CHAPTER TEN

Poets I Have Known

Inevitably, in the course of my adventures in poetry, I met other poets, some of whom come back to mind with particular vividness--not necessarily those I knew best or longest, but those whose individuality makes them stand out most sharply.

To begin with, I think of a man whom I shall call Morris, and who has, unhappily, made himself notorious. I first met him back in the fall of 1920, shortly after my arrival in New York. He was then the owner of a small bookshop, near where the Sixth Avenue “L” trains thundered to a halt at the station at Eighth Street in Greenwich Village. A proud, handsome, insolent-looking, big-browed intellectual, he impressed me with his announcement that a novel of his was to appear in the spring, and that he was writing a book on current poetry (in what spring the novel was published I do not know, but I am sure that the book on poetry never made its bow). In the loneliness of my first months in New York, I paid several visits to his shop, where I saw (but was not introduced to) a number of literary celebrities, including Edna St. Vincent Millay. I then lost track of Morris, until several years later, when compiling _Modern American Lyrics_ I met him again in the office of Earle Balch, who mentioned that he had some poems which might be worth considering for my contemplated anthology.

Indeed they were worth considering! a series of well-wrought and feeling sonnets dealing with remembrances of his native village in Russia. These, I knew, were an acquisition for the anthology; and here, I also knew, was a poet of unusual promise--promise, unhappily, not to be fulfilled. For Morris chose to follow other roads than those of poetry--roads leading toward ruin and disgrace. What was the flaw, the weak link, the fatal trap within the personality of this intelligent and capable man? That his thoughts should turn toward publishing was not unnatural, in view of his bookish interests--but why, of all fields of publishing, should he choose pornography as his particular area? In his appearance, and in his conversations, he gave no suggestion of any perverse tendencies--was it then that he was looking for an especially lucrative source of income? I only know that he underwent successive trials, convictions, and prison sentences, while perhaps the force of circumstances or his own fierce and defiant nature forbade him to turn to other channels--a good life and an able intellect largely lost, and one more poet cast into the abyss.

Another memorable verse-writer, whom I never knew well but cannot forget, was Anton Romatka--a man whose death some years ago was the subject of wide newspaper publicity, not because his poetry was notable, but because the facts of his life were extraordinary.

He was a man certain to impress you on sight: like a picture straight out of a Victorian album, with his small figure, his round ruddy face, his gold-rimmed spectacles over watery eyes, his blond side-whiskers and long, drooping blond mustache, his small bow-tie, and high stiff celluloid collar that gave a sort of European rigidity and formality to his appearance. Romatka was a man who took poetry seriously--would that there were more of his kind! Though his own offerings may have been nothing to boast of, he did a real service for poets by the forum which he provided for them in a hall on Fourteenth Street, somewhere near Third Avenue. I can still see him, as he gravely, even ponderously officiated, introducing the various poets in an English that perhaps left something to be desired, but with a zeal in which nothing was lacking: he was that rare poet who was less interested in reading his own work than in providing means for others to read theirs. I can recall various meetings, perhaps not greatly attended, but pervaded by that spirit, that enthusiasm which is more important than numbers; he made it possible for many different groups to be represented, as on the occasion when Henry Hazlitt (then literary editor of the _Sun_, but later known as a writer on economics) appeared in order to introduce some of the _Sun’s_ local poets.

Alas, I fear that Romatka, though a good saint of poetry, was not always appreciated. I know that he was a bit discouraged, as I was, on that Sunday afternoon when he had asked me to appear at a Third Avenue location to address a poetry group, and I found an audience of three in addition to Romatka and myself. That was the last I ever saw of him; but I know that he, with little or no means and handicapped by his foreign appearance