, viii, xiii, xiv, 4–28, 297. John, Best Years, 198–202. John, Melhores Anos, 199–201. Tomsich, Genteel Bemühung, 74. Stedman, Nature, 47. Tomsich, Genteel Bemühung, 101–4. John, Beste Jahre, 214–5. William Dean Howells widersetzt sich keiner Demütigung der Gemeinschaft, um eine Verurteilung wegen der Manifestationen von Haymarket zu verteidigen. Tomsich, Genteel Endeavour, 140. Stedman, Nature, 127. Ver Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Mary Blanchard, Oscar Wildes Amerika: Gegenkultur im goldenen Zeitalter (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); e Kevin Murphy, Political Manhood: Red Bloods, Mollycoddles, and the Politics of Progressive Era Reform (Nova York: Columbia University Press, 2008). John, Best Years, 173. Sedgwick, Atlantic, 293. Sedgwick, Atlantic, 294. John, Best Years, 256. John, Best Years, 173. Ver Ann Douglas, The Feminization of Culture in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Farrar , Straus & Giroux, 1977). A ligação feita pelos modernistas masculinos entre sentimentalismo e mediocridade provou ser tão duradoura que foi apenas na década de 1980 que os estudiosos começaram a recuperar as contribuições feitas por esse gênero. Sensationell

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Notes on pages 32–36 233

47. 48. 49.

50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

59. 60.

61.

Jane Tompkins' designs have come a long way in restoring the importance of sentimentality in American cultural and literary history. See also Karen Kilcup, Robert Frost and Feminine Literary Tradition (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998) and Clark, Sentimental Modernism. Bederman, Masculinity and Civilization. Lawrence Oliver, “Theodore Roosevelt, Brander Matthews, and the Campaign for Literary Americanism,” American Quarterly [93–111], 94. Lawrence Oliver, Brander Matthews, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Politics of American Literature, 1880–1920 (Nashville : University of Tennessee Press, 1992), xi-xiv. In this monograph, Oliver examines the complicated relationship between progressive ideology, cultural hegemony, imperialism, racial slander and Roosevelt's brand of literary Americanism. Oliver, Brander Matthews, 5, 16, 136. Carlin Kindilien, American Poetry (Providence: Brown University Press, 1956), 26. In 1909 Gilder published In Union Square, about an anarchist killed by a police bomb. John, Best Years, 114, 174. John, Best Years, 141. John, Best Years, 233-35. John, Best Years, 236. Jessie B. Rittenhouse, My House of Life: An Autobiography (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1934), 123. Van Wyck Brooks, America's Coming of Age: Three Essays on America (New York: E.P. Dutton , 1934). American Academy of Arts and Letters Information Handbook, No. 62 (New York, 1927), 6N8. For a full history of the institute see A Century of Arts and Letters. Ed. John Updike (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). When William James was elected to the Academy in 1905, he chose not only to decline but to resign from the Institute. He wrote to the nominating committee: “I have not been advised that this Academy has any particular work program in which I could play a useful role; and tant soit peu proposes the notion of an organization that serves only to profile certain individuals (with their own invention) and allow the whole world to say, 'We're in and you're out.'” Quoted in Thomas Bender, New York Intellect: A History of Intellectual Life in New York City (New York: Knopf, 1987), 220. Oliver, Brander Matthews, xi. John, Best Years, 262. For the first nineteen years of its existence, despite pressure from women and blacks, the Institute had only one woman: Julia Ward Howe, author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, died at the age of ninety elected -a year or two before his death. No African Americans became members until the election of W.E.B. Du Bois in 1944. Oliver, Brander Matthews, 80-1. Masters to Monroe, September 2, 1924, quoted in Williams, Monroe, 9.

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Notes for pages 37-42

62. Sedgwick, Atlantic, 294. 63. Sedgwick, Atlantic, 295. 64. William Vaughn Moody to Robert Underwood Johnson, October 25, 1904, William Vaughn Moody Papers, UVA. 65. Thompson, Frost, 524. 66. "Ezra Pound Speaking": World War II radio speeches. Ed. Leonard Doobs (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978), 91. 67. Pound to Monroe, Spring 1915. Cited in Williams, Monroe, 7. 68. Pound to Monroe, 11 October 1912 and September/October 1912, HMUC. Letters from the Personal Papers of Harriet Monroe, reprinted with permission from the Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. 69. See Max Putzel, The Man in the Mirror: William Marion Reedy and His Magazine (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998). 70. Dudley F. Safe to Untermeyer, August 27, 1903, Box 8, LUUD. Letters from MSS 111 Louis Untermeyer Papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, reproduced by arrangement with the Louis Untermeyer Estate. 71. Johnson to Louis Untermeyer, November 18, 1912, Box 5, LUUD. 72. Harriet Monroe, A Poet's Life: Seventy Years in a Changing World (New York: Macmillan Co., 1938), 15-26. 73. Monroe, Poets Life, 78-82. 74. Monroe, The Poet's Life, 82; Ethel Kelley (Hampton Publisher) to Harriet Monroe, April 24, 1911, HMPP. 75. Monroe, Poet's Life, 121. 76. "Suggestions in Reference to Miss Monroe's 'Colombian Ode'", Box 15, Folder 1, HMUC. 77. Monroe, Poet's Life, 117-142, 147. 78. Perry to Monroe, November 13, 1905, HMUC. 79. Tarbell to Monroe, November 18, 1908, quoted in Williams, Monroe, 5. 80. Ethel Kelley to Monroe, April 24, 1911, Folder 8, Box 3, HMUC. 81. Carrie Noland, in Poetry at Stake: Lyric Aesthetics and the Challenge of Technology (New York: Princeton University Press, 1999), examines the response of French modernist poets to capitalism and technology. 82. Monroe, Poet's Life, 34, 146, 193-4. 83. Monroe, The Poet's Life, 180. 84. Monroe, The Poet's Life, 180-1. 85. Sedgwick to Lowell, May 11, 1910, September 23, 1913, February 8, 1911, ALHH. Letters from the Amy Lowell Papers, bMS Lowell 19.1, reprinted with permission of the Trustees of the Amy Lowell Estate and Houghton Library, Harvard University. 86. Sedgwick to Lowell, May 11, 1910, May 17, 1910, February 8, 1911, May 17, 1912, September 23, 1913, Box 20, ALHH. "Atlantic" was the first of four sonnets accepted by the Atlantic Monthly in 1910 The William S Reader Braithwaite . Ed. Philip Butcher (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), 237-9.

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Notes for pages 42-45

235

88. Burton to Braithwaite, December 5, 1903. Box 3, WBHH. Letters from the William Braithwaite Papers are reprinted with permission from the Houghton Library, Harvard University. 89. Braithwaite, "Arcturus," Phylon, 2 (1942), 2:189. Braithwaite may have followed the advice of his friend Frederick Knowles (1869–1905), Boston poet, anthologist of American humorous verse and song, whose The article 'Some practical tips for amateur versifiers” can be found in Braithwaite's papers. Knowles suggested that poets avoid foreign words because they "show bad taste". He argued that newspapers wanted short poems on light-hearted subjects and "if they tell a story their chance of acceptance is greater than if it is purely subjective". Box 11, WBHH. 90. "The Memoirs of William Stanley Braithwaite", OHCU. 91. Burton Kline, "William S. Braithwaite," BET, November 30, 1915. 92. Review, "The Magazines and the Poets: A Critical Examination of Periodical Files for 1905," appeared in the February 14, 1915 issue. 1906 from transcript. 93. Braithwaite, "The Magazines and the Poets," typewritten 1905, WBVA. 94. OHCU, 15. 95. Rittenhouse, My House, 3-15, 35, 51, 63, 75-6, 84-93. 96. Rittenhouse, My House, 116. 97. Robert Crunden, Ministers of Reform: The Progressives' Achievement in American Civilization, 1889–1920 (New York: Basic Books, 1982). 98. Cited in Van Wyck Brooks, The Confident Years, 1885-1915 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1952), 73. 99. See Roger Stein, John Ruskin and Aesthetic Thought in America, 1840-1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968). 100. Crunden, Minister, 91-6. 101. "On Poetic Diction," Harper's Weekly, 5 (1909), 6. Similar challenges were posed decades earlier in French Symbolist poetry, beginning with Baudelaire, and gained greater prominence in the transatlantic world in the fields of art, architecture, and philosophy , psychology and mental life in general. For explorations of the connections between various artistic endeavors, see Daniel Albright, Untwisting the Serpeant: Modernism in Music, Literature, and the Other Arts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Charles Altieri, Painterly Abstraction in Modernist American Poetry: The Contemporaneity of Modern Poetry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); The Cambridge Companion to Modernity. Ed. Michael Levenson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 102. Williams, Monroe, 11. 103. Warren Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984); Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). 104. The term “epistemological toilet” is from Jeffrey Nunokawa, “Speechless in Austen,” Humanities Center at Harvard, February 2005. Cited with permission of the author.

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Notes for pages 46-53

105. Upton Sinclair, The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair (Nova York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1962), 45. 106. Orrick Johns, Time of Our Lives: The Story of My Father and Myself (Nova York: Octagon Books, 1973 [1937]), 178. 107. „On Poetic Diction“, Harper's Weekly (29. Mai 1909). 108. David Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgement: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (Nova York: Knopf, 1989). 109. Paul Carter, A Crise Espiritual da Era Dourada (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971); Edward Blum, Reforjando a República Branca: Raça, Religião e Nacionalismo Americano, 1865–1898 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005). 110. Santayana, Sense of Beauty, 138. 111. Santayana, The Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1927 [1900]), V, 10, 256, 270, 289; Santayana, Sense of Beauty, 138. 112. Johns, Times of Our Lives, 129 113. Johns, Times of Our Lives, 199. Idéias contemporâneas sobre pragmatismo, psicologia, epistemologia e estética influenciaram até mesmo as crenças de Thorstein Veblen sobre o papel da beleza na criação de uma sociedade mais igualitária . Veja Trygve Throntveit, „The Will To Behold: Thorstein Veblen’s Pragmatic Aesthetics“, Modern Intellectual History, 5 (2008) 3: 519–46. 114. Walt Whitman, Folhas de Relva. Text der Erstausgabe von 1855 (Virginia: Wilder Publications, 2008), 8–10. 115. Whitman, Folhas, 8–10, 13–4, 16 20, 79. 116. Stedman, Poetas, 351–94. 117. Kenneth Price, Walt Whitman: The Contemporary Reviews (Nova York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), xi–xviii. 118. Barbara Hochman, Getting At The Author: Reimagining Books and Reading in the Age of American Realism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 12. 119. George B. Hutchinson, „Whitman and the Black Poet: Kelly Miller's Speech para o Walt Whitman Fellowship“, American Literature, 61 (março de 1989): 1, 53 [46–58]. 120. Clarence Brown, „Walt Whitman and the ‚New Poetry‘“, American Literature, 33 (março de 1961) 37, 34 [33-45]. 121. Alice Henderson, „Comentário Editorial: Um Retorno Perfeito“, Poesia, 1 (dezembro de 1912) 3, 88–90. 122. Harriet Monroe, „Walt Whitman“, Poetry, 14 (Maio de 1919) 2: 89–.94 123. Brown, „Walt Whitman“, 37–8. 124. O Editor Vaidoso, Richard Badger, Contatou Robinson e relançou o livro com dezesseis novos poetas como The Children of the Night. Um Bewunderer de Robinson, Willie Butler, pagou als Despesas. Hagedorn, Robinson, 106, 112. 125. Robinson, Children of the Night (Boston: Richard Badger, 1897), 85, 63, 91. 126. Robinson, Children, 63. Robinson teve algum sucesso em encontrar uma saída para seu trabalho . Lippincotts Comprou um soneto sobre Poe, mas não o publicou por doze anos, enquanto The Critic publicou outros dois, mas

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Notes for pages 54-63

127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136.

137.

237

offered no payment, and the Boston Transcript published The Children of the Night; Hagedorn, Robinson, 98, 105. Cited in Chard Powers Smith, Where the Light Falls: A Portrait of Edwin Arlington Robinson (New York: Macmillan Co., 1965), 291. Hagedorn, Robinson, 110-112. Viereck, “Young Diary,” EGLC. Benet to Untermeyer, December 2, 1913, Box 2, LUUD. I would like to thank John Gibbs for the phrase "intentional ignorance". Bequest to Untermeyer, June 29, 1914, Box 2, LUUD. Sedgwick, The Atlantic Monthly, 237. Journal and letters of Josephine Preston Peabody. Ed. Christina Hopkinson Baker (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1925), 109, 130-1. Peabody to Mary Mason, February 11, 1901, Peabody, 146. G.B. Shaw, Man and Superman (New York: Brentano's, 1922), 62. Cited in the introduction to Corinne Roosevelt Robinson to Roosevelt As The Poets Saw Him: Tributes from the Singers of America and England to Theodore Roosevelt. Ed. Charles Hanson Towne (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932), xviii. Hagedorn, Robinson, 212.

2 Reforming Verse, Uplifting Society: The Labor Theory of Poetic Value 1. Jessie B. Rittenhouse, "A Year's Harvest in American Poetry," NYT Book Review, Nov. 28, 1915, 462. 2. Biographical information on Markham's early years are from Louis Filler, The Unknown Edwin Markham: His Mystery and Its Significance (Yellow Springs, Ohio: Antioch Press, 1966). 3. Markham quoted in Filler, Markham, 13. 4. Filler, Markham, 35. 5. Filler, Markham, 59. 6. Filler, Markham, 59. 7. Filler, Markham, 63, 65, 75. 8. Filler , Markham, 99. 9. Filler, Markham, 79. 10. Filler, Markham, 79–81, 83, 61. 11. For more information, see Clark D. Halker, For Democracy, Workers, and God: Labor Song - Poems and Labor Protest, 1865–1895 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991). 12. For more on the genre of dead pet poetry in Greek epigrams and Victorian verse, see G. Herrlinger, Totenklage um animale in der alten Dichtung, cited in Vertis in usum, ed. John Miller et al. (Munich: K.G. Sauer Verlag GmbH, 2002), 191, and Ingrid H. Tague, "Dead Pets: Satire and Sentiment in British Elegies and Epitaphs for Animals", EighteenthCentury Studies, 41 (Spring 2008) 3, 289-306. 13. Infantiles, American Poetry, 10, 12-19. 14. Infantiles, American Poetry, 56.

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Notes for pages 63-71

15. Kindilien, American Poetry, 57. 16. Quoted in James D. Hart, The Popular Book: A History of America's Literary Taste (New York: Oxford University Press, 1950), 128. 17. More than 4,000 copies of the book were made sold prior to publication in November 1855. After five months, over 30,000 copies had been sold. Hart, People's Book, 129-30. 18. Elizabeth Van Allen, James Whitcomb Riley: A Life (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 10, 12. 19. Quoted in Benediktsson, George Sterling, 63. 20. Riley made more money than Longfellow, the first American a makes a living from poetry, which earned $2,000 a year before The Song of Hiawatha was published. Van Allen, Riley, 183 and Hart, Popular Book, 127. The only other poet to make comparable money was the Kansas poet Walt Mason, who was paid fifteen dollars a poem unless he sold them in "full lots." . He told an interviewer in 1914 that people “want poetry that is easy to read, poetry with a jingle, poetry that deals with things and conditions with which they are familiar, and they want their poetry clean and sane . . . The fact that they want it shows their heart and head are right.” “A Kansas Poet's Income,” The Literary Digest 48 (February 14, 1914), 339–43. 21. Van Allen, Riley, 9, 193, 229. 22. Van Allen, Riley, 5. 23. Van Allen, Riley, 1–2, 6. 24. Filler, Markham, 45. 25. Filler, Markham, 61 26. Markham condemned the lecture in his notebook. Filler, Markham, 82, 88. 27. The line became the motto of Markham's bookplate. The poem was published in War Poems 1898, compiled by the California Club (San Francisco, 1898). Cited in Filler, Markham, 96. 28. "The Author of 'The Man with the Hoe' Gives an Exposition of His Poem," The New York Times, February 3, 1900. 29. Markham, Man with the Hoe and Other Poems (New York: Doubleday & McClure Company, 1899), 15-18. 30. See Robert Walker, The Poet and the Gilded Age: Social Themes in Late Nineteenth Century Verse (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963). 31. Bailey Millard, History of the San Francisco Bay Region (New York: American Historical Society, Inc., 1924): 447-58, Elizabeth Bergmann Loizeau, "Ekphrasis and Textual Consciousness", Word & Image Vol. 15, #1 (January-March 1999), 76. 32. Frank Norris, The Octopus: A Story of California (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1901) 316-17, 372, 376-77. 33. Norris, The Octopus, 394. 34. Mark Sullivan, Our Times: America at the Birth of the Twentieth Century (New York: Scribners, 1996 [1936]), 179-80. 35. Arthur Davison Ficke, The Present State of Poetry, North American Review (1911) 194, 438 [429-41].

