Alfred Kreymborg
Encyclopedia
Early life and associations
He was born in New York City to Hermann and Louisa Kreymborg, who ran a small cigar store, and he spent most of his life there and in New JerseyNew Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
. He was an active figure in Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
and frequented the Liberal Club.
He was the first literary figure to be included in Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form...
's 291
Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession
291 is the commonly known name for an internationally famous art gallery that was located at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York City from 1905 to 1917. Originally known as the "Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession", the gallery was created and managed by photographer Alfred Stieglitz.The gallery is...
circle, and was briefly associated with the Ferrer Center where Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
was studying under Robert Henri
Robert Henri
Robert Henri was an American painter and teacher. He was a leading figure of the Ashcan School in art.- Early life :...
. From 1913
1913 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* January 8—Harold Monro founds the Poetry Bookshop in London...
to 1914
1914 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* January 29 – Yone Noguchi lectures on "The Japanese Hokku Poetry" at Magdalen College, Oxford...
, Kreymborg and Man Ray worked together to bring out ten issues of the first of Kreymborg's prominent modernist magazines: The Glebe
The Glebe (literary magazine)
The Glebe was a literary magazine edited by Alfred Kreymborg and Man Ray from 1913 to 1914. The first issue was published from Ridgefield, New Jersey, while the rest of the run was published in New York by Alfred & Charles Boni. Ten issues were produced, with a circulation of 300. Issue number 5...
. Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
— who had heard about The Glebe from Kreymborg's friend John Cournos
John Cournos
John Cournos , a writer of Russian-Jewish background, was born in the Ukraine, whence his family emigrated when he was aged 10. During the 1910s and 1920s, he lived in Britain, where his literary career started...
— sent Kreymborg the manuscript of Des Imagistes
Des Imagistes
Des Imagistes, edited by Ezra Pound and published in 1914, was the first anthology of the Imagism movement. It was published in The Glebe in February 1914, and later that year as a book by Charles and Albert Boni in New York, and Harold Monro's Poetry Bookshop in London.The eleven authors featured...
in the summer of 1913 and this famous first anthology of Imagism
Imagism
Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of much Romantic and Victorian poetry. This was in contrast to their contemporaries, the Georgian poets,...
was published as the fifth issue of The Glebe
Samuel Halpert
Samuel Halpert was born in 1884 in Białystok, Russia and he died in 1930 in Detroit, Michigan. He was an American painter.-Early days:Samuel Halpert was born on December 25, 1884 in Białystok, Russia, where his friend Max Weber had been born three years earlier. His family immigrated to New York...
, another of Henri's students, started an artist's colony in Ridgefield, New Jersey
Ridgefield, New Jersey
There were 4,020 households out of which 32.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 59.7% were married couples living together, 9.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 26.2% were non-families. 23.0% of all households were made up of individuals and 11.8% had someone...
. This colony was often also referred to as 'Grantwood' and comprised a number of clapboard shacks on a bluff on the Hudson Palisades opposite Grants Tomb, across the Hudson River in Manhattan. Kreymborg moved to Ridgefield and launched Others: A Magazine of the New Verse
Others: A Magazine of the New Verse
Others: A Magazine of the New Verse was founded by Alfred Kreymborg in July, 1915 with financing from Walter Conrad Arensberg. The magazine ran until July, 1919. It published poetry and other writing, as well as visual art. While the magazine never had more than 300 subscribers, it helped launch...
with Skipwith Cannell
Skipwith Cannell
Skipwith Cannell was an American poet associated with the Imagist group. His surname is pronounced with the accent on the second syllable. He was a friend of William Carlos Williams, and like Ezra Pound he came from Philadelphia...
, Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...
, and William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
in 1915. Pound had, along with the Des Imagistes poems, written to Kreymborg suggesting that he contact 'old Bull' Williams, that is William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
. Williams did not live far from Ridgefield, and he became involved in the magazine. Soon there was a group of artists
Others group of artists
Others was a group of avant-garde artists in New York formed after the outbreak of World War I. Poet Alfred Kreymborg and artist Man Ray founded the group, centered an artist colony called Grantwood, just outside Ridgefield, New Jersey...
associated with the magazine. Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore was an American Modernist poet and writer noted for her irony and wit.- Life :Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, in the manse of the Presbyterian church where her maternal grandfather, John Riddle Warner, served as pastor. She was the daughter of mechanical engineer and inventor...
came to Ridgefield for picnics, and in 1915 Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
moved in. Regarding Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore was an American Modernist poet and writer noted for her irony and wit.- Life :Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, in the manse of the Presbyterian church where her maternal grandfather, John Riddle Warner, served as pastor. She was the daughter of mechanical engineer and inventor...
, she was asked in an interview whether Alfred Kreymborg was her American discoverer, to which she replied, "It could be said, perhaps; he did all he could to promote me. Miss Monroe and the Aldingtons had asked me simultaneously to contribute to Poetry and The Egoist in 1915. Alfred Kreymborg was not inhibited. I was a little different from the others. He thought that I might pass as a novelty, I guess."
1915 also saw the publication of a story in part based on a personal experience. The story was titled 'Edna' and published as Edna: The Girl of the Street; by the Greenwich Village entrepreneur Guido Bruno
Guido Bruno
Guido Bruno was a well-known Greenwich Village character, sometimes called 'the Barnum of Bohemia'.He was based at his "Garret" on Washington Square where for an admission fee tourists could observe genuine "Bohemian" artists at work...
; the subtitle was Bruno's idea, added without the consent of the author. John S. Sumner
John S. Sumner
John Saxton Sumner headed the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice , a New York state censorship body empowered to recommend obscenity cases to the appropriate prosecutors. He served as Associate Secretary of the NYSSV for three years, succeeding founder Anthony Comstock as Executive...
of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice
New York Society for the Suppression of Vice
The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice was an institution dedicated to supervising the morality of the public, founded in 1873. Its specific mission was to monitor compliance with state laws and work with the courts and district attorneys in bringing offenders to justice. It and its...
raised a stir; there was a court case which led to the Bruno's imprisonment. The attendant morals row drew in George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
and Frank Harris
Frank Harris
Frank Harris was a Irish-born, naturalized-American author, editor, journalist and publisher, who was friendly with many well-known figures of his day...
: Harris made an impassioned statement in court defending the publisher.
Kreymborg was life-long friends with Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,...
, each independently choosing to write in free verse
Free verse
Free verse is a form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.Poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, is not free. Free Verse displays some elements of form...
. Kreymborg's tone-poems, or 'mushrooms', had seldom made it into print, but in 1916, soon after his move to Ridgefield they were brought out in book form by John Marshall
John Marshall (publisher)
John Marshall was a London publisher who specialized in children's literature, chapbooks, educational games and teaching schemes. He described himself as 'The Children's Printer' and referred to children as his 'young friends' He was the preeminent children's book publisher in England from about...
as 'Mushrooms: A Book of Free Forms' and Williams praised them as a "triumph for America".
Kreymborg spent a year touring the United States, mostly visiting universities, reading his poetry while accompanying himself on a mandolute
Mandolute
A Mandolute is a North African instrument derived from the more traditional Oud. It is a ten string fretted instrument, sometimes called a mandoluth or mandol. It is slightly bigger than the mandola...
.
1920s
Kreymborg continued to edit Others somewhat erratically until 1919; he then in June 1921 sailed to Europe to act as co-editor of Broom, An International Magazine of the Arts (along with Harold LoebHarold Loeb
Harold Albert Loeb was an American figure active in the arts in Paris in the 1920s. Loeb attended Princeton University where he boxed. Loeb served in World War I and after the War was Ernest Hemingway's sparring partner. Loeb served as co-editor of Broom, An International Magazine of the Arts . He...
). Contributors included Malcolm Cowley
Malcolm Cowley
Malcolm Cowley was an American novelist, poet, literary critic, and journalist.-Early life:...
, E. E. Cummings
E. E. Cummings
Edward Estlin Cummings , popularly known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e.e. cummings , was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright...
, Amy Lowell
Amy Lowell
Amy Lawrence Lowell was an American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926.- Personal life:...
and Walter de la Mare
Walter de la Mare
Walter John de la Mare , OM CH was an English poet, short story writer and novelist, probably best remembered for his works for children and the poem "The Listeners"....
. The magazine lost money. Kreymborg soon resigned and the magazine ceased publication in 1924. An ironic anecdote on the status of modernism: Kreymborg arranged for an aspiring artist Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
to create the artwork for the cover of volume 2, number 4 of Broom. When Broom ceased publication, the original painting was left behind for its next tenants. Original works by Léger from that time period have sold for several million dollars.