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Notes on pages 71-80 239 36. Filler, Markham, 102. 37. Debs to Markham, July 18, 1899, EMWC. 38. Florence Hamilton, "'The Man with the Hoe': The Poem, The Poet and The Problem: The Intellectual Biography of Edwin Markham," unfinished and unpublished biography, 187, box 10, FHLC. 39. Torrence to Markham, [n.d.], folder T(I), EMWC. 40. James to Markham, March 17, 1899, folder J, EMWC. 41. "Review #10," Oct. 21, 1899, The New York Times. 42. Filler, Markham, 104-5. 43. Cited by Florence Hamilton, "The Poet and the Problem," 181. 44. "Hamilton Mabie on Edwin Markham," Nov. 16, 1901, The New York Times Saturday Review. Filler, Markham, 105. 45. Benediktsson, Sterling, 65-67. 46. Cary Nelson analyzes Markham's concerns about organized labor in Revolutionary Memory: Recovering the Poetry of the American Left (New York: Routledge, 2001), 16–21. 47. Markham to Mr. Knight, April 1, 1899, Pasta 1882-1905, EMWC. 48. Sullivan, Our Times, 180-181. 49. "Mr. Markham, The Author of 'The Man with the Hoe' Gives an Exposition of His Poem,' The New York Times, February 3, 1900, BR10. 50. Quoted in People Met in Hotel Lobbies, April 12, 1905, The New York Times. 51. Filler, Markham, 101. 52. Jones also used Millet's photo and a quote from The Man with the Hoe on his official stationery. Filler, Markham, 123. 53. Hamilton, "The Poet and the Problem", 188. 54. Hamilton, "The Poet and the Problem", 189. Bailey Millard stated that Cheney received $750 while Markham received only $25 received for your poem. Millard, San Francisco, 456. 55. "'The Man with the Hoe' Competition," Public Opinion, Feb. 8, 1900, 183-84. 56. See, for example, Howard Pyle's criticism of Markham's "pessimism". November 10, 1900, The New York Times. 57. "Markham's Pessemism," Dec. 8, 1900, BR29. 58. E. B. Patterson of Brooklyn, New York, quoted in "Markham's Pessimism". 59. Quoted in "Markham's Pessimism". 60. Rev. Alexander Fitzgerald quoted in "Markham's Pessimism". 61. John Talman, “Tardy Appreciation of Markham,” December 29, 1900, The New York Times Saturday Review, BR16. 62. Hamilton, Box 10, 4, FHLC. 63. The undated article is in Box 10, Folder 2, FHLC. 64. Markham, Notes, 29, 33, 37, 44. The pamphlet, published by the Doubleday & McClure Company, cost fifty cents, half the price of The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems. 65. C.H. Garrett, "Edwin Markham, Cowboy and Poet," The Era Magazine (1903), Vol. 11, 181-83. 66. Colonel Richard Hinton, "An Author Not at Home," The New York Times, Aug. 12, 1899, BRA 529-30.

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240 Notes on pp. 81-84 67. William Wallace Whitelock, “Edwin Markham: How He Wrote His Famous Poem,” September 7, 1901, The New York Times, BR12. 68. Joaquin Miller, “Edwin Markham—His Life and His Verse,” Nov. 18, 1899, The New York Times. 69. Loren Glass explores the connections between modernity, mass culture, masculinity, and celebrity in Authors, Inc.: Literary Celebrity in the Modern United States, 1880–1980 (New York: New York University Press, 2004). See also Aaron Jaffe, Modernism and the Culture of Celebrity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005) and David Blake, Walt Whitman and the Culture of American Celebrity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006). 70. Markham was paid two hundred dollars per speech and McClure was paid a commission of fifty dollars. Filler, Markham, 112. 71. Markham to Miss Watson, September 2, 1903, EMWC. 72. Markham to Eugenie Kellogg-Churchill, June 22, 1904, Markham to Mrs. Townsend Allen, September 7, 1903, Markham to Julia Small, November 20, 1904, Markham to Mr. Southworth, September 10, 1903, EMWC. 73. Markham to Marcus Kennery, May 8, 1901, EMWC. 74. Markham to Mr James 3 Sep 1903, Markham to Mr Biere 7 Sep 1903 EMWC. 75. Edwin Markham, “Literature Remade,” The New York Times, December 12, 1909, SMA2. 76. Edwin Markham, The Younger Choir (New York: Moods Publishing Co., 1910), 9-11. The first edition of five hundred contained reprints of poems previously published in publications such as Moods, The Forum, Atlantic Monthly, Century, Independent, Smart Set, The Saturday Evening Post, North American Review, The New York Times, The Sol von Nova York. 77. Markham, Younger Choir, 10-11. 78. Markham, Younger Choir, 12. 79. Edwin Markham, "On Our Younger Writers' Eroticism, Paganism and Nietzsche," The New York Times Book Review, October 13, 1912, 578. The volume received favorable reviews. In a book review, Richard Le Gallienne called America "the quintessential commercial land" and praised The Younger Choir for curbing that commercialism by providing "the power of the dream" that "forever mysteriously creates and recreates the visible world." - a visible world not all granite and iron, but also violets and daffodils and woman's face and birdsong.” Richard Le Gallienne, “The Younger Choir,” The Forum 43 (June 1910), 652 [651-60]. 80. Filler, Markham, 158. 81. Margaret Widdemer, A Tree With A Bird In It: A Symposium of Contemporary American Poets On Being Showd A Pear-Tree On That Sat A Grackle (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1922), 4. 82. Hearst International Library published the book in 1914. Filler, Markham, 127, 138, 155. 83. Filler, Markham 133.

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Notes for pages 86-95

241

3 Healing a Community, Creating a Renaissance: A New Infrastructure for the “New Beauty” quoted in Ross Wetzsteon, Republic of Dreams: Greenwich Village, the American Bohemia, 1910–1960 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), 16. 2. As a young man, William had an affair with Berlin actress Edwine Viereck. Louis von Prillwitz, son of Prince August of Prussia, assumed legal paternity. George Sylvester Viereck, My Flesh and Blood: A Lyric Autobiography with Indiscreet Annotations (New York: H. Liveright, 1931), 3, 236-238; Otis Norman, "Viereck, Hohenzollern?" New York Times Saturday Review of Books, June 29, 1907, 413. Birth certificates show that Prince George of Prussia and Baron Franz von Schick, the Austrian Imperial Cavalry General, served as godparents. 3. Quadrangle, “Youth Journal,” EGLC. 4. Huneker to Viereck, 11/13/1905, EGLC. 5. Huneker to Viereck, December 1, 1905, EGLC. 6. Elmer Gertz, Odyssey of a Barbarian: The Biography of George Sylvester Viereck (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1978), 40. 7. Ralph Melnick, The Life and Work of Ludwig Lewisohn, vol. 1 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 94-104. 8. Viereck, Ninevah and Other Poems (New York: Moffat, Yard & Co., 1912 [1907]), xiv–xv. 9. Quadrangle, Nineveh, xvi. 10. Gilder to Viereck, June 24, 1907, EGLC. 11. "Viereck Writes to Gilder," The New York Times Book Review, Aug. 19, 1907, 488. 12. Untermeyer, "The Haunted House," The New York Times, July 13, 1907. 13. "Topics of the Week" , The New York Times Book Review, June 29, 1907, page 416. 14. Bradley, “Prolonging Strains of A Dying Song,” The New York Times Book Review, June 22, 1907, page 407. 15. Barker to Gertz, May 24, 1936, EGLC. 16. Gertz, Odyssey, 112. 17. "Believes He Is A Genius," Saturday Evening Post, August 31, 1907. 18. Gertz, Odyssey, 99. 19. Viereck also flattered himself on the Rough Rider's sister, Corinne, who had sent copies of her poems for critics. While other poets viewed her as a wealthy dilettante, Viereck wrote diplomatic letters praising her work as "inspired". He gladly accepted invitations to lunch to talk about his literary development. See, for example, square to Corinne Roosevelt, March 8, 1913, GVHH. 20. Neil M. Johnson, George Sylvester Viereck: German-American Propagandist (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972), 17. 21. In a letter to his parents, who returned to Berlin in 1912, Viereck reported his success “Million Dollar Luncheon" at the Roosevelt

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242

22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

The notes on pages 95-99 were intended for a literary and business audience. Within a year the journal was accepted into the Internationale, a "liberal journal of literature, politics, philosophy and drama". The International was founded by Colombian students belonging to the Socialist League for Industrial Democracy. Unlike CL, International printed original articles. Publishers received non-fiction from figures such as Charles W. Eliot, John Dewey, and George Cronyn. Walter Lippmann prepared the political notes; Floyd Dell contributed fiction; Sara Teasdale, Louis Untermeyer and many others submitted their verses. B. Russell Herts, Richard le Gallienne, and Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff served as contributing editors. Salon host Mabel Dodge declined Viereck's request for financial support for the magazine, but she contributed articles and believed that she had "a truly emancipatory influence on young writers who had not previously had a vehicle for their work". Mabel Dodge Luhan, Movers and Shakers (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985), 160. “The Confessions of a Barbarian,” The New York Times Book Review, May 21, 1910, page 5. Cited in Phyllis Keller, USA of Belonging: German-American Intellectuals and the First World War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 126. Hapgood, review by GS Viereck, Confessions of a Barbarian, The Bookman (1910), 505. Cited in Gertz, Odyssey, 102. Floyd Dell, Homecoming: An Autobiography (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, Inc., 1933), 287. Steven Watson, Strange Bedfellows: The First American Avant-Garde (New York: Abbeville Press, 1991), 29 John Reed, "A Gilbertian Ode", The Day in Bohemia; or Life Among the Artists, reprinted in Alex Baskins John Reed: The Early Years in Greenwich Village (New York: Archives of Social History, 1990), 70. Dell, Homecoming, 279-89. Such behavior contradicts Dell's earlier statement that the Village “wanted its most serious beliefs to be ridiculed; liked to laugh at his own beliefs.” Dell, Homecoming, 261. Dell, Homecoming, 280. Quoted in Florence Hamilton, “The Poet and the Problem,” 221. Harvey to Gertz, 4 September 1935, EGLC. In the same letter, Harvey attributed the resentment Viereck sometimes aroused to his prescient thinking: “He spoke of sex with a poetic liberty not understood in Anglo-Saxon circles at the time. It's time to justify it. Psychoanalysis had not yet become popular.” Gertz, Odyssey, 59. Gertz, Odyssey, 59. “Recent Poetry”, October 1913, 271. “Recent Poetry”, September 1910, 334. “Recent Poetry”, CO, August 1910 , 221. “Recent Poetry,” April 1916, 282.

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Notes on pages 99–106 243 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

64. 65.

66.

Revision of Rhymes To Be Trades for Bread, Aug. 1913, 128. Revision of Viereck, The Candle and The Flame, Aug. 1912, 231. "Voices of the Living Poets," CO, Feb. 1915, 121. "Recent Poetry ', June 1914, 462. 'Recent Poetry', September 1911, p. 332. "Recent Poetry", February 1911, pp. 217-218. 'Recent Poetry', January 1911, 102. 'Recent Poetry', Poetry November 1918, 329. See for example 'Recent Poetry', August 1910, 218, September 1910, 334 and November 1910, 568 'The Poets' Circle and Syndicate Open ', The New York Times, Jan. 2, 1911, p. 7. "Poetry Is a Living Art,' That's Why American Poets Organized," The New York Sun, 10 "Recent Poetry," CL, Dec. 1910, p. 682 Braithwaite, "The Feast of the Poets," BET, Dec. 31, 1910. Quoted in "Recent Poetry," Jan. 1911, CL, 101f. Ibid., 102. Percy MacKaye was a respected poet who led a movement to make poetry more democratic by attempting to establish masked mini-game poems to be read to audiences as diverse as African-American high schools, advertising agencies, and Labor should party industrialists of the world. See "Percy MacKaye Predicts Communal Theatre," The New York Times Sunday Magazine, May 14, 1916, page 13. "First Aid To Poets," Washington Post, January 3, 1911, page 6. Members of Authors' Club founded in 1882 appointed he Matthew Arnold as the first honorary member. Monroe, Poets Life, 84-85. Eunice Tietjens, The World at My Shoulder (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1938), 5, 35. See PSA to Teasdale, Dec. 23, 1910, STVA. "'Poetry is a living art'", 10. "Boom in Poetry May Make 'Best Selling' Fiction A Back Number," The New York Times, June 22, 1913, SM6. Initially, the Pulitzer Committee refused to create the poetry category. The Society jointly administered the prize with Columbia University until the Pulitzer Committee changed its belief about the value of honoring poetry and took control of the prize three years later. In his memoir, Jessie Rittenhouse credited this, while in the official PSA story, Gustav Davidson claimed that Edward J. Wheeler secured the funds. In allegiance to Apollo. Ed. Gustav Davidson (New York: Fine Editions Press, 1950), 19. Pulitzer Prize records provide no clarification. "Boom in Poetry," 6. "Poets in Session in Untermeyer Home," The New York Times, May 10, 1914, p. 10; "Poets Woo Spring on Greystone Lawn," The New York Times, May 26, 1915, p 9. Rittenhouse, My House of Life, 227-230.

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Notes for pages 107-111

67. Viereck resigned as secretary after declaring that he lacked "the spirit of a secretariat". He had no desire to continue in the unpaid position, preferring to devote his energy to more lucrative ventures that still left enough time for poetry writing. Rittenhouse herself struggled with meager pay and her lack of literary productivity during her years as a secretary. 68. Margaret Widdemer in Jessie Rittenhouse, 21. 69. Rittenhouse recalled that “when the so-called New Movement in poetry was just beginning and was still a little unsettling to the layman,” she performed before small audiences at local book clubs such as as well as at places like the American Library Association's annual convention, which brings together more than 2,000 librarians. She has also been invited to present a series of talks to members of the Board of Education in New York City. Rittenhouse, My House, 275-76. 70. Rittenhouse, My House, 279-280. When Rittenhouse moved to Florida in 1922, Catherine Markham assumed the duties of PSA secretary. 71. Poet Robert Hillyer served as the first PSA faculty president, with Mark Van Doren and Grace Hazard Conkling as co-vice presidents. In Rittenhouse, My House, 240. 72. See PSA Notes, December 29, 1911, STVA. 73. Widdemer, Friends, 113. 74. Reedy to Teasdale, June 21, 1915, STVA. 75. William H. Pritchard, Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993, 117. Pritchard notes that Frost originally addressed this remark to Carl Sandburg, a poet to whom he has often been compared. On a 1922 visit to Sandburg at the University of Michigan, Frost derided the pose of energetic masculinity: "He might stay [three] hours in town and spend one of them washing his white hair and facial expression for public display to harden." 76. Lowell to Rittenhouse, December 3, 1915, Box 17, ALHH. 77. Rittenhouse, My House of Life, 256-258. 78. Widdemer, Friends, 113. 79. "Recent Poetry," CO, Apr. 1915, p. 273. 80. Wheeler to Lowell, Dec. 1, 1915, ALHH. 81. CO, June 1916, 433. 82. In Amy Lowell: A Chronicle with Extracts from Her Correspondence (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1935), Samuel Damon dates this speech as January 25, 1916, but his congratulatory letters from the Houghton Correspondence library date 1917. 83. Damon, Amy Lowell, 36. 84. Square to Lowell, February 3, 1917, ALHH. Reprinted with permission from copyright owner Stephanie A. Viereck Gibbs Kamath. 85. Lowell to Viereck, 2/9/1917, GVHH. 86. Rittenhouse, My House of Life, 293-308. 87. In allegiance to Apollo. Ed. Gustav Davidson (New York: Fine Editions Press, Publishers, 1950), 21, 23. 88. Monroe, Poet's Life, 242. 89. Greenslet to Monroe, March 8, 1910, Folder 8, Box 3, HMUC.

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Notes on pages 111-117 245 90. Kennerley to Monroe, October 18, 1911, Folder 11, Box 1, HMUC. 91. Monroe, “The Bigness of the World,” Atlantic Monthly, 108 (September 1911) 3, 372 [371-75]. 92. Monroe, "Size", 373-75. "Cinderella of the Arts", Chicago Tribune, November 19, 1911, 1. Cited in Williams, Monroe, 247. 93. "Cinderella of the Arts", 1. Cited in Williams, Monroe, 247. 94. Williams, Monroe , 14-15 95. Monroe to O'Brien, August 28, 1912, HMUC. 96. Monroe, Poets Life, 246-247. 97. Williams, Monroe, 20-21. Poets who received the letter included Edwin Markham, Amy Lowell (whose poem "On Carpaccio's Picture" Monroe had listed in the Atlantic Monthly under her own article "The Bigness of the World"), E.A. Robinson, Vachel Lindsay, Floyd Dell and British writers such as W. B. Yeats and John Masefield. 98. Williams, Monroe, 11. 99. Monroe, "The Motive of the Magazine." Poetry (October 1912), 27–29. 100. Edith Wyatt, "On the Reading of Poetry," Poetry, 1 (October 1912) 1, 25. 101. Monroe, Review of The Vaunt of Man and Other Poems, Poetry, 2 (April 1913) 1, 26 102 Monroe , Review of The Lonely Dancer, and Other Poems, Poetry, 4 (April 1914) 1, 31. 103. Monroe, “The New Beauty,” Poetry, 2 (April 1913) 1, 22–24. 104. Carl Sandburg wrote of this slogan in "The Work of Ezra Pound," Poetry, 7 (Feb. 1916) 5, 251. 105. Monroe, Poet's Life, 223. 106. Pound to Monroe, August 18, 1912. HMUC . 107. Cited in James Longenbach, Stone Cottage (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 31. 108. Pound to Monroe, August 18, 1912. HMUC. 109 pounds to Monroe, Oct. 11, 1912 and Sept./Oct. 1912, HMUC; Pound to Monroe, October or November 1912, quoted in Poetry Magazine: A Gallery of Voices. An Exhibition from the Harriet Monroe Poetry Collection (Chicago: Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, 1980), 36. 110. Parisi, Dear Editor, 11, 12, 75, 77. 111. Parisi, Dear Editor, 10-22, 178. 112. Parisi, Caro editors, 59. 113. Parisi, Caro editors, 43-44. 114. Floyd Dell, 'To A Poet', Chicago Evening Post Literary Review (April 4, 1913), quoted in Monroe, Poet's Life, 310. 115. Sandburg was initially reluctant to analyze the meaning of Pound's poetry: 'So how to was intended to reduce the crimson wing of a Kentucky red bird to a chemical formula while dissecting the inner human elements that make up poetic art." But then he compared Pound's creations to those of a scientist or entrepreneur: "His way of working. . . it's more conscious and conscious, clearer in purpose and design than meets the eye." Despite this deceptive ease, Pound really works "by rules,

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116. 117. 118. 119.

120. 121.

122. 123.

124. 125. 126. 127.

128. 129.

130. 131. 132. 133. 134.

135. 136.

Notes on pages 119-123 with measurements, formulas, and dates as rigorous and definite as any workman who employs exact science, using fractions of an inch, and drilling steel to thousandths of a millimeter. Sandburg, "The Work of Ezra Pound," 249-57. Parisi, Caro Editor, 52. Parisi, Caro Editor, 42. Monroe, "The Open Door," Poetry, 1 (November 1912) 2, 62, and Monroe, "Tradition," Poetry, 2 (May 1913) 2, 67 –69. Monroe, Poet's Life, 215. When Monroe first saw the show in New York, she was reacting to the lack of transparency in paintings by Picasso, Duchamp and Matisse. "A picture should speak for itself," she argued. Several months of reflection and discussion helped her appreciate the contributions of these artists. Henderson, "Art and Photography," Poetry, 6 (April 1915)1, 99-101. Tietjens, World, 24. For an analysis of Henderon's contributions to the journal, see Jayne Marek, Women Editing Modernism: "Little" Magazines and Literary History (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995). Quoted in Lowell, Tendencies, 213. Monroe fired back, charging: “What risk did The Dial ever take? What have you printed but echoes?” Monroe, “The Enemies We Have Made,” Poetry, 4 (May 1914) 2, 63–64. Monroe, "The Enemies We Have Made," 63. Monroe, "Review of Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems," Poetry, 8 (May 1916), 2, 90-93. Tietjens, Welt, 39-40. Monroe, "Incarnations," Poetry, 2 (May 1913), 2, 104. Assistant editor Alice Corbin Henderson supported Lindsay's affirmation: "He realizes himself in relation to direct experience." Henderson, "Too Far From Paris," Poetry, 4 (June 1914), 3. Monroe, "Poetry's Banquet," Poetry, 4 (April 1914) 1, 25-28. However, Ficke denounced the free verse forms that Yeats sometimes used. Unlike Rousseau, Ficke believes that the poet finds freedom only in chains. See Monroe, Poet's Life, 406. Monroe, “Introduction” to Lindsay, The Congo and Other Poems (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1914), v–ix. Randolph S. Bourne, “Sincerity in the Making,” The New Republic, 1 (December 5, 1914), 26–26. Herbert Russell, "Edgar Lee Masters", Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 54(1), 298. Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, Roosevelt, xx. "Poetry is the orientation of the soul to the conditions of life," Masters continued. "How great waters can it rush, surge or roar." "What is poetry?" Poetry (September 1915), 307. Russell, "Edgar Lee Masters", 302. Monroe, "Review of Edwin Markham, The Shoes of Happiness and Other Poems Poetry (September 1915) vol. VI, No. 6, 308-10.

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Notes on pages 124–128 247 137. James Kraft, Who Is Witter Bynner? A Biography (Albuquerque: University of Mexico Press, 1995), 24. 138. Harriet Monroe, “Review of Witter Bynner The New World,” Poetry, 7 (December 1915), 3, 147–148. 139. Others, 2 (Feb. 1916) 2, 156. 140. See Suzanne Churchill, The Little Magazine Others and the Renovation of Modern American Poetry (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2006). 141. Monroe to Williams, March 3, 1913, Parisi, Dear Editor, 113. 142. See Monroe to Untermeyer, September 20, 1915, Box 6, LUUD. Conrad Aiken and Ford Madox Hueffer were also instrumental in Monroe's decision to publish Eliot's poem. 143. Monroe, "Give Him Room," Poetry, 6 (April 1915)1, pp. 81-83. 144th pound to Henderson, June 14, 1917, Folder 8.2 (1917-1949), Box 1, AHUT. 145. These included 790 for paid subscriptions, 254 for guaranteed copies, 149 for trade and press, and 40 for advertisers, contributors and miscellaneous. Williams, Monroe, 296. 146. Williams, Monroe, 20–21.

4 Rewriting Genre Codes, Redrawing the Color Line: Anthologies and the Dream of Aesthetic Universalism 1. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Co., 1907 [1903]), 164. 2. Braithwaite, “Arcturus ", Phylon, 2 (1941), 258-59. 3. Newsletter of the Poetry Society of America, April 1937, 4. 4. Mencken to George Sterling, quoted in From Baltimore to Bohemia: The Letters of H. L. Mencken and George Sterling. Ed. S. T. Joshi (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001), 29. 5. Cited in Lisa Steinman, Made in America: Science, Technology, and American Modernist Poets (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 45. 6. Cited in Lara Vetter, Modernist Writings and Religio-scientific Discourse (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 11. 7. T.E. Hulme, "Romanticism and Classicism" (1911) and "A Lecture on Modern Poetry" (1908), in The Collected Writings of T.E. Hulme. Ed. Karen Csengeri (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 8. Daniel Albright makes it clear that the relationship between modernists and science was not without problems or contradictions. D. H. Lawrence, for example, invoked Jewish stereotypes to criticize Einstein, while Wyndham Lewis and Pound found his theories more compatible with the nebulous and insubstantial poetry and poetics of the Victorians. "Einstein deeply offended that part of the modernist movement that loved solidity, hard edges, and practicality," argues Albright. Quantum Poetics: Yeats, Pound, Eliot, and the Science of Modernism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 13.

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Notes for pages 129-135

9. Pound didn't use the phrase "Make it New" until the 1930s. See Kurt Heinzelman, "'Make It New': The Rise of An Idea," in Make It New: The Rise of Modernism. Ed. Kurt Heinzelman (Austin: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, 2004): 131-34. In their three-volume study of the role of women in 20th-century literature, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar document "sexualized visions of change and exchange": No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century, Vol. I: The War of Words (New York: Yale University Press, 1989); Vol. II: Sex Exchange (1989); Vol. III: Letters from the Front (1995). 10. In On Beauty and Being Just (New York: Princeton University Press, 1999), Elaine Scarry traces the gender division of beauty back to the 18th century, when Kant divided aesthetics into two categories and saw beauty as mere charm with feminine associations , and elevates the sublime associated with the masculine with its ability to move people. See also Rita Felski, The Gender of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995). 11. Anne Ferry, Tradition and the Individual Poem: An Inquiry into Anthologies (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 5, 202-10. For his part, Ezra Pound referred to The Golden Treasury as "that stinking sugar sucker Palgrave" and constructed his critical opinions in opposition to the book's content. Frank Lentricchia discusses Pound's views on Palgrave in the Modernist Quartet (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 55–61. 12. See Alan Golding, From Outlaw to Classic: Canons in American Poetry (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995); Craig S. Abbott, “Modern American Poetry: Anthologies, Classrooms, and Canons,” College Literature, 17 (1990 ). ) ) 2/3, 209–21, Timothy Morris, Becoming Canonical in American Poetry (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995) and Gerald Graff, Professing Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). 13. For more information on black culture during this period, see Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem: African American Literature and Culture, 1877–1919. Ed. Barbara McCaskill, Caroline Gebhard (New York: New York University Press, 2006). 14. Nina Miller, Making Love Modern: The Intimate Public Worlds of New York's Literary Women (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 210-11, 216. Marureen Honey also makes this point in Shadowed Dreams: Women's Poetry of the Harlem to express Renaissance (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 2-3, 6-7, 20-21. 15. Rittenhouse, My House of Life, 225-226. 16. Guiney quoted Charles Lamb when he said this. Horace Gregory, Marya Zaturenska, A History of American Poetry, 1900-1940 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1946), 83. 17. Rittenhouse to Orton Tewson, 1925, JRVA. 18. In 1890, Boston had 8,125 African Americans, making up 1.8% of the total population. By 1920 that number had risen to 16,350 (2.2%), of whom 5,334 lived in Cambridge. Two-thirds of Boston's black citizens lived in integrated environments. In 1904, the Boston Sunday Herald ran the headline "Boston as a Negro's Paradise," quoting prominent Boston blacks. Mark Schneider,

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19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34.

Boston Confronts Jim Crow, 1890–1920 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997), x, xii, 4, 7. Braithwaite, „The House under Arcturus“, Phylon 2 (1941) 1, 132. Braithwaite, „Arcturus“, Phylon, 2 (1941) 2, 135–36. Ver Stephen Fox, The Guardian of Boston: William Monroe Trotter (Nova York: Atheneum, 1970). Butcher, BR, 11–13, 18, 246, 249. Braithwaite für Ray Stannard Baker, 3. November 1907. Citado in BR, Butcher, 245–247. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Social and Political Criticism (Nova York: Macmillan Co., 1920 [1869]), 31. Braithwaite, „Some Contemporary Poets of the Negro Race“, Crisis, April 1919. Citado em BR, Butcher, 53. Für Diskussionen über Ästhetik zwischen Künstlern, Autoren und Akademikern von Afroamerikanern, konsultieren Sie Russ Castronovo, Beautiful Democracy: Aesthetics and Anarchy in a Global Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). Jeffrey Perry, Hubert Harrison: The Voice of the Harlem Renaissance, 1883–1918 (Nova York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 69–72. James Weldon Johnson, Book of American Negro Poetry (Nova York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1922), 18. Em 1906, Braithwaite fez lobby sem sucesso para encontrar um editor para a antologia de versos afroamericanos; ele entregou a ideia a Johnson que, quinze anos depois, conseguiu encontrar uma editora e colher um grande lucro. Braithwaite, que trabalhou na antologia com Johnson por dezoito meses, não recebeu nenhuma recompensa financeira. Alain Locke für Charlotte Mason, 25. Februar 1931, Caixa 69, Pasta 1, ALHU. Braithwaite, „Arcturus“, Phylon, 2 (1941) 2, 136. Braithwaite, „Arcturus“, Phylon, 3 (1942) 1, 35. Braithwaite, The House of Falling Leaves: With Other Poems (Boston: John W. Luce and Company, 1908), 61. Howard Meyer, Colonel of the Black Regiment: The Life of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967), 162. Meyer, Colonel, 296. Embora três volumes dos Poemas de Dickinson tenham sido publicados entre 1890 e 1892 e vendeu bem, os sinais de pontuação, a sintaxe e a estrutura foram significativamente alterados. Sua influência se expandiu quando Thomas Johnson restaurou os textos em suas versões originais em a edição de três volumes, The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Belknap Press, 1955). Mesmo aqueles não transmitiam com total precisão a escrita de Dickinson. Para um exame dos manuscritos de Dickinson, in Betsy Erkkilia, „The Emily Dickinson Wars“, The Cambridge Companion to Emily Dickinson. Ed. Wendy Martin (Nova York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 11–29. Gary Williams, Hungry Heart: The Literary Emergence of Julia Ward Howe (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 1, 136. Perto do fim de sua vida, Higginson apoiou o plano de Booker T. estratégia de Du Bois. Em 1909, Du Bois convidou o então coronel de 85 anos para participar da reunião organizacional do que se tornou a NAACP, mas Higginson recusou.

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250 Notes on pp. 138-143 35. Braithwaite, "Arcturus," Phylon, 2 (1942) 2, 190-92. 36. OHCU, 74. For a full discussion of the racial issues that affected Braithwaite's life and career, see Lisa Szefel, "Encouraging Verse: William S. Braithwaite and the Poetics of Race," New England Quarterly (March 2001), 32-61 37. Braithwaite to Arthur Upson, December 30, 1906, Box 19, WBVA. 38. The Book of Georgian Verse appeared in 1908, followed by The Book of Restoration Verse in 1909. Braithwaite completed the last volume of Victorian verse in three years, but was unable to print it because the publishers failed to grant copyright permission for crucial selections from Tennyson, Arnold and other authors. Braithwaite to Temple Scott, Brentano's, June 9, 1909. Butcher, BR, 250. 39. OHCU, 72. 40. Braithwaite to Arthur Upson, April 26, 1908, Box 19, WBVA. 41. OHCU 7. 42. OHCU 7. 43. Cited in Roy Harvey Pearce, The Continuity of American Poetry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), 255. 44. According to Braithwaite, the transcript had a daily newspaper publication circulation of 35,000. The Wednesday and Saturday editions, which included the magazine section, attracted more subscribers, with the Saturday edition selling 80,000 copies nationwide. OHCU, 18. 45. Braithwaite, "Poetic Criticism," The Poetry Journal, 1912, 38-40. 46. Braithwaite, "Poetic Criticism," 38-40. 47. Matthew Arnold, "The Study of Poetry", Matthew Arnold's Poetry and Criticism. Ed. Dwight Culler (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961), 306. 48. Arnold, 'The Function of Criticism at the Present Time', in Poetry and Criticism, 247, 258. 49. The Poems and Sonnets of Louise Chandler Moulton (London: Macmillan and Co., 1909), xvii. 50. Reedy to Teasdale, October 22, 1912, STVA. 51. Spingarn, "The New Criticism", Criticism in America: Its Function and Status (Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1924), 11. 52. Braithwaite, "The Function of Poetry in the Twentieth Century" (unpublished manuscript [ca . 1916]), Box 2, WBHH. Braithwaite, The Verse of Kendall Banning, BET, 22 Jun 1921. 53. Braithwaite, The Year in Poetry, Bookman, March 1917. Cited in BR, Butcher, 35. 54. Braithwaite, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1913 (Cambridge: William Braithwaite), x. 55. Braithwaite, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1915 (New York: Gomme & Marshall), xxii. 56. After reading Braithwaite's review of The Town Down the River (dedicated to Roosevelt) in 1910, Robinson sought out Braithwaite in Boston and began a long and strong friendship. Louis Coxe, Edwin Arlington Robinson: The Life of Poetry (New York: Pegasus, 1969), 82. In 1920, Braithwaite encouraged Robinson to urge Macmillan to publish it

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57. 58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

73. 74. 75. 76.

77.

a collected edition of his verses. Robinson initially gave up, but when Braithwaite insisted, he finally relented. The volume sold well and received a Pulitzer Prize in 1922. Hagedorn, Robinson, 325. However, Robinson opposed Braithwaite's plan to film poets and their works. During the 1920s, Robinson helped his friend on several occasions. Braithwaite recalled that without the interventions of Robinson, Bliss Perry and Robert Hillyer, his financial situation would have been completely unsustainable. Braithwaite to Edith Mirick, January 16, 1930, Box 17, WBVA. Braithwaite, Anthology of Magazine Verses for 1914 (New York: Laurence Gomme), xv, xvii. Braithwaite, "Percy MacKaye and the Nation's Rebirth," BET, Jan. 12, 1916. Braithwaite, "Three Poets of the New Age," BET, Dec. 19, 1914. Teasdale published his first book, Sonnets to Duse (1907), but did not . received great acclaim until Helen of Troy appeared in 1911. Rivers to the Sea (1915) and Love Songs (1917) sold well and established their reputations. The first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a work of poetry was given to Teasdale in 1918 for Love Songs. "Notable Books in Brief Review," The New York Times, October 21, 1917, page 51. "Miss Teasdale's Prize," The New York Times, June 16, 1918, page 55. Earle to Braithwaite, September 12, 1912, box 6, WBHH. The Lyrical Year: One Hundred Poems. Ed. Ferdinand Earle (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1912), 132-37. Lyric Year, Earle, 180–88. Matthew Bruccoli, The Fortunes of Mitchell Kennerley: Bookman (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1986), 59-60. Poetry (September 1913), 131. Wild Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford (New York: Random House, 2001), 76, 78–79. Untermeyer to Abercrombie, February 18, 1913, Box 40, LUUD. Rittenhouse, My House of Life, 250-51. Braithwaite wrote this in a review of Millays Renaissance and Other Poems, 'A Poet of Renaissance', BET, June 1918, 6. Braithwaite, 'The Fine Art of An American Poet', review of Louis Ledoux, The Story of Eleusis, BET , Oct. 28, 1916. Braithwaite, “The Soul of Spoon River,” BET, May 1, 1915; "The 'Spoon River' Man Takes Our Measure," BET, Aug. 21, 1915; "More Hot News from Spoon River," BET, March 29, 1916. Braithwaite, "Square! His last book of smug verse,” BET. Braithwaite, "More Recent Verse," BET, 1913. Thompson, Frost, 72. Braithwaite, "Robert Frost, New American Poet: His Opinions and Practice—An Important Analysis of the Art of the Modern Bard," BET, May 8 1915 , 4. W.D. Howells, “Editor's Easy Chair,” Harper's Magazine, 131 (June-November 1915), 635.