Kreymborg's poems appeared in The Dial
The Dial
The Dial was an American magazine published intermittently from 1840 to 1929. In its first form, from 1840 to 1844, it served as the chief publication of the Transcendentalists. In the 1880s it was revived as a political magazine...
in 1923.
In the summer of 1925, Kreymborg was staying in Lake George Village, and happened to meet Paul Rosenfeld
Paul Rosenfeld
Paul Leopold Rosenfeld was an American journalist, best known as a music critic.He was born in New York City into a German-Jewish family...
who was staying with Stieglitz. In one late night discussion Kreymborg and Rosenfeld lamented the disappearance of various literary magazines, including Broom. Another neighbour, Samuel Ornitz appeared and offered financial backing for an annual book of new writing. Thus Kreymborg and Rosenfeld founded American Caravan, which was to be edited by Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford was an American historian, philosopher of technology, and influential literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer...
and Van Wyck Brooks
Van Wyck Brooks
Van Wyck Brooks was an American literary critic, biographer, and historian.- Biography :Brooks was educated at Harvard University and graduated in 1908...
. The Second American Caravan, was edited by Kreymborg, Mumford, and Rosenfeld; it was reviewed the December 1928 issue of The Dial.
1925 also saw the publication of his autobiography Troubador, in which he refers to himself in the third person by the nicknames 'Ollie' and 'Krimmie'. The books also describes his first unsuccessful marriage to a girl called Maude, and then his second marriage to Dorothy ("Dot") Bloom.
1930s and later
In 1938 Kreymborg's verse drama for radio The Planets: A Modern AllegoryThe Planets: A Modern Allegory
The Planets: A Modern Allegory is a radio play, written in verse, by Alfred Kreymborg. The first performance was on 6 June 1938 by the National Broadcasting Company at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, and was directed by Thomas L. Riley...
was broadcast by NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
and received such an enthusiastic response from the public that it was repeated a few weeks later.
Kreymborg maintained a long-term connection with Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form...
primarily because of Kreymborg's relationship with Hugo Knudsen
Hugo Knudsen
Hugo Knudsen was a Danish printer, eponym of the Knudsen process for fine lithography, patented in 1915. He owned the Offset Printing Plate Company of New York....
, who invented some of the early photo-printing processes that Stieglitz utilized. Knudsen and Kreymborg both married sisters Beatrice (Bea) and Dot Bloom (respectively).
Other interests
He also wrote puppet plays (his most famous being Manikin Minikin and Lima Beans), which he performed with his wife, Dot, while touring the United States.Kreymborg played chess at a near-professional level; he was recognized as a National Master standard player in his youth. On two occasions he played and lost to José Capablanca, including a defeat in 1910 due to a mix-up in his endgame He drew one game with the U.S. Champion Frank Marshall in the 1911 Masters Tournament, but shortly afterward left the chess world after a stunning defeat by Oscar Chajes
Oscar Chajes
Oscar Chajes was an Austrian, then American chess player.-Biography:Chajes was Jewish and was born in Brody, Galicia, in what is now Ukraine. In 1909, he won in Excelsior, Minnesota . In 1910, he took 2nd in Chicago. In January/February 1911, he tied for 3rd-4th in New York...
, returning to the sport roughly 23 years later. He wrote the article 'Chess Reclaims a Devotee', which is semi-autobiographical and also based on Charles Jaffe
Charles Jaffe
Charles Jaffé was a Belarusian-American chess master, of virtually Grandmaster strength at his peak in the 1910s, when he was one of the world's top players. Jaffe was also a chess writer....
; the story is well-known in chess circles.
Kreymborg was very close with "Sandy" Calder
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...
.
Due to his knack of "discovering" and publishing some of the most important poets during his time, Kreymborg later became president of the American Society of Composers, Artists, and Performers.
Critical views
Kreymborg later became a relatively conservative poet, but — according to Julian SymonsJulian Symons
Julian Gustave Symons 1912 - 1994) was a British crime writer and poet. He also wrote social and military history, biography and studies of literature.-Life and work:...
— "never an interesting one"
In Namedropping, Richard Elman writes a short chapter about a meeting with Kreymborg in the early 1960s.