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252 Notes on pp. 148-152 78. Quoted in Lawrence Thompson, Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 1915-1938 (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970), 5, 519. 79. OHCU, 26. 80 Letter from the Editor of Harper's Magazine to Braithwaite, May 4, 1914, WBVA; and OHCU, 142-43. 81. OHCU, 85. Wright created the crime novels of SS Van Dine. 82. Some of the motions are in Box 12, WBVA. 83. Ledoux had studied with the Columbia professor and poet George Woodberry who, like Braithwaite, saw the poet as a vessel of inspiration, passion and emotion, a passive mediator between the earth and the eternal. George Woodberry, The Inspiration of Poetry, 225–30. Braithwaite named one of his children after Ledoux and the others after the poets he loved: Fiona Lydia Rossetti, Katharine Keats, Edith Carman, Arnold and Francis Robinson. Their third child was William, Jr. The sinking of the Lusitania hit Braithwaite particularly hard when Charles Lauriat Jr. was on board, returning from one of his biannual voyages to England to purchase rare books. OHCU, 160-61. 84.OHCU, 148. 85.OHCU. However, Braithwaite noted that the professor did not use such kind words. 86. More on Braithwaite, Braithwaite Papers, Box 13, WBVA. 87. See, for example, Braithwaite to Harold Pulsifer, editor of The Outlook, May 4, 1926, Box 3, WBVA. 88. Casual Comment, Feb. 1, 1915, p. 73, quoted in Williams, Monroe, 7. 89. Percy MacKaye to Braithwaite, Jan. 13, 1915, Braithwaite Papers 8990, Box 9, Folder 195, WBVA. 90. Widdemer, Friends, 39. 91. Markham to Braithwaite, Feb. 3, 1916, Box 12, WBHH. 92. Kline, “William S. Braithwaite,” BET, Nov. 30, 1915. 93. Holley to Braithwaite, Dec. 2, 1915, Box 7, WBHH. 94. OHCU, 108-9. 95. The Poetry Review ran from May 1916 to February 1917. Lowell secured five subscribers to pay the editor's salary and the cost of printing. But Braithwaite, already overwhelmed by his anthology work and BET duties, couldn't live up to his commitment. He only agreed to the job because he needed money to support his wife and eight children. 96. H.T. Schnittkind, "The Aims of The Stratford Journal" (Autumn 1916), 3-4. The journal was published from 1916 to 1925, although Braithwaite's work was limited. See also Lorenzo Thomas, “W. S Braithwaite v. Harriet Monroe: The Heavyweight Poetry Championship, 1917,” in Aldon Nielsen, Reading Race in American Poetry: “An Area of Act” (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 84–106. 97. Edward Butscher, Conrad Aiken: Poet of White Horse Vale (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), 86, 92, 110, 149, 157, 469. 98. Buetscher, Aiken, 216-17. 99. Braithwaite, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1915, xvii.

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Notes on pages 153-157 253 100. Braithwaite, Anthology. . . 1918, IX, X. 101. Marsh to Monroe, May 27, 1915, HMUC. 102. Braithwaite to Olive Lindsay Wakefield [Vachel's sister], 18 June 1945, Butcher, BR 292. In the letter, Braithwaite also criticized Edgar Lee Master's biography of Lindsay: sympathy or understanding for the interpretation or representation of Vachel's art or spirit. ” 103. Ibid. In an obituary, Sinclair Lewis described Lindsay as "kind of a Billy Sunday in rhymes". Miscellaneous files: Za Lewis, W-Z, January 9, 1932, MFBY. 104. Lindsay, The Congo and Other Poems (New York: Macmillan Co., 1915 [1914]), 3-11. 105. Monroe, "Review of Vachel Lindsay, The Congo and Other Poems," Poetry, 5 (March 1915) 6, 296-299. 106. Cited in Walter Daniel, "Vachel Lindsay, W.E.B. Du Bois, and The Crisis," The Crisis (August-September 1979), 292 [291-93]. For a critical reading of the poems, see Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Genders, Races and Religious Cultures in Modern American Poetry, 1908-1934 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 87-97, Susan Gubar, Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in of American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 140–43. 107. Quoted in Kenny J. Williams, "An Invisible Partnership and an Improbable Relationship: William Stanley Braithwaite and Harriet Monroe," Callaloo 10 (Summer 1987), 520. 108. In his Columbia Oral History, Braithwaite stated that she later They met reading the introduction to his 1916 anthology, but their correspondence suggests they had met at least two years earlier. OHCU, 106-7. 109. Braithwaite to Mrs. Chenery, April 12, 1926, Box 3, WBVA. 110. OHCU, 124. 111. Quoted in Thompson, Frost, 46. 112. Thompson, Frost, 43. Braithwaite later learned that he had made a fatal mistake, commenting in his recorded memoirs: “So I introduced them and Don't think Frost has ever forgiven me. OHCU, 124. 113. Harcourt to Braithwaite, March 20, 1915, Box 7, WBHH. 114. OHCU, 136. 115. Frost to Untermeyer, Dec. 22, 1915, quoted in Thompson, Frost, 64, 535. However, in the published version of the letter, Untermeyer changed “niggers” to “Braithwaite”. Letters to Untermeyer, 19. 116. Frost to John Bartlett, December 20, 1920, Box 5, RFVA. 117. Sterling to H.L. Mencken, March 1, 1919, Sterling, From Baltimore, 54. 118. Sterling, From Baltimore, 55, 254. 119. Untermeyer to H. L. Mencken, December 20, 1918, Reel 64, HMNY. 120th pound to Henderson, October 14, 1916, folder 7.14, box 7, AHUT; Pound added a note "Please destroy this last sheet" at the end of the letter. Pounds to Henderson, January 16, 1913, Folder 7.14, Box 7, AHUT; Pounds to Henderson, January 16, 1913, Folder 7.14, Box 7, AHUT. Also appeared in Letters, Nadel: 18, 170, 15,

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254 Notes on pages 157-162 121. Fletcher to Monroe, January 29, 1917, Box 32, Folder 8, HMUC. 122. Braithwaite, "Five Women and the Muse," BET, Nov. 1914. 123. Braithwaite, "The Emergence of a Chicago Versifier," May 13, 1916, and "An American Poet: The Work and the Message of Ezra Pound." , "BET. 124. Braithwaite, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1916 (New York: Laurence J. Gomme, 1916), xiv–v. 125. Henderson to Monroe, June 1916, Box 33, Folder 5, PMUC. Courtesy of the Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. 126. Henderson to Monroe, December 1, 1916, Box 33, Folder 6, HMUC. 127. Sandburg to Henderson, December 30, 1916, Folder 9.2, Box 9, AHUT. 128. Henderson to Burton Kline, Nov. 6, 1916, BET. 129. In a letter to Henderson dated November 27, 1917, Sandburg supported this scheme, saying: "A pathetic character was allowed to develop into a fungus to be confused with whatever grows. The papacy and the imperialism in it, the snobbery, the lackeys and the intrigues, I am aware of that. I can only take it. . . I have but one day of reckoning to look forward to.” Folder 9.3, Box 8, AHUT. 130. Poetry 9 (January 1917): 211–214. 131. Tietjens wrote to Braithwaite: "Harriet Monroe seems to think that, as co-editor of Poetry, I should not appear in the journal of a man who officially criticizes us." She advised him to look at the bigger picture: "The thing of poetry is so much greater than what any of us can do individually that it seems to me rather ridiculous and petty to fight among ourselves.” January 31, 1917, WBVA. 132. Kate Buss reviewed the anthology for the transcript. Amy Lowell wanted to use her connections with the newspaper's owner to replace the editor of the Transcript, but Braithwaite was not ready. Two months later he returned to the newspaper. OHCU, 32. Further evidence that Braithwaite resigned over Monroe's interference in his duties at the newspaper comes from a letter Agnes Lee wrote to Braithwaite: “What you say about the transcript revisions is quite a blow. However, I find it hard to believe Harriet Monroe had anything to do with it unless you know for sure. . . ” March 26, 1917, Box 11, WBVA. Ledoux's advice was instrumental in the decision to return. He wrote: "If your decision to give up your work there is irreparable, it will be such a loss to us who write poetry - I selfishly think of E.A. and myself - that I was hoping you had decided to ignore this unpleasant incident. Ledoux to Braithwaite, April 20, 1917, Box 11, WBVA.

5 Cutting Words, Shaping Pictures: The Economics of Authorship in the Literary Market 1. Citado em Jean Gould, Amy: The World of Amy Lowell and the Imagist Movement (Nova York: Dodd, Mead, 1975), 199–200. 2. H.D., "Priapus", Poetry, 1 (janeiro de 1913) 4, 118.

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Notes on pages 162-163 255 3. Harriet Monroe, "Notes", Poetry (January 1913), 135. 4. Neil Roberts, A Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry (London: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 133. 5. See , for example S. Foster Damon, Amy Lowell: A Chronicle with Extracts from Her Correspondence (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1966 [1935]) and Gould, Amy. In Amy Lowell (New York: Harold Vinal, 1926), another contemporary, not exactly his friend, Clement Wood, belittled Lowell's abilities as a poet and critic, concluding that his death was inevitably followed by "silence" rather than applause would. See also Melissa Bradshaw and Adrienne Munich, Selected Poems of Amy Lowell (2002) and Amy Lowell, American Modern. Ed. Adrienne Munich and Melissa Bradshaw (New York: Rutgers University Press, 2004); Melissa Bradshaw, "Outcoming Men's Modernisms: Amy Lowell and the Art of Self-Commodification," Victorian Poetry (Spring 2000), 141–69; and Amy Lowell: Selected Poems (New York: Library of America, 2004), with an introduction by Honor Moore. 6. Historians have begun to pay more attention to market knowledge strategies employed by writers, intellectuals, and artists in building audiences. Important contributions to this understanding of modern poetry are marketing modernisms. Ed. Dettmar and Watt; Aaron Jaffe, "Adjectives and the Work of Modernity in the Age of Celebrity," Yale Journal of Criticism 16 (2003). For more on the relationship between print culture and commerce, see Daniel Borus, Writing Realism: Howells, James, and Norris in the Mass Market (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989); James West, American Authors and the Literary Marketplace since 1900 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000); and Christopher Wilson, The Labor of Words: Literary Professionalism in the Progressive Era (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985). Susan Coultrap-McQuin analyzes the connection between women and non-business values such as love, hope, and charity in Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990). Beliefs about the gap between literature and commerce may reflect what some historians of print culture call the belief that mass culture has led to "extensive" rather than "intensive" reading. That is, the reading revolution of the 19th century led to a focus on quantity rather than quality of reading; Instead of dwelling on texts, subjects consumed them like toothpaste. For more information on this division, see David Paul Nord, “Religious Reading and Readers in Antebellum America,” Journal of the Early Republic (Summer 1995), pp. 241–272. Nord also provides a taxonomy of reader responses in Chicago during the 1910s and an analysis of the role played by interpretative communities in "Reading the Newspaper: Strategies and Politics of Reader Response, Chicago, 1912–1917," Journal of Communication (Summer from 1995 ). , 66-103. 7. Gould, Amy, 304 and Lesley Lee Francis, "A Decade of 'Stirring Times': Robert Frost and Amy Lowell," New England Quarterly (December 1986), 511 [508-22].

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256 Notes on pp. 163-167 8. Lowell to Fletcher, December 26, 1916, Box 9, ALHH. 9. Wood, Lowell, 16. 10. Lowell wrote this in response to a letter from Howard Cook, editors of Moffat, Yard & Co., inquiring about the books she had read as a child. Rollo's book series Grimm's Fairy Tales, Hans Christian Anderson, Lord Braebourne, Thackery, Ruskin and Cooper were among his youthful favorites. As a teenager she enjoyed the works of Dickens, Trollope, Scott and Charlotte Bronte. Lowell to Cook, Aug. 9, 1919, Box 6, ALHH. 11. Cited in Walker, Masks Outrageous, 29. 12. Christopher Benfey discusses Percival Lowell's interest in Asia and Mars in The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan (New York: Random House, 2003 ) . 13. Louis Untermeyer, From Another World: The Autobiography of Louis Untermeyer (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1939), 102. 14. Edna Ferber to Untermeyer, March 8, 1916, box 4, LUUD. 15th pound to Henderson, May 5, 1916, Folder 7.14, Box 7, AHUT. 16. Gould, Amy, 34. 17. See Erica Hirshler, A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston, 1870-1940 (Boston: MFA Publishers, 2001). 18. Cited in Marilee Meyer, Inspiring Reform: Boston's Arts and Crafts Movement (Wellesley, MA: Harry Abrams, Inc., 1997), 20. 19. Gould, Amy, 78. 20. Lowell to Monroe, February 16, 1914 Feld 15, ALHH. Viereck published Lowell's "The Basket" and "Dupidity" in the October 1914 issue. 21. The "Commission Contract" required the author to pay production and advertising fees. The publisher received a commission of fifteen percent of profits, and the author the rest. Houghton Mifflin's newly appointed editor, Ferris Greenslet, who left The Nation to take up the post, warned Lowell: "I don't think you're getting any Creating illusions about the possibilities of selling poetry in this heedless age.” Greenslet to Lowell, April 12, 1912, Box 11, ALHH. 22. Gould, Amy, 98-99. 23. Amy Lowell, A Dome of Many-Colored Glass (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1912), 75-77. Lowell moved from Houghton Mifflin to the Macmillan Company, with whom he published from 1916 to 1919, and then returned to Houghton Mifflin. Macmillan published an edition of the collection in 1915. 24. Poets who influenced Lowell's free verse experiments were Albert Smain, Paul Fort, Henri de Regnier, Remy de Gourmont and Emile Verhaeren. They served as the subject of his critically acclaimed and widely read Six French Poets: Studies in Contemporary Literature (1915), which had gone through three editions by 1916. 25. A Dome of Many-Colored Glass was printed for a second time in 1915 as Lowell's popularity was increasing. Gould, Amy, 105, 110. 26. Louis Untermeyer, The New Era in American Poetry (New York: Henry Holt, 1919), 140-41. 27. Arthur Davison Ficke, "Imagisme", Poetry, 1 (March 1913) 6, 199 and Ezra Pound, "A Few Don'ts By An Imagist", 200-206.

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Notes on pages 167-172 257 28. See Stanley Coffman's Imagism: A Chapter for the History of Modern Poetry (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1951); Cirena Pondrom, "H. D. and the origins of Imagism”, Sagetrieb, 1 (Spring 1985), 73–97; William Pratt, The Imagist Poem: Modern Poetry in Miniature (New York: EP Dutton, 1963); and Pratt's translation of Rene Taupin, The Influence of French Symbolism on Modern American (New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1985), Timothy Materer, "Make It Sell! Ezra Pound Advertises Modernism,” in Marketing Modernisms (Dettmar and Watt), 17-36. 29. Cyrena Pondrom makes this point in “H. D. My interpretation of H.D.'s "Priapus" stems from this article. 30. Pound quoted in selected letters by John Gould Fletcher. Ed. Lucas Carpenter et al. (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1996): 13. Daniel Albright discusses synaesthesia and modern poetry in "Exhibiting Modernism: A View from the Air" in Make It New: The Rise of Modernism. Ed. Kurt Heinzelman (Austin: Harry Ransom Center, 2004): 42. 31. Lowell, Tendencies, 261, 268, 280, 297. 32. Ben F. Johnson, Fierce Solitude: A Life of John Gould Fletcher (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1994), 20, 43. 33. Johnson, Fierce Solitude, 35. 34. The books published by Fletcher were: The Book of Nature, The Dominant City, Fire and Wine, Fool's Gold and Visions of the Evening. 35. Cited in Johnson, Fierce Solitude, 17. 36. Johnson, Fierce Solitude, 48. 37. Fletcher, Life Is My Song, 68. 38. Fletcher, Life Is My Song, 72, 110. 39. Lowell, Tendencies, 300-302, 327. 40. Lowell to Fletcher, Oct. 15, 1916, Box 9, ALHH. 41. Lowell to Monroe, September 15, 1914, Box 15, ALHH. Lowell insisted that the breakup was mainly due to her refusal to contribute $5,000 to Pound's efforts to start a literary journal in France, rather than overt artistic differences. 42. In a letter to Richard Aldington, she expressed her belief: 'If you play poetry as politics, expect to be treated as politicians. I don't think people will succeed in the long run who don't see poetry as a religion.” 7 December 1917, Box 1, ALHH. 43. "The New Movement in American Poetry," The New York Times (January 7, 1917). The unsigned author admired Lowell for "extracting beauty to the last drop from resisting matter." 44. Quoted in The High Priestess of Vers Libre, Literary Digest, April 8, 1916. 45. Walker, Masks Outrageous and Austere, 20. See also Betsy Erkkila, The Wicked Sisters: Women Poets, Literary History, and Discord ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). 46. For more information on H.D. and her literary circle, see Georgina Taylor, H.D. and the Public Sphere of Modernist Women Writers, 1913–1946 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Diana Collecott, H.D. and Sapphic Modernism, 1910-1950 (New York: Cambridge University

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258 notes on pages 172–174

47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59.

60. 61.

Press, 1999); and Cassandra Laity, H.D. and the Victorian Finde-Siecle: Gender, Modernism, Decadence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Walker, Masks Outrageous, 27, 31, 41. Quoted in Walker, Masks Outrageous, 143. Lillian Faderman was the first scholar to analyze homosexual themes in Lowell's writings. See "Warding Off the Watch and Ward Society: Amy Lowell's Treatment of the Lesbian Theme," Gay Books Bulletin 1 (Summer 1979): 23–27, and "Writing Lesbian" in Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love between Women the Renaissance to the Present (New York: Perennial, 1998). To learn more about Lowell's lesbian identity, her pursuit of female and homosexual descent through to modern poetry, and her use of verse libre to evoke a lesbian erotic sensibility, see Mary Galvin, Queer Poetics: Five Modernist Women Writers (Westport, CT : Praeger Publishers, 1999), especially Chapter 2, "Imagery and Invisibility: Amy Lowell and The Erotics of Particularity". See also Paul Lauter, "Amy Lowell and Cultural Borders," in Speaking the Other Self: American Women Writers. Ed. Jeanne Campbell Reesman (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), 288-96. Edward O'Brien to Braithwaite [nd], Box 9, WBVA. Mabel Dodge Luhan, Movers and Shakers (New York: Harcourt Brace), 1936, 91. Lowell to Bryher, January 7, 1919, Box 4, ALHH. Carolyn Burke, Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 191. Lowell to Bryher, January 7, 1919, Box 4, ALHH. Cited in Walker, Outrageous Masks, 29. Lowell to Aldington, 11 August 1918, Box 1, ALHH. Lowell to Evans, June 7, 1918, Box 8, ALHH. However, Lowell declined a 1918 invitation to speak before an all-male organization called "The Writers" who asked her to discuss "The Woman Writer - Professional or Parasite?" A Critical Fable (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922). Quoted in Walker, Masks Outrageous, 19. Rittenhouse continued: "His diction is graphic, engaging, often repellent, sometimes grotesque, but always individual and often beautiful." Rittenhouse, "A Year's Harvest in American Poetry", The New York Times Book Review (November 28, 1915), 462. Vita Sackville-West to Lowell, 1921, Box 20, ALHH. Untermeyer, New Era, 144. After reading Untermeyer's review, Lowell formed a friendship that grew stronger over the years. A gift of some safety pins yielded a letter from Lowell that revealed his consistent views on beauty. When asked if she would wear the brooches in public, Lowell replied, "No, my child, no one spoils a pretty thing for useful purposes." She would place them on a fireplace to serve their "purpose, a delight to be for the eyes". Lowell to Untermeyer, December 30, 1915, Box 20, ALHH.

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Notes on pages 174-179 259 62. See, for example, Philip Ainsworth Means to Lowell, February 4, 1920, box 16, ALHH. 63. Marshall Schacht, March 3, 1923, Box 20, ALHH. 64. Lowell, Sword Blades and Poppies (New York: Macmillan Co, 1914), vii. 65. Lowell to Anderson, February 1, 1916, Box 1, ALHH. 66. Wilkinson to Lowell, Jan. 29, 1919, Box 20, ALHH. 67. Lowell, "A Consideration of Modern Poetry," North American Review (January 1917). 68. Lowell expressed the same principles in a letter to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, Ellery Sedgwick: "I personally find that art should be true, sincere and beautiful, even if it sometimes has the beauty of a Gothic grotesque." Lowell to Sedgwick, April 2, 1914, Box 18, ALHH. 69. Lowell, Sword Blades, viii. 70. Lowell, sword blades, xi. In 1893, in his famous Renaissance conclusion, Pater had declared that logic and theories diminished the power of art and poetry. He viewed success as those individuals who could "always burn with that hard, jewel-like flame to sustain that ecstasy". The brief glimpses of beauty promised a healing effect: "While everything melts beneath our feet, we can cling to every exquisite passion, to every contribution to knowledge that shines upon a lofty horizon, to shut the mind for a moment or excitement liberating...of the senses, strange dyes, strange colors and strange smells, or the work of the artist's hands, or a friend's face. Walter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry. Ed. Donald Hill (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 189. 71. Lowell, Sword Blades, 89-90. 72. Lowell, Sword Blades, 155-57. 73. Lowell, Sword Blades, 42-43. 74. Amy Lowell, Can Grande's Castle (New York: Macmillan Co., 1918), xiv–v. 75. Lowell, Can, 227-31. 76. Mary Brewerton DeWitt to Lowell, Nov. 18, 1921, Box 7, ALHH. 77. Ellen Carter to Lowell, October 15, 1918, Box 7 and Leighton Rollins to Lowell, September 30, 1921, Box 19, ALHH. 78. Mabel Loomis Todd to Lowell, Aug. 4, 1922, Box 19, ALHH. Todd and her husband were friends with Lowell's brother, Percival. 79. Virginia Livingstone Hunt for Lowell, Feb. 21, 1916, Box 12, ALHH. 80. Moore, Amy Lowell, XVI. 81. Lowell to H.D., Nov. 23, 1915, Box 1, ALHH. 82. Lowell also quoted the symbolist Remy de Gourmont's epistemological stance: "The only excuse a man can have for writing is to write himself to reveal to others the kind of world that is reflected in his individual mirror. . . He has to create his own aesthetic; and we must allow as many aesthetics as there are original minds, and judge them by what they are, not by what they are not. Amy Lowell, Some Imagist Poets (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1915).

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Notes on pages 179–182

83. Lowell encouraged Harriet Monroe to do the same and suggested that she contract with the International News Company to stock poetry at railroad bookstalls and distribute posters with each issue for posting in bookstores and newsstands. To prove his methods, Lowell received subscriptions from acquaintances and local bookstores. Lowell to Monroe, September 15, 1916, September 16, 1916, Box 15, ALHH. 84. In 1917 the publishers wanted to renew the contract for the anthology, but by then Aldington was experiencing problems in France, international correspondence was limited and Lowell felt the series 'did its job'. Lowell to Florence Wilkinson, May 29, 1917, Box 8, ALHH. 85. Lowell to H.D., Oct. 13, 1916, Box 1, ALHH. 86. Ibid. 87. Lowell to Untermeyer, August 30, 1918, Box 20, ALHH. 88. In the same letter, Lowell enclosed a hundred dollars as a wedding present for Pound and his wife. Lowell to Pound, April 7, 1914, Box 16, ALHH. 89. Lowell downplayed his trips south. "To this day, the Southern accent still terrifies me," she wrote. Born in 1874, the Civil War, although dormant for nine years, permeated her home. "I was surrounded by stories about it and the feeling in my family was still strong even though the war was over. I grew up listening to the songs of war, and it all took on both the terror of a real event and the mystique of a legend. Lowell to John Drinkwater, October 11, 1919, Box 7, ALHH. 90. Lowell to Fletcher, Feb. 4, 1920, Box 9, ALHH. 91. Lowell to May Becker, July 7, 1923, Box 3, ALHH. 92. Bishop to Lowell, Jan. 22, 1917, Box 3, ALHH. 93. Sergeant Katharine Angell to Lowell, February 28, 1920, Box 2, ALHH. 94. Lowell to George Brett [an editor at Macmillan's], undated, Box 4, ALHH. 95. Lowell borrowed the expression "both realistic and romantic" from an essay by Professor Dowden, who wrote that Heinrich Heine worked towards an art that combined the two currents but never achieved this synthesis. Lowell, Tendencies, 142. 96. Lowell, Tendencies, 237. 97. Lowell, Tendencies, 343. 98. Lowell, Tendencies, 80–136, 181, 343. 99. Lowell noted this in the section on masters, but actually argued so Thing, in other words, about sand castle. Tendencies, 157. 100. Lowell, Tendencies, 158. 101. Lowell, Tendencies, 175. 102. Lowell, Tendencies, 174. 103. Lowell, Tendencies, 175. In making this statement, Lowell had to account for the production of his good friend's D.H. Lawrence. Although she admitted that he was also "very concerned with sex," she consciously tried to derail the comparison by noting that in Lawrence's work "there is a certain ecstasy, sex as a flowering of mental and physical life is treated to throw it away is the transparent and shiny cloak

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Notes on pages 182–186

104. 105.

106.

107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114.

115. 116. 117.

118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125.

261

of pleasure.” Lowell, Tendencies, 174-75. See also Lowell's survey of Lawrence's poetry, "A New English Poet," The New York Times, April 20, 1919. Lowell, Tendencies, 184. Lowell and Sandburg also shared public complaints about intellectuals ignoring poetic developments. Sandburg wrote to Lowell: "I am ready to tell Walter Lippmann that he deserves a prize for aimless cleverness, he writes like one of the first steam engines, defending or justifying violence and sabotage in the labor movement while despairing of identical tactics of nonconformity in the area of action where Sandburg is boldly experimenting with new methods of reaching thought and human emotion Lowell, April 2, 1916, box 20, ALHH Lowell, Tendencies, 201–2, 214, 216 Lowell ordered Sandburg to help her sse to recruit like-minded writers: “What we need in American poetry and literature is the ability to pose and be honest, direct, and candid. ” December 10, 1917, Box 18, ALHH. Lowell, Tendencies, 218, 222, 232, 261, 268. Quoted in Kilmer, "How Does the New Poetry Differ from the Old?" NYT Magazine (March 26, 1916), Lowell to Masters, July 20, 1917, Box 15 , ALHH. Monroe, Poet's Life, 401. Lowell to MacLeish, June 25, 1924, Box 14, ALHH. Lowell to MacLeish, March 14, 1925, Box 14, ALHH. Quoted in Braithwaite, "Miss Amy Lowell on Our Coming Shelleys," BET, June 2, 1915. Lowell to Irita Van Doren, July 16, 1920, Box 20, ALHH. Lowell has expressed his admiration for Arnold in other letters, interviews, and books. Ellery Sedgwick breathed a sigh of relief when she read this in Lowell's Tendencies in Modern American Poetry from 1917: "I think that's wonderful. . . that you should like poets like Arnold. Sedgwick to Lowell, December 31, 1917, Box 20, ALHH. Joyce Kilmer, "How does new poetry differ from old poetry?" 8. Wood, Amy Lowell, 31. Lowell cited her work on a biography of Keats as further evidence. Lowell to Coblentz, April 16, 1924, Box 5, ALHH. She responded to many other critics, celebrated and obscure, near and far, to better explain and clarify the new poetry. Lowell to Publisher, BET, Box 4, ALHH. Lowell to Lowe, Oct. 27, 1919, Box 12, ALHH. Lowell to H.D., Nov. 23, 1915, Box 1, ALHH. Lowell to Anderson, July 17, 1916, Box 2, ALHH. Lowell to Williams, Oct. 13, 1916, Box 21, ALHH. Fletcher, Life Is My Song, 148. Wood, Lowell, 34. Eleanor Belmont, Ada's theater colleague at Russell, wrote so in her 1957 autobiography. Quoted in Gould, Amy, 177.

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262

Notes on pages 187–192

6 Romantic Individualism, Radical Politics: Lyrical Solidarity in Peace and War 1. Randolph Bourne, Untimely Papers (New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1919), 145–146. 2. Wheeler to Untermeyer, June 2, 1914, Box 11, LUUD. 3. Untermeyer, From Another World, 48-49. 4. Untermeyer, From Another World, 46–47. 5. Eastman, Enjoyment of Living, 304. 6. See also Michael Loewy and Robert Sayre, Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001) and Casey Nelson Blake, Beloved Community: The Cultural Criticism of Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank and Lewis Mumford (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990) 7. Waldo Frank to James Oppenheim, August 17, 1916, Box 1, Folder 1, JONY. 8. Milton Cantor, Max Eastman (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1970), 60. 9. Max Eastman, Enjoyment of Living (New York: Harper & Bros., 1948), 434. 10. Untermeyer, From Another Welt, Nov. 8 Untermeyer to Mrs. Asbury, April 3, 1918, Box 9, LUUD. 12. Untermeyer, From Another World, 15, 17, 34, 36. 13. Untermeyer sent a copy of his first book to Viereck, who replied with the condescending reply: “It is my invariable habit to send little poets and their verses with it treat kindness. I'm glad I didn't make any exceptions in your case. Two or three lines in the "Ballade" were really beautiful. . . There is a certain music in these verses that no doubt echoes mine, but it sounds sweet to my ears, despite the fact that some lines are awkwardly constructed and lack poetic value. Animosity between the two men increased as the decade progressed. Square to Untermeyer, December 20, 1911, Box 9, LUUD. 14. The Committee received 354 submissions. By Hert's estimate, The International had 2,500 subscribers plus newsstand sales. Herts to Untermeyer, October 25, 1911, January 10, 1912, Box 5, LUUD. 15. B. W. Huebsch to Louis Untermeyer, March 13, 1911, Box 5, LUUD. 16. Benet to Untermeyer, January 19, 1913, Box 2, LUUD. 17. Charles Hanson Towne to Untermeyer, January 1, 1911, Box 8, LUUD. 18. Holz to Untermeyer, May 17, 1913 and May 2, 1913, Box 10, LUUD. 19. Surely to Untermeyer, 26.7.1918, Box 8, LUUD. 20. G.A. Peckham to Untermeyer, April 25, 1912, Box 7, LUUD. 21. Untermeyer, From Another World, 255. 22. Untermeyer, From Another World, 37–39; Untermeyer, Bygones, 31. 23. Cited in Eastman, Enjoyment of Poetry, 559. 24. Max Eastman, Enjoyment of Living (New York: Harper & Bros., 1948), 292. 25. Eastman, Enjoyment of Living, 269.

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Notes on pages 193-197 263 26. Eastman, Enjoyment of Living, 301, 312. 27. Eastman to Untermeyer, September 12, 1913 and April 1914, Box 4, LUUD. 28. Eastman, Enjoyment of Living, 32, 313. 29. Max Eastman, Enjoyment of Poetry (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913), 11, 135, 148, 152. 30. Eastman, Enjoyment of Poetry, 193-97 . 31. Eastman, Enjoyment of Poetry, 174-77, 158-60, 161. 32. Gold to Untermeyer, [undated ca. 1916], Box 4, LUUD. 33. Gold for Untermeyer, [n.d., ca. 1916], box 4, LUUD. 34. James Oppenheim, The Mystic Warrior (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1921). 35. Untermeyer, From Another World, 81–2. 36. James Oppenheim, Songs for the New Age (New York: The Century Co., 1914), 10, 52. Oppenheim dedicated the book to Louis and Jean Untermeyer, Clement Wood and Dr. Psychoanalyst and translator of The Psychology of the Unconscious by Carl Jung. 37. Oppenheim, "Report on the Planet, Earth", War and Laughter (New York: The Century Co., 1916), 54. 38. Untermeyer to Mrs. Asbury, 3 April 1918, Box 9, LUUD. 39. Gladys Baker to James Oppenheim, [n.d., ca. 1924], box 1, folder 1, JONY. 40. Beverly Kaye to James Oppenheim, June 10, 1930, Box 1, Folder 2, JONY. 41. Oliver Jenkins to James Oppenheim, February 19, 1923, Box 1, Folder 2, JONY. 42. Edna Ferber and Oppenheim bought Keller a Braille-inscribed copy of The Golden Bird. Keller to Oppenheim, January 7, 1924, box 1, folder 2, JONY. 43. Edward Booth to Oppenheim, November 11, 1917, Box 1, Folder 1, JONY. 44. Braithwaite made this observation of Oppenheim's 1914 Songs for the New Age in a review of the May 28, 1921 transcript of the poet's autobiography in Vers The Mystic Warrior (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1921). 45. Braithwaite, "Three Poets of a New Age," BET, 1914. 46. Braithwaite, "Percy MacKaye," January 12, 1916. 47. Braithwaite, "Review of Louis Untermeyer's Challenge," BET, September 26, 1914; and Braithwaite's review of Untermeyer's 1919 anthology, The New Era in American Poetry, on BET, April 5, 1919. 48. Untermeyer, Bygones, 49, and From Another World, 209. 49. The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer. Ed. Louis Untermeyer (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1963), 8. 50. Letters of Robert Frost, 292. 51. Letters of Robert Frost, 52. Carl Sandburg also warned Untermeyer against this kind of writing: “ You cannot be a journalist and know eternal things!” Sandburg to Untermeyer, July 1920, Box 7, LUUD. 52. Untermeyer, From Another World, 24.