Works
Maxim LieberMaxim Lieber
Maxim Lieber was a prominent American literary agent in New York City during the 1930s and 1940s. Whittaker Chambers named him as an accomplice in 1949, and Lieber fled first to Mexico and then Poland not long after Alger Hiss's conviction in 1950.- Early years :Lieber was born in Warsaw, Poland,...
was Kreymborg's literary agent in 1947.
- Love and Life and Other Studies (1908)
- Apostrophes: A Book of Tributes to Masters of MusicApostrophes: A Book of Tributes to Masters of MusicApostrophes: A Book of Tributes to Masters of Music is a book written by Alfred Kreymborg and published by The Grafton Press, New York, in 1910. It is a slim volume , and comprises a series of short somewhat 'poetic' paragraphs addressed to various great composers...
(1910) - Erna Vitek (1914) novel
- Edna: The Girl of the Street (1915) http://debs.indstate.edu/k924e3_1919.pdf PDF of 1919 edition with G. B. Shaw contribution
- To My Mother 10 Rhythms (1915)
- Mushrooms: A Book of Free Forms (1916) poems, as 1915 Mushrooms 16 Rhythms in Bruno Chap Books
- Others: An Anthology of the New Verse (1916) editor
- Others: An Anthology of the New Verse (1917) editor
- Six Plays for Poem-Mimes (1918)
- Blood of Things: A Second Book of Free Forms (1920)
- Others for 1919: An Anthology of the New Verse (1920)
- Plays for Merry Andrews (1920)
- Less Lonely (1923)
- Puppet Plays (1923)
- Troubadour (1925) autobiography
- Lima Beans. A Scherzo Play in One Act (1925)
- Rocking Chairs and Other Comedies (1925)
- Manikin and Minikin (1925)
- Scarlet and Mellow (1926)
- There's a Moon Tonight (1926) comedy
- The American Caravan (1927), yearbook, editor with Lewis MumfordLewis MumfordLewis Mumford was an American historian, philosopher of technology, and influential literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer...
, Van Wyck BrooksVan Wyck BrooksVan Wyck Brooks was an American literary critic, biographer, and historian.- Biography :Brooks was educated at Harvard University and graduated in 1908...
and Paul RosenfeldPaul RosenfeldPaul Leopold Rosenfeld was an American journalist, best known as a music critic.He was born in New York City into a German-Jewish family...
, later years also - Funnybone Alley (1927)
- The Lost Sail, A Cape Cod Diary (1928)
- Alfred Kreymborg (1928) The Pamphlet Poets
- Manhattan Men: Poems and Epitaphs (1929) poems
- Body and Stone: A Song Cycle (1929)
- A History of American Poetry: Our Singing Strength (1929) also later in 1934
- An Anthology of American Poetry Lyric: America 1630–1930 (1930) anthology, later editions are supplemented
- Prologue in Hell (1930)
- I'm Not Complaining: A Kaffeeklatsch (1932)
- Little World. 1914 and After (1932)
- I'm No Hero (1933)
- How Do You Do Sir? And Other Short Plays (1934)
- Anthology of One-Act Plays 1937-38 (1938) editor
- The Planets: A Modern Allegory (1938)
- Two New Yorkers (1938) editor Stanley BurnshawStanley BurnshawStanley Burnshaw was an influential American poet, primarily known for his ontology, The Seamless Web . His style was particularly writing political poems, prose, editorials, etc...
, illustrated by Alexander Kruse - The Four Apes and Other Fables of Our Day (1939)
- Poetic Drama: An Anthology of Plays in Verse (1941) editor
- Ten American Ballads (1942)
- Selected Poems 1912 to 1944 (1945)
- Man and Shadow: An Allegory (1946) poems
- The Poetry Society of America Anthology (1946) editor with Amy Bonner and others
- No More War: An Ode to Peace (1949)
- No More War and other poems (1950)
External links
- Edward WinterEdward Winter (chess historian)Edward Winter is an English journalist, archivist, historian, collector and author about the game of chess. He writes a regular column on that subject, Chess Notes, and is also a regular columnist for ChessBase.-Chess Notes:...
, Alfred Kreymborg and Chess - Index entry for Alfred Kreymborg at Poets' Corner
- 1921 passport photo, Alfred and Dorothy Kreymborg