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Notes on pages 198–204

53. Louis Untermeyer - and other poets (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1916), vii. 54. Nan Apothrecker to Untermeyer, January 9, 1913, Box 1, LUUD. 55. The Letters of Robert Frost, 5. 56. Sandburg an Untermeyer, 8 June 1916, Box 7, LUUD. 57. Christopher Kamrath, Randolph Bourne's Malcontents: Cultural Politics, Democratic Practice, and the Domestication of War, 1917-1918 (New York: Routledge, 2009). When Bourne appealed to discriminatory criticism that associated poetry with "the greater movement of ideas and social movements and the peculiar intellectual and spiritual color of the age", Monroe responded with a warning that "movement passes, but beauty endures". For a discussion see Monroe, Poet's Life, 407-11. 58. Lew Sarrett to Untermeyer, 18 November 1921 and 10 December 1921, Box 8, LUUD. 59. Willard Wattles to Untermeyer, May 10, 1917, Box 10, LUUD. 60. Untermeyer, From Another World, 330–31. 61. Frost to John Bartlett, December 8, 1913, Box 5, RFVA. 62. John, Best Years, 138, 153. 63. Untermeyer, The New Era In American Poetry (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1919), 9-10. 64. Untermeyer, New Era, 11-12. 65. Untermeyer, New Era, 14. 66. Aiken to Untermeyer, December 22, 1919, January 9, 1921, Box 1, LUUD. 67. Aiken to Untermeyer, February 20, 1923, Box 1, LUUD. 68. Sandburg to Untermeyer, December 1916, Box 7, LUUD. 69. Sandburg to Untermeyer, January 1920, Box 7, LUUD. 70. Fletcher to Untermeyer, November 24, 1919, Box 4, LUUD. 71. Markham to Untermeyer, September 6, 1921, Box 6, LUUD. 72. Max Eastman, Colors of Life: Poems and Songs and Sonnets (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1918), 13, 99. 73. Singer, Eastman, 71. Social critic Hutchins Hapgood (whose favorite phrase is "the real thing") , as one scholar observed, "was more determined to open minds than to enact public policy." Robert Dowling, "Hutchins Hapgood," Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 303, 193-95. 74. Lowell, Tendencies, 158, 175. 75. Braithwaite, "The Fine Art of An American Poet," BET, Oct. 28, 1916. 76. Monroe, "The Poetry of War," (September 1914), 237 77. Monroe, "The Poetry of War," (September 1914), 238-39. 78. Monroe, "Poetry and War," Poetry (November 1914), 83. 79. Monroe, "Various Views," Poetry (June 1916), 144. 80. Monroe, "New Banners," Poetry (August 1916 ). ), 251–53. 81. For an analysis of war poetry, particularly verses composed by members of the IWW and the Woman's Peace Party, and its effect on public opinion, see Van Wienan, Partisans and Poets. 82. For more on the use of coercion and propaganda in preparing for US entry into the war, see Christopher Capozzola, "Uncle Sam Wants You!" World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

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Notes on pages 204-207 265 83. Johnson, Viereck, 23. Patria changed its name to Viereck during the war and to The American Monthly after the United States entered the war. The content also changed to indicate the weekly magazine's support of American servicemen and efforts. 84. Neil Johnson, George Sylvester Viereck: German-American Propagandist (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1959): 36–42. For more on German espionage activities in America during World War I, see Jules Witcover, Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany's Secret War in America, 1914–1917 (New York: Algonquin Books, 1989). 85. Neil Johnson's Biography of Viereck and Phyllis Keller's States of Belonging provide a full account of his activities as a propagandist. Keller's book draws on Freudian psychology to examine Viereck's influences and motivations and does not discuss his literary endeavors. 86. "Embassy Members and Prominent German Names in Assault Campaign to Conquer American Thought," Washington Post, August 15, 1915, 2-3; "Viereck Got $100,000 from the Germans," The New York Times (July 26, 1918), 1. 87. Originally published in The Nautilus, "Outwitted" was reprinted in CO, Oct. 1914, 353. In Markham's first book of post-war poetry, Gates of Paradise and Other Poems (Doubleday, Page & Co., 1920), he demonstrated his anti-war attitude: "I am a man of peace: war is generally one of the great follies of men and can only be healed by the divine powers of love and justice". 88. Keller, States, 103. 89. Letter of December 19, 1916, EGLC. 90. In the decades leading up to World War I, German-Americans were at the forefront of promoting progressive social legislation and new ideas in philosophy and literature. They built up a national network of newspapers and cultural societies as a forum for discussing such currents. In 1914, over eight million German-Americans lived in the United States. More than two million belonged to the German-American Alliance, formed in 1901 to help newly arrived immigrants assimilate in America. When the United States entered the conflict in May 1917, maintaining this intransigent stance became increasingly difficult. The German-American press was torn down and German classes were discontinued. For more information, see Erik Kirschbaum, The Eradication of German Culture in the United States, 1917–1918 (Stuttgart: Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz Akademischer Verlag, 1986) and Charles Johnson, Culture at Twilight: The National German-American Alliance, 1901– 1918 (New York: Peter Lang, 1999). 91. Viereck co-published Songs of Armageddon and Other Poems with Mitchell Kennerley in 1916. The collection included hymns to "Wilhelm II, Prince of Peace", "The Iron Chancellor" and "Deutschland, Deutschland, Land of All Lands". 92. Braithwaite, "War Poems and Others," The Poetry Journal (May 1916), 197-99. It helped, of course, that Viereck's friends Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff and Edmund Brown were on the editorial staff. Trying too hard, Braithwaite wrote bi-weekly reviews for the

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266 Notes on pages 207–211

93.

94. 95.

96. 97.

98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103.

104.

105. 106.

BET and the compilation of an annual anthology, the company collapsed after only five issues. Quoted in Recent Poetry, CO, Dec. 1918, 397. Monroe welcomed Aiken's refusal to enlist under this Class II exemption. Under the work-or-fight law, Aiken argued, poetry could not be classified as an unproductive vocation, nor could playing billiards or speculating on theater tickets. With the help of his publisher, the Four Seas Company, Aiken presented the recruiting board with formal proof that, although he had no regular hours or annual salary, he had a regular job as a writer. See E. R. Brown to Aiken, July 29, 1918, CAVA. See Van Wienen, Partisans and Poets. For a discussion of mass judgment and a useful bibliography, see Elliott Parker, "The Government's War against Dissent: The Masses and the First Amendment," AEJMC Conference Papers, 94 (Aug. 1996). Letters from Robert Frost, 55. Untermeyer, From Another World, 201, 189-90. The two became friends after Mencken wrote a letter filled with his usual pointed humor disapproving of Untermeyer's first volume of poetry. As a writer and book critic for the Baltimore Sun and co-editor of the Smart Set, Mencken began searching for poetic talent in 1911. He made his own debut with the publication of Ventures into Verse, a collection of ballads, rondeaux, quatrains and odes. It was Mencken who introduced Untermeyer to the work of the poet Sara Teasdale. "Some of your lyrics come pretty close," Mencken wrote. Oppenheim to Seward Collins, Editors of The Bookman, January 13, 1930, Box 1, Folder 1, JONY. Oppenheim to Arthur Spingarn, December 11, 1916, Box 2, Folder 1, JONY. Annette Rankin to Oppenheim, August 22, 1917, box 2, folder 1, JONY. Lowell to Oppenheim, September 17 and 20, 1917, Box 1, Folder 4, JONY. Viereck reported this number in a letter to Edmund Wheeler dated May 21, 1918. Reprinted in Viereck's American Weekly, July 1918, 1. "Citizens Want Viereck Outsted," Washington Post, August 11, 1918, 2; "NYAC Expels Viereck," The New York Times (16 August 1918), 12. Viereck's wife, Margaret, fainted after being stripped twice by British naval and military authorities and then left alone and naked on the trail for several hours in 1916 to Berlin. "British Disrobed Her," Washington Post, March 1, 1916; 2. Hagedorn, "Portrait of a Rat," New York Evening Sun (November 22, 1917). Despite his denunciation of German belligerence, Hagedorn, who was never able to support himself financially, continued to receive $25,000 a year from his father in Berlin. Keller, States, 231. Gould, Amy, 136. Some Imagist Poets: An Anthology. Ed. Lowell and others. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), 77-81.

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Notes on pages 211-215 267 107. Gould, Amy, 261, 268, 270. 108. Sir Edgar Speyer had to leave England because he refused to take the government's oath of allegiance. He helped fund Scott's Antarctic expedition and contributed financially to Lord Asquith's position as Prime Minister and did not feel he needed to demonstrate his loyalty with an oath. OHCU, 118. 109. Lowell to Fletcher, July 16, 1917, Box 9, ALHH. 110. Lowell to Aldington, December 7, 1917, Box 1, ALHH. 111. Lowell to Hagedorn, April 21, 1917, Box 10, ALHH. 112. Lowell never published these poems in book form for fear that chauvinism would embarrass her when they were ready for publication in 1919. At the time, however, she looked at them affectionately. In a letter to Sara Teasdale, Lowell wrote: "I look at these poems. . . as the best part of my 'part' for my country.” Damon, Amy Lowell, 719. 113. “Poetry Society May Drop Viereck,” Washington Post, June 28, 1918, 9. 114. Viereck reprinted exchanging articles in his journal, renamed Viereck's American Weekly, July 10, 1918. 115. Viereck to Wheeler, May 21, 1918, quoted in Viereck's American Weekly, July 1918. Letter of June 3, 1918, Viereck's American Weekly, July 1918. 116. Wheeler to Viereck, June 7, 1918, quoted in Viereck's American Weekly, July 1918. 117 Cited in Hamilton's unpublished biography of Markham, 288-89, FHLC 118. "May Drop Viereck," 9. 119. "May Drop Viereck," 9 120. Viereck to Wheeler, June 19, 1918, in Viereck's American Weekly, July 1918. 121. "Viereck Expelled By Authors' League," The New York Times, July 26, 1918, p. 20. 122. Lowell to Wheeler, July 15 July 1918, ALHH 123. Lowell to Wheeler, 23 July 1918, ALHH 124. Acre O'Sheel dictated that Braithwaite notwithstanding his support of the alliie war effort, and asked for help: "I suppose your feelings about the war are what mine are not, but you cannot condone my economic killings" because of my political views. . . I am powerless to seek justice. My family had to turn to my wife's mother's charity and I have enough money to not starve for a month. Can you suggest something for me to publish? O'Sheel to Braithwaite, June 4, 1916, Box 14, WBHH. 125. When Rittenhouse did not respond, O'Sheel circulated this letter to PSA members. O'Sheel to Rittenhouse, October 31, 1918, Box 14, ALHH. 126. Untermeyer and his wife Jean particularly questioned Lowell's tactics. One night over dinner, Untermeyer joked about his poem "The Cornucopia of the Red and Green Comfits," which appeared in the November 1917 issue of the magazine

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268 Notes on pages 215–218

127. 128. 129.

130. 131. 132. 133. 134.

the Independent, which repeated claims that German airmen had delivered poisoned sweets to starving children in Bar-le-Duc. Jean commented, "You and the magazine weren't exactly defending the court of reason, Amy," to which Lowell hysterically replied, "You don't know what you're talking about. . . Times are changing - we are all at risk. Cited in Gould, Amy, 269-70. After O'Sheel left, he was suspended from the company. Square to Elmer Gertz, April 25, 1935. EGLC. Quadrangle to Bynner, 1918, BYHH. Letters from the Witter Bynner Papers, bMS AM 1891, reprinted with permission from the Houghton Library, Harvard University, and the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Viereck and Bynner became acquainted when they exchanged books in 1907. Viereck had written painfully candidly to Bynner: "I never understood why some people objected to my free form until I found something similar in your book." Their friendship transcended literary disagreements. Quadrangle to Bynner, August 7, 1907, BYHH. Lowell to Rittenhouse, Nov. 25, 1919, ALHH. Rittenhouse to Lowell, December 8, 1919, ALHH. O'Sheel to Rittenhouse, October 31, 1918, SSVA. Harriet Monroe, "The Viereck Incident", Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, 13 (February 1919) 5, 265-267. Isaac Goldberg, “Square Redivivus,” Stratford Monthly, Fall 1924, pp. 183–86.

Epilogue 1. Ezra Pound, Poems, 1918–1921 (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1921), 62. 2. Christopher A. Thomas, The Lincoln Memorial and American Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), xxvii–xxviii , 156–57; Adam Fairclough, “Civil Rights and the Lincoln Memorial: The Censored Speeches of Robert R. Moton (1922); and John Lewis (1963), Journal of Negro History, 82 (Fall 1997) 4, 408-16, "Harding Dedicates Lincoln Memorial, Blue and Gray Join", The New York Times (May 31, 1922), 1-2, Scott Sandage, "A Marble House Divided: The Lincoln Memorial, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Politics of Memory," Journal of American History, 80 (June 1993) 1, [136-67]. 3. Markham continued to compose poetry for civic occasions, including the 1930 Boston Tercentenary, where he recited his work to an audience of 10,000. See Jane Holtz Kay, Lost Boston (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006 [Houghton Mifflin, 1980]), 285. 4. Harriot Monroe, “The Great Renewal,” Poetry, 324. 5. Lowell to Seldes, 1 November 1922, Box 18, ALHH. 6. Lowell to Richard Aldington, April 4, 1923, Box 23, ALHH. 7. Lowell to Archibald MacLeish, March 14, 1925, Box 14, ALHH. 8. Golding, From Outlaw to Classic, 7-18.

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Notes on pages 219–221 269 9. William Carlos Williams, “Supplement,” Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, 5 (July 1919) 5:25–32. 10. Widdemer added that this attitude solidified in the 1940s, when "the now cowed reading public bowed their heads and — for the most part — stopped reading him, humbly admiring him". Widdemer, Friends, 43. 11. Wendy Steiner, Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in Twentieth-Century Art (New York: The Free Press, 2001), xv. See also Arthur Danto, The Abuse of Beauty (New York: Open Court, 2003) and Uncontrollable Beauty: Toward A New Aesthetics. Ed. Bill Beckley (New York: Allworth Press, 2001). 12. The Guild published annual anthologies that sold for a nickel. Anna Hempstead Branch, Smith Alumnae Quarterly (November 1920) 57-59. Aries, friends, 208–11. 13. FHLC, 387. 14. Parisi, Dear Editor, 12, 187. 15. Ad appeared in October 1948 issue of Poetry, 31. 16. George Sylvester Viereck, “Hitler, The German Explosive,” The American Monthly (Oct 1923), 235-38. 17. Gertz, Odyssey, 272-75. 18. Aries, Golden Friends, 52–53. 19. Untermeyer wrote the introduction to each of the volumes. It proved to be the largest publishing project undertaken during the war, with approximately 122 million Armed Forces issues distributed to soldiers over a four-year period. Untermeyer, Past, 147-54. John Hench examines US government publishing efforts during and after World War II in Books As Weapons: Propaganda, Publishing, and the Battle for Global Markets in the Era of World War II (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1910). 20. Lowell to Jeanette Marks, Jan. 24, 1918, Box 14, ALHH. 21. Margaret Homans, in "Amy Lowell's Keats: Reading Straight, Writing Lesbian", Yale Journal of Criticism 14 (2001) 2: 319-51, explores Lowell's affinity for Keats and how it influenced her sexuality and identity. 22. "Keats + G525", Time (March 2, 1925). 23. Aiken to Untermeyer, May 28, 1925, LUUD. 24. Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil (NY Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920), 247. 25. Braithwaite, "The Negro in Literature", The New Negro: An Interpretation. Ed. Alain Locke (A. and C. Boni, 1925), 208. Braithwaite wrote to Nella Larson of a project for an anthology of Negro poetry: “This work will astonish the country with the recognition and acceptance of the spiritual and cultural equality of Negroes race. . . [he] will do more than all the politics and propaganda in a generation to solve the so-called "problem". There's no problem when it comes to the mind, where beauty burns down all barriers. Overwhelmed by the bankruptcy of B. J. Brimmer in 1928, Braithwaite never completed this anthology, and the 'Braithwaites' ended the 1929 edition for similar reasons. Butcher, BR, 279-80, 284, Braithwaite to Miss Robinson, 3 January 1930 .See Locke's letter to Charlotte Mason, Box 69, Folder 1, ALHU.

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270

Notes on pages 222–223

26. James Rorty, „The Conquerer“, Poetry, 14 (seit 1919) 6, 306–307, James Rorty, „California Dissonance“, von Braithwaite, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921 (Boston: Small, Maynard & Co. , 1921), 136–38, und James Rorty, „The Bell Ringers“, „End of Farce“, Anthology der Poetry Society of America (New York: Poetry Society of America, 1969 [1946]), 185–186. James Rorty enthält den Titel „Beauty and the Ad-Man“ sobre a exploração da beleza na indústria publicitária em Our Master’s Voice–Advertising (New York: John Day, 1934). 27. Richard Rorty, „Trotsky and Wild Orchids“, in Wild Orchids and Trotsky: Messages from American Universities (Nova York: Penguin Books, 1993), 35–36 [31–50]. Ver Também Rorty, Kontingenz, Ironie und Solidarität.

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Index

Abbott, Leonard, 52, 97, 206 Abendpost (Chicago German daily), 54 Abercrombie, Lascelles, 145 Adams, Henry, 56 Addams, Jane, 40, 44, 47 Adventures while Preaching the Gospel of Beauty (Lindsay), 3–4 African American, 8–10, 15, 17, 42, 51, 71, 120, 129–31, 134–39, 148, 150, 153–55, 157–58, 214, 217, 233n60, 243n55, 248n18, 249n26 , 28 Female poets, 131 and hypermasculinity, 129–31 reading practices of, 8–10 and Whitman, 51 Aiken, Conrad, 47, 129, 151–53, 201, 207, 210, 215–16, 221, 247n142 Alden, Raymond, 123 Aldington, Richard, 124, 168, 174, 179, 185, 211, 218, 257n42, 260n84 Aldrich, Thomas Bailey (1836–1907), 24–25, 29–30, 33–34, 75, 104, 138, 140 Alighieri, Dante, 102, 116, 137 Altgeld, John Peter, 4, 45 American Academy of Arts and Letters, 36 An American Anthology (Stedman), 42 American Magazine, 3–4, 23, 40, 42–43 American "Renaissance “-Poetry (1910–1920), 1–19 and public, see public and morality, see morality and the new critics, poetry of the new critics as view ignored, 1–3 , 11, 1 4–15 reception of, 6–7, 10–11, 13–19, 24–25 and race, see roots of racism of, 12–13 and women, see gender see also "Gospel of Beauty" Anderson, Margaret, 175 anthologies, 2, 6, 10, 15, 17-18, 25-26, 42, 50, 63, 74, 81, 86, 106, 110, 123, 129-30, 132, 140-43, 145, 148-60, 167-69, 171, 178-79, 184-85, 189, 197, 199-201, 216, 220-22, 235n89

e Braithwaite, 130, 140–43, 145, 148–60 propósito de, 129 e Rittenhouse, 132 The Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1913, 141 Anthony, Susan B., 132 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 40 Aristóteles, 4, 9 Armory Show Ausstellung, 85–86 Arnold, Matthew, 8, 17, 21–23, 27, 32–33, 35, 55, 90, 136, 140–42, 151, 184–85, 200 Movimento Arts and Crafts, 165 The Atlantic Mensal, 1, 23–25, 30–31, 33, 36–37, 39–43, 53, 55, 61, 65, 111, 155–56, 163 público, 1, 6–7, 10–11, 13 –14, 18–19, 29, 33–34, 37–38, 62–64, 66, 69, 72–73, 81, 86, 91, 93, 102–03, 106–14, 122–29, 142 , 147, 153–54, 163, 177, 180–81, 184, 201, 216–17, 221, 241n21, 243n55, 244n69, 255n6, 268n3 Austen, Jane, 44 Author’s Club, 25 poetas de vanguarda, 14, 17 , 46, 128, 146, 207 Baker, Gladys, 195 Baker, Ray Stannard, 42–43 Barker, Elsa, 92 Barney, Natalie, 172 Baudelaire, Charles, 12, 87, 97, 169, 228n42, 235n101 Bebel, agosto , 87 Bellamy, Edward, 73 Benét, William Rose, 54–55, 118, 185, 190 Bennett, Gwendolyn, 131 Bennett, Paula, 11 Bergson, Henri, 51 , 10 4, 167–169, 175 Berman, Marshall, 12 Bible, 79, 110 Bierce, Ambrose, 64–65, 72–73 Bishop, John Peale, 180–81 lista negra, 204–16 Controvérsia do Prêmio Bollingen (1949 ), 223

271

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272

Index

„The Bombardment“ (1914) (Lowell), 180 The Bookman, 54 Boston Authors Club, 138, 142 Boston Evening Transcript, 2, 43, 88, 103, 113, 140, 144, 148–50, 155, 159–60 , 179, 184, 250n44, 254n132, 263n44 The Boston Globe, 1, 135 Bourne, Randolph, 122, 187, 198, 207, 209 A Boy's Will (Frost), 2, 148 Bradley, William Aspenwall, 91–92 Braque, Georges, 12 Braithwaite, William Stanley, 2, 9–10, 17–18, 42–43, 53–54, 101, 103, 113, 127–30, 134–60, 173, 175, 178, 185, 189, 196–97, 202, 207, 211, 218, 221–22 und Antologias, 141–43, 148–60 Biografia de, 134–35 und Frost, 156–57 The House of Falling Leaves, 140 und Keats, 127–128 e Lowell, 155–56 Lyrics of Life and Love, 139–40 e Monroe, 157–58, 160 e Oppenheim, 196 fotografia de, 139 sobre poesia, 141–42 The Poetry Review, 151 e Pound, 157 rejeições de trabalhos de , 42–43 und Sandburg, 158–59 como tipógrafo, 127 Brawley, Benjamin, 136–37 Brooks, Van Wyck, 15, 35, 96, 161, 208 Brownell, William, 104 Browning, Robert, 10, 51, 55, 80, 102, 129, 144, 146 Bryan, William Jennings, 56, 67, 73, 132, 135 Bryant, William Cullen, 51, 59, 118 Burns, Robert, 69, 111–12, 123, 128 Burton, Richard, 42 Bushnell, Horace, 5 Bynner, Witter, 47 , 96, 98, 104, 106, 109, 124, 196, 199, 215, 220, 268n129 California Magazine, 66 Can Grande's Castle (1917) (Lowell), 178 The Candle and the Flame (1912) (Viereck), 147 Cannel, Skipwith, 125

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Kapitalismus, 3, 6, 15, 21–22, 25, 28–29, 45, 51, 60–61, 71, 73, 143, 192, 203, 234n81 Carleton, Will, 63 Carlyle, Thomas, 8, 78, 82 Carman, Bliss, 134 Carnegie, Andrew, 3 Cather, Willa, 124 Cawein, Madison, 64, 99, 161 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia (1876), 40 The Century Dictionary, 121 The Century Magazine, 1, 23–25, 28 , 31, 33–34, 36–40, 42–43, 53–56, 61, 65, 68, 89–90, 163, 166, 190, 192–93, 200 Siehe auch Scribner's Cézanne, Paul, 169 Challenge ( 1914) (Untermeyer), 196–97 Chatfield-Taylor, H. C., 112–13, 121 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 9 Chesnutt, Charles, 135 Chicago American, 39 Chicago Evening Post, 2, 100, 117, 190, 193 Chicago Poems ( Sandburg), 120–21, 176, 182, 198 Chicago Tribune, 39, 112 The Children of the Night (1897) (Robinson), 52, 55–56 Cristianismo, 4, 10, 50, 60, 66, 74, 79 –80, 125, 132, 137, 192 Cristianismo e a Crise Social (1907) (Rauschenbusch), 4 „Chromo-Civilization“ (Godkin), 22 City Beautiful Movement, 16 Guerra Civil, 21, 23, 33, 138, 217 , Klasse 260n89, 28–30, 62–63, 96–97 Ver também classe média Cleveland, Grover, 25, 65, 74 Coblentz, Stanton, 184, 261n117 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 28, 100, 142 „Columbian Ode“ (Monroe), 111 The Confessions of a Bárbaro (Viereck), 95 The Congo and Other Poems (Lindsay), 153–54, 180 Copeland, Charles Townsend, 124 Cotkin, George, 13 Cowley, Malcolm, 185 Crane, Hart, 202 Crane, Stephen, 33 , 108 Crise mensal revista, 10 Culture and Anarchy (1869) (Arnold), 22 Cummings, z. B. 125, 184

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Index Current Literature, 2, 86, 93, 96–98, 102, 108–09, 212 Current Opinion, 99, 101, 108–09, 204 Daly, Thomas, 144, 146 Darnton, Robert, 7 Darrow, Clarence, 113 Darwin, Charles, 14, 23, 44, 103 Debs, Eugene V., 135 Defense of Poetry (1819) (Shelley), 5 Dell, Floyd, 44, 96–97, 105, 117, 192, 208, 241n21, 242n30 democracia, 3–4, 6, 8–10, 15, 17, 22–23, 28–29, 44, 49–52, 73, 80–81, 87, 98, 100, 104, 110–12, 120– 21, 124, 133, 135–36, 146, 151, 179, 188, 196, 200–01, 208, 211, 216, 223 Des Imagistes (1914) (Pfund), 168–69, 178 Dewey, John, 124 , 192, 241n21 The Dial, 42, 50, 120, 123, 138, 140, 150, 184, 218, 246n123 Dickens, Charles, 44 Dickinson, Emily, 81, 138, 249n33 Dissens, 204–16 Dodd, Lee Wilson, 30 Dodge, Mabel, 8, 85–86, 96, 173, 241n21 Dole, Nathan Haskell, 45, 128, 155 Uma cúpula de vidro multicolorido (Lowell), 155, 166–67, 256n23,25 Doolittle, Hilda (H. D.) , 116, 162, 166–68, 172, 179, 183, 185 Dostoiévski, Fydor, 170 Dreiser, Theodore, 33, 65, 123 Du Bois, W. E. B., 9–10, 47, 127, 130, 136, 154, 221, 233n60, 249n34 Dubedat, Louis, 46 Dunbar, Paul Lawrence, 42 Duncan, Isadora, 40 Duse, Eleanor, 40 Earle, Ferdinand, 144 Eastman, Max, 18–19, 47 , 97, 187 –88, 191–94, 202, 230n59 Edgett, Edwin, 160 Eliot, Charles, 24 Eliot, George, 44 Eliot, T. S., 1, 47, 116, 120, 125, 152, 163, 183 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 5 –6, 23, 48, 51, 78, 81–82, 98, 138, 192 empatia, 3, 11, 46, 84, 146, 194, 219 Engels, Friedrich, 87 Genuss der Poesie (Eastman) , 193

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273

Epigrams from the Greek Anthology (1913) (Mackail), 123 Espionage Act (1917), 207–08 Evans, Donald, 174 Farm Ballads (Carleton), 63 The Fatherland journal (Viereck), 204, 210 Fauvism, 12 Ficke, Arthur Davison, 70–71, 96, 100, 114, 122, 167, 246n129 „Fireside Poets“, 51 First Love: A Lyric Sequence (Untermeyer), 190 1st South Carolina Volunteers (Union), 138 Fitzgerald, Alexander, 76 Fletcher, John Gould, 157, 169, 179, 186, 201–02 Flint, F. S., 179 Flower, Roswell, 28 Fornaro, Carlo de, 110–11 Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workman and Labourers of The Golden Treasury (1861), 129 Fort, Paul, 177 Fortnightly Review, 40 The Forum, 102 Frank, Waldo, 97, 188 Franklin, Ben, 78, 124 Freeman, Joseph, 13 Französischer Impressionismus, 167–70 Französische Symbolisten, 167–69 Freud, Sigmund, 86, 97, 169, 194, 265n85 Aus Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics (1903) (Carman), 134 Frost, Robert, 1–2, 37, 47, 108, 116, 128–29, 145, 147–48, 151, 156 –57, 180–81, 196–97, 199–201, 208–09 und University of Michigan, 199 Fuller, Loi e, 40 Fuller, Margaret, 5 A Game At Love and Other Plays (Viereck), 88–89 Garrett, C. H., 79 Gauguin, Paul, 169 gênero, 7–8, 11, 17, 26, 30–31, 36, 62, 127–36, 163–65, 173, 186, 199, 227n31, 248n10 „The Genteel Tradition“ (Santayana), 12 Partido Social-Democrata Alemão, 87 Gilded Age, 25, 62 The Gilded Age (1873), 66

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274

Index

Gilder, Richard Watson (1844–1909), 24–25, 28–30, 33–34, 36, 39, 43, 55–56, 89–91, 104, 124, 174, 192, 233n51 Ginn and Company, 127 Glasglow, Ellen, 33 Godkin, E. L., 22 Gold, Mike, 194 Goldman, Emma, 207 Gomme, Lawrence, 149 Gorky, Maxim, 84 „The Gospel of Beauty“, 3–4, 14, 122, 129, 160 , 163 , 222–24 „The Gospel of Wealth“, 3 Großbritannien, 1, 8, 22, 25, 44, 61, 90, 102, 104, 106, 164, 167, 174, 189, 204–05, 210 , 245n97 , 266n103 Grã-Bretanha, 1871–1878 (Ruskin), 61 Grande Depressão, 222 Greenwich Village, 14, 85–86, 92–93, 96–97, 173–74, 191 Griswold, Rufus, 26, 50 Guiney , Louise Imogen, 133, 248n16 Guiterman, Arthur, 105 Haiku, 18 Hall, David, 47 Hampton's Magazine, 39–40 Hapgood, Hutchins, 96, 264n73 Hardy, Thomas, 90, 172 Harlem Renaissance, 130, 221 Harper's Weekly, 1 , 24, 34, 37–38, 43, 53, 70, 98, 148, 155, 235n101 Harris, Thomas Lake, 60 Harrison, Hubert, 136 Harte, Walter, 61 Harvey, Alexander, 98, 242n33 Havel, Hippolyte, 187 , 222 Haymarket caso (1886), 4, 45 Hearst, Wil li sou Randolph, 38–39, 67, 69, 73, 87, 220 Heine, Heinrich, 28, 189, 260–95 Henderson, Alice Corbin, 52, 119–21, 123, 129, 153, 157–60, 203, 218 , 220, 230n57, 246n127, 254n129 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 138, 140 Hitler, Adolf, 220 Hochman, Barbara, 51 Holland, Josiah, 24 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 23, 30, 51, 55 Hope, John, 9 Houghton Mifflin , 170, 179 Hovey, Richard, 133 Como vive a outra metade, 15

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Howe, Julia Ward, 138 Howe, Samuel Gridley, 138 Howells, William Dean, 33, 42, 123, 140, 232n36 Hueffer, Ford Madox, 179, 247n142 Hugo, Victor, 60 Hulme, T.E., 128, 167 Huneker, James, 88 Huntington, Collis P., 75 Hurd, Charles E., 140 O Idiot (1868) (Dostoyevsky), 5 Idealism, 12–13, 15, 21, 32, 46–47, 54, 92, 120, 123, 136 ; –37, 143, 149, 182, 192, 201–02, 209, 212 fancy, 3, 5–6, 11, 14, 19, 26, 35, 47–48, 50, 56, 82–83, 101, 101; 119, 124, 137, 146, 157, 164–65, 167, 182, 187, 202–03, 208–09, 231n5 Imagism, 18, 107, 117–18, 124, 126, 166–71, 175, 179 –80, 183, 193–94 Immigrants, 3, 15, 29–30, 49, 56, 60, 75, 143–44, 158, 191, 196, 219–20, 265n90 Impressionism, 167–70 Individualism, 5, 56; 18–19, 46, 51, 187–216 industrialization, 3, 5, 10–12, 14, 22, 29, 34, 40, 46, 50, 74, 85, 126, 171, 201, 208, 218–19 Ingersoll, Robert, 44 Instrumentalism, 14 International Copyright Law, 25 An Introduction to the Study of American Literature (Matthews), 32 James, William, 48, 71 Japanese Tanks, 18 Jefferson, Thomas, 78 Jewett, Sarah Orne, 172 Jim Crow , 8, 32, 51, 129–30, 135 Johns, Orrick, 46, 48, 144 Johnson, Helene, 131 Johnson, James Weldon, 137, 222, 249–28 Johnson, Lionel, 173 Johnson, Robert Underwood, 36– 38, 43, 65 Johnson, Tom, 74, 249–33 Keats, John, 5, 9–10, 26–28, 31, 62, 81, 93, 99, 127–128. 29, 137, 152, 163, 166, 191, 202, 221, 230n59, 261n117, 269n21 Keller, Helen, 195 Kennerley, Mitchell, 111, 145, 265n91

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Indice Kilmer, Joyce, 144, 184, 214 Kipling, Rudyard, 40, 42, 55, 63, 71, 98–99 Kline, Burton, 43 Knowles, Frederic Lawrence, 133, 140, 235n89 Kreymborg, Alfred, 124–25 Ku Klux Klan, 130 Partido Trabalhista, 7 Gedichte Trabalhistas, 62–67 „Lamia“ (Keats), 26–27 Lauriat, Jr., Charles, 149 Lawrence, Abbott, 164 Lawrence, D. H., 179 Le Gallienne, Richard, 99, 114 , 124, 240n79 Lears, Jackson, 45 Grashalme (Whitman), 33, 49–50, 64, 192–94 Ledoux, Louis, 143, 146, 149–50, 155, 252n83, 254n132 LeMoyne, Sarah Cowell, 39 Lengel, William, 92–93 Leonard, William Ellery, 114 Library of America (Stedman), 42 Liebknecht, Wilhelm, 87 Lincoln, Abraham, 4, 44, 48, 65–66, 78, 120, 124, 194, 217 Lincoln , Robert Todd, 217 Lindsay, Vachel, 3–4, 14, 99, 105, 109–10, 120–22, 143, 150, 153–55, 161, 177, 180, 183, 219, 253n102,103 Lippincotts, 24, 43 Lippmann, Walter, 96, 241n21, 261n105 The Literary Era (Garret), 79 Literary World, 50 Locke, John, 46 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 28 London, Jack, 34, 44 Longfell ow, Henry Wadswort h, 10, 30, 33, 51, 55, 63–64, 81, 238n20 Olhando para trás (Bellamy), 73 Lowe, John Adams, 185 Lowes, John Livingston, 184–85 „The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock“ (Eliot), 125 „Love Songs“ (Teasdale), 144 Lowell, Amy, 1–2, 8, 10, 18, 41–42, 52, 107–09, 119, 126, 129, 143 , 149, 151, 155–56, 158, 161–71, 173–86, 189, 202, 208–13, 215, 218, 221, 252n95, 254n132, 255n5, 256n10,21,23–25, 257n41,43 , 258n48, 259n8, 259n82

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275

aparência de, 164–65 biografia, 164–66 e "The Bombardment", 180 e British Romantics, 164 Can Grande's Castle, 178 A Dome of Many-Colored Glass, 155, 166, 256n23,25 and Eliot, 183 and Fletcher, 169-70 homossexualidade de, 162-63, 171-4, 258n48 como Imagismo, 161-62, 166 and Masters, 181-83 and Monroe, 179-80 and assuntos "novos", 41-42 "Padrões", 211 Imagens of the Floating World, 221 and Poetry, 161, 166 and Pound, 171, 179-80, 183 and Sandburg, 181-83 Some Imagist Poets, 175, 179, 259n82 estereótipos sobre, 162-63 Sword Blades and Poppy Seed, 175 –78 and tendencies in modern poetry, 181, 183–84 and “liveliness”, 175–76 and World War I, 210–13 Lowell, Abbott, 206 Lowell, Francis Cabot, 164 Lowell, James Russell, 23, 26, 30 , 51 Lusitânia, naufrágio de (1915), 204, 206 "Lyric Year", 2, 144–45 The Lyric Year Anthology, 145 Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (1802) (Wordsworth), 26, 82 Lyrics of Life and Love (Braithwaite), 139-40 Mabie, Hamilton, 72, 101 Mackail, J.W., 123 MacKaye, Percy, 1 03, 143, 150, 196, 199, 243n55 Macy, John, 52 "The Man with the Hoe" (Markham), 57-59, 67-78, 81, 89, 146 The Man with the Hoe, With Notes por The Autor (Markham), 78 The Man Who Laughs (Hugo), 60 Markham, Catherine, 104, 107, 244n70 Markham, Edwin, 15, 44-45, 57-62, 66-84, 97 –98, 101–05, 107, 109–10, 111, 123–24, 126, 129, 137, 144, 146, 148, 150, 175, 178, 190, 197–98, 202, 205–06, 213 , 215, 217, 219–20, 237n2, 238n27,

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276

Index

Markham, Edwin - continued 239n46,54, 240n70, 245n97, 265n87, 267n117, 268n3 and sons, 84 and Christianity, 79–80 and cowboy aesthetics, 59 early years, 59 upbringing, 60 "Lincoln, Man of the People," 217 and pessimism, 75–79 photograph of, 58 and the role of the poet, 61–62 and religious reverence, 77 and Shelley, 60 The Shoes of Happiness and Other Poems, 123 in square, 205–206 See also “The man with the hoe” Marks, Josephine Peabody, 147 Marsh, Edward, 153 Marx, Karl, 60, 87, 97, 189, 192 Manhood, 11, 15, 30–32, 69, 128–34, 149, 164, 174, 182 , 240n69, 248n10 Masefield, John, 99–100, 106 The Masses (Magazine) (1911–1917), 2, 18, 187, 191–94, 197, 202, 204, 207–08, 266n95 Masters, Edgar Lee, 36, 107, 109, 120, 122–24, 147, 153, 180–83, 246n133, 253n102, 260n99 Matthews, Brander, 32, 104, 140 May, Henry, 12 McClure's, 34, 42–43, 98, 124 , 240n70 McKay, Claude, 9 Mencken, H. L., 16, 45, 88, 128, 149, 157, 208 The Metropolis (Sinclair), 95 Middle Class, 23, 28, 30, 48, 5 1–52, 74, 79, 86, 93, 9 6, 130, 134, 191, 202, 208, 225n9, 227n31 Mill, John Stewart, 46 Millay, Edna St Vincent, 144–45 Miller, Joaquin, 81 Miller , Kelly, 51 Miller, Nina, 131 Millet, Jean Francois, 57–58, 67, 69, 76, 78, 239n52 Milton, John, 9 Mirror (Reedy), 38 Painter Modern (Ruskin), 10 Modern (20th century) Century), 6, 11-14, 16-19, 21, 29, 45-47, 116, 118, 125, 128-30, 133, 149, 151, 153, 163, 188, 217-19, 223, 232n46 , 234n81, 240n69, 247n8

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Roots of American Literature, 12–13 See also Imagism Moody, William Vaughan, 36–37, 47 Moore, Marianne, 183 Moore, Thomas, 59 Monroe, Harriet, 2, 8, 16–17, 38–41, 45, 52 , 86–87, 101, 104, 109, 111–26, 129, 145, 152–55, 157–58, 160, 162, 166, 168, 171, 179, 183, 189, 197, 202–03, 216 , 218, 220 and Bynner, 124 Caricature of, 118 “Columbian Ode”, 111 and Lindsay, 121–22 and Masters, 122–23 and Modern Affairs, 40, 45 and “New Beauty”, 114–15, 117, 119 "Poet Laureate" from World Exposition, 39 and Poetry magazine, 114–26 on realism, 119–20 and Sandburg, 120–21 youthful success, 38–40 morality, 3–5, 7, 10–11, 15–16, 21–24, 27, 36, 45, 47–48, 55–56, 58–60, 65–68, 71, 73, 83, 86, 92, 96, 100, 103, 115, 120, 124, 137, 142, 147, 159, 165, 169-70, 175, 183, 187, 192, 194-95, 200, 218, 222-23, 230n59 More, Brooke, 149 Morris, William, 23, 62, 97, 170 Moulton , Louise, 104, 138, 142 Muir, John, 28 Munsey's Magazine, 34 Munsterberg, Hugo, 206 Murphy, Anna Catherine, 61–62 The Mystic Warrior (Oppenheim), 194 The Nation, 32, 88, 256n21 National Arts Association, 102 National Arts Club, 102 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 9, 207-08, 249n34 National Institute of Arts and Letters , 35–36 The National Magazine, 42 National Poetry Week, 17 Nationalism, 204–16 The Nature and Elements of Poetry (1892) (Stedman), 25, 82 Nehamas, Alexander, 11 Neihardt, John, 117 Nelson, Cary, 11

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Índice „The New Criticism“ (palestras) (Spingarn), 142 New Critics, 11–12, 130, 142, 223 New England Monthly, 61 The New Era in American Poetry, 199–202 The New Republic, 1–2, 122 , 179, 184 „New Woman“, 3, 30 The New York Sun, 75, 88, 105, 110 The New York Times, 1–2, 75, 77, 79, 82, 91, 95, 106, 144, 184 New York World, 39 Niagara Movement, 9 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 4, 5, 55, 87, 152, 169, 192, 194–95 Ninevah and Other Poems (Viereck), 89–93, 99 Norris, Frank, 69–70 North American Review, 38 North of Boston (Frost), 1–2, 148, 197 Noyes, Alfred, 105 Nussbaum, Martha, 11 O'Brien, Edward, 113 O'Sheel, Shaemus, 214 The Octopus (1901) (Norris ), 69–70 „Ode on a Grecian Urn“ (Keats), 5, 127, 191 Oppenheim, James, 9, 18, 51, 82, 98–99, 188, 194–96, 208–09 Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, 124–25, 173, 218 Overland Monthly, 61 The Pisan Cantos (Pound), 223 Pan American Exposition (1901), 9 Panic of 1893, 15, 30, 32 Pater, Walter, 23, 44, 131 –32, 134, 176, 259n70 „Padrões“ (Lowell), 211 Pea Körper, Josephine Preston, 55 Peck, Harry Thurston, 54 Pendleton Act (1883), 28 Perry, Bliss, 30–31, 40, 138 Filantropia, 3, 84, 112 Phyllis Wheatley Clubs, 8 Picasso, Pablo, 10 Bilder der Floating World (1919) (Lowell), 173, 221 Pilgrims and Other Poems (1907), 45 Platon, 5–6, 24, 47, 49, 56, 68, 80, 98 Poe, Edgar Allan, 10, 87, 89 , 169, 184, 196, 214, 236n126 Poemas sobre a escravidão (1842) (Longfellow), 33

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Poets' Communities, 2–3, 56, 60–61, 84, 104, 115, 174 "The Poet" (Emerson), 6 Poets of America (1885) (Stedman), 25–26, 61, 129 Poets' Club (London ), 18 The Poetry Journal, 106, 113, 179, 265n92 Poetry: A Magazine of Verse (Chicago), 2, 16, 18, 52, 86, 114–26, 152, 157–59, 161, 223 Founding of , 114-26 and Lowell, 161 The Poetry Review, 151, 252-95 Poetry Society of America (PSA), 16, 84, 86, 94, 102-8, 110-11, 113, 152-53, 190, 198, 205, 210–16, 220, 243n63, 244n70,71, 267n125 and public connection, 102–03 birth of, 102–08 national distinction, 106 and war policy, 210–16 pounds, Ezra, 1, 16, 17–18, 37-38, 51, 98, 101, 106, 114-19, 122-23, 125-26, 128, 153, 157-59, 163, 165, 167-68, 171, 176, 178-80, 183, 217–18, 223, 225n4, 245n115, 247n8, 248n9,11, 253n120, 257n41, 260n88 "Ballad for Gloom", 101 and Braithwaite, 17, 157–59 and Des Imagistes, 178 Exultations, 115 es Imagism, 1653 , 167, 171, 178–80 and Monroe, 115–19, 122 The Pisan Cantos, 223 Personae, 115 ff Po esie, 115–16, 128–29 praise of, 117–18 Provence, 98 and PSA, 106 on rejection, 37–38 "To Whistler, American", 114 and Whitman, 51 pragmatism, 48–49, 74, 100 , 120, 193, 212, 236n113 Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1800) (Wordsworth), 5, 68–69 Progressive Poets, 5–6, 12–13, 15, 46, 49, 132, 163, 187, 202, 204 –08, 217–24 Proust, Marcel, 12 Pulitzer Prize, 106, 144, 220, 243–63, 250–56, 251–60

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278

Index

racismo, 3, 8–10, 17, 30–32, 36, 56, 130–31, 135–39, 153–58, 181, 187, 233–49, 249–34, 250–36 Rauschenbusch, Walter, 4 Reed, John, 96– 97 Reedy, William Marion, 38, 108–09, 122–23, 142 Reese, Lizette Woodworth, 105 „Renasence“ (Millay), 145 Repression and Recovery (Nelson), 11 Rhymes To Be Traded For Bread (Lindsay), 3 Rice, Cale Young, 107, 220 Rice, Isaac, 102 Riis, Jacob, 6, 15 Riley, James Whitcomb, 63–66 Rittenhouse, Jessie B., 2, 8, 16, 35, 43–44, 57, 106– 11, 129, 131–34, 145, 174, 199, 202, 214–16 „The Road Not Taken“ (Frost), 156 Robinson, Edwin Arlington, 52–56, 143, 150, 155–56, 173, 180 –81 Romantik, 5, 13, 18, 19, 27–28, 32–33, 38, 46, 52, 63, 82, 91–92, 103, 111, 117, 131, 152, 164, 167, 175, 181, 187–216 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 124 Roosevelt, James A., 211 Roosevelt, Theodore, 28, 31–32, 55–56, 95, 123, 156, 233n49 Root, John Wellborn, 40 Rorty, James, 202, 222 Rorty, Richard, 11, 222–23 Rose, Jonathan, 7 Rubin, Joan, 13–14 Ruskin, John, 10, 21–23, 34, 44–45, 59, 61, 7 8, 82, 165, 169, 231n5, 256n10 Russell, Ada, 171 Sackville-West, Vita, 174 The San Francisco Examiner, 69, 72 Sandburg, Carl, 2, 36, 44, 117, 120–21, 124, 149 , 158 –59, 176, 180–83, 198, 201, 203, 244n75, 245n115, 254n129, 261n105,106, 263n51 Sarrett 1526, 1526, Sarrett, Lew, 199 The Saturday Evening Post, 93 The Saturday Review, 1 Scarry, Elaine, 11, 248n10 Schiller, Friedrich, 46 Schnittkind, Henry Thomas, 151

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Scribner's Monthly, 1, 23–24, 34, 37, 42–43, 53, 61, 70, 77, 101, 166. Siehe auch The Century Magazine Scollard, Clinton, 132 Scudder, Horace, 55 The Sea (Oppenheim), 195 The Sea Wolf (Londres), 34 Sedgwick, Alexander, 37–38, 41–42 Sedgwick, Ellery, 259n68 Sedition Act (1918), 207 Seurat, Georges, 12, 168 Seven Arts, 2, 9, 97, 196, 207 –09 sexualidade, 30–31, 47, 50, 81, 86, 89, 91, 95, 97, 130–31, 163, 172–74, 182, 258n48 Shakespeare, William, 9, 38, 78, 99, 102 , 108, 111, 137, 194 Shaw, George Bernard, 46, 55, 120 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 5, 9–10, 27–28, 39, 45, 59–60, 62, 78, 87, 113, 123 , 129, 144, 166, 189, 194, 196, 202 The Shoes of Happiness and Other Poems (1915) (Markham), 123 Sinclair, Upton, 46, 95–96 Sklansky, Jeffrey, 5 „The Slump of Poetry“ ( The Critic) (1905), 1 Revista The Smart Set, 45 Smith, Adam, 46 Social Democrats, 87, 120 Social Gospel Movement, 4, 146 Socialism, 3, 15, 18–19, 21, 72, 80, 82, 84, 87, 97–98, 120, 143, 184, 187–88, 191–92, 194–95, 197, 202, 219 Algu ns imagistas Poets (Lowell), 175, 179, 259n82 A Canção de Hiawatha (Longfellow), 64 Canção da Musa do Trabalho ou Canção da Nova Humanidade (Markham), 62 Canções para a Nova Era (1914) (Oppenheim), 194– 96 Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois), 9, 136, 221 Guerra da América Espanhola (1898), 32, 66–67 Spingarn, Joel, 142, 154–55 O Espírito da Literatura Americana (1913) (Macy), 52 Spoon River Anthology (Masters), 101, 107, 122–23, 147, 182 Stedman, Edmund Clarence (1833–1908), 25–26, 39 Steffens, Lincoln, 124, 193 Stein, Gertrude, 10 Sterling, George, 144 –46 , 150, 157 Stevens, Wallace, 47, 124

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Index Stevenson, Robert Louis, 112 Stickney, Trumbull, 31, 47 Stieglitz, Alfred, 10 The Stillwater Tragedy (1880) (Aldrich), 33 Stoddard, Richard, 104 The Stones of Venice (Ruskin), 23 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 74 „The Suicide“ (Markham), 77 Susman, Warren, 45 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 10, 21, 55, 71, 87–88, 128, 142 Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914) (Lowell), 175–78 Symons , Arthur, 90, 169 Talbert, Mary, 9 Talman, John, 76–77 Tarbell, Ida, 40, 124, 193 Taylor, Bayard, 25 Teasdale, Sara, 98, 104, 106, 129, 142, 144, 219, 241n21, 251n60, 266n97, 267n112 Tendências na Poesia Moderna (Lowell), 181, 183–84 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 9, 27, 51, 59, 80–81, 99, 108, 116, 129, 175, 194, 250n38 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 44 Thomas, Edith, 98, 133–34 Thoreau, Henry David, 5, 48 Ticknor, Caroline, 29–30, 138 Tietjens, Eunice, 104–05 Tolstoi, Leo, 45, 181, 188, 191 Tompkins, Jane, 11 Torrence, Ridgely, 71 The Torrent and The Night Before (Robinson), 52 Towne, Charles Hanson, 99, 190, 219–20 tra ns cendentalism, 5–6, 11, 48, 50, 77 Trotter, William Monroe, 135 Tubman, Harriet, 9 Twain, Mark, 66, 124 Onkel Toms Cabin (Stowe), 74 Underwood, Francis, 23 University of Michigan, 199 191 188–91, 193–202, 207–10, 218, 220 Biographie, 189 Desafio, 196–97

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Conduct of, 199 Employment of, 190–91 First Love: A Lyric Sequence, 190 and Frost, 197, 200 The New Era in American Poetry, 199–202 and Rejection, 189–90 and World War II, 220–21 Untermeyer, Samuel , pp. 218, 249n34 Upshaw, “Ernest Willie”, 63 Upson, Arthur, 150 USS Harriet Monroe, 220 Van Dyke, Henry, 149 van Gogh, Vincent, 169 Victorian Gentle Tradition (late 19th century) (1860–1900) , 7–8 , 12–15, 19, 21–35, 41, 45, 48, 56, 69, 114–15, 128–29, 140, 142, 167, 169, 180, 188, 227n31, 247n8, 250n38 Poets Victorians (1883) (Stedman), 25 Viereck, George Sylvester, 14, 16, 38, 54, 82, 86–103, 108–11, 126, 147, 150, 166, 173, 190, 202, 204–07 , 210, 212–16, 220 Blacklist of, 204–07, 210, 212–16, 220 The Confessions of a Barbarian, 95 Education, 88 Expulsion from the PSA, 215, 220 The Fatherland, 204, 210 A Love Game and Others Witze, 88-89 and "Genius", 93, 95, 214 about Hitler, 220 Hohen Zollern Ancestry, 87-88, 94 Ninevah and Other Poems, 89-93, 99 Photography by, 94 and Roosevelt, 95 and Wilde, 87–88 See also Poetry Society of America Vlag, Piet, 191 Vorticisim, 106 Wagstaff, Blanche Shoemaker, 96, 110, 242n21, 265n92 Walker, Cheryl, 11, 171 Warner, Charles Dudley, 66 , 75 Washington, Booker T., 51, 130, 217, 249n34 The Washington Post, 103, 205, 212

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280 Index “The Waste Land” (Eliot), 183, 218 Wattles, Willard, 199 Wheeler, Edward, 107, 145, 150, 187, 212–15, 243n63 Whitelock, William Wallace, 80–81 Whitman, Walt, 15, 24, 33, 49-52, 57, 59, 64, 80-81, 85, 87, 90, 108, 113-14, 116-18, 120, 146, 152, 169, 184, 192-94, 196, 200–01, 218 as 'America's poet', 51 on the public, 113–14 criticism of, 50 and democracy in verse, 49–50 and ethics, 57 ideal poet of, 49–50 popularity of, 51–52 See also Grass Blades Whittier, John Greenleaf, 30, 33, 51 Aries, Margaret, 84, 107–08, 219–20 Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, 174, 198 Wilde, Oscar, 12, 32, 45, 86–89, 91, 97, 110, 173 Wilhelm I of Prussia, 87 Wilhelm II, German Emperor, 95, 204, 212 Wilkinson, Marguerite, 175

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Williams, William Carlos, 125, 163, 184, 218–19 Wilson, Woodrow, 65, 130, 204, 211, 213 mulheres, Ver gênero Wood, Clement, 2, 184, 186, 190, 214–15 Woodberry, George, 105 Wordsworth, William, 5, 9, 26–28, 68, 77, 80, 82, 96, 128, 137, 142, 222, 230n59 Feira Mundial de Chicago (1893), 33–34, 39 Congresso Literário da Feira Mundial (1893), 66 Erster Weltkrieg, 188, 203–16, 219 Zweiter Weltkrieg, 220–21, 223 Wright, Willard Huntington, 148 The Writer Magazine, 30 Wyatt, Edith, 114 Yeats, John Butler, 2–3 Yeats , William Butler, 1, 2, 106, 122, 223, 246n129 Yerkes, Charles, 39 The Younger Choir (1910), 82 The Youth's Companion, 1 Zorach, William, 125

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The Gospel of Beauty in the Progressive Age: Reforming American Verse and Values ​​(Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History) - SILO.PUB (2023)

The Gospel of Beauty in the Progressive Age: Reforming American Verse and Values (Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History) - SILO.PUB (2023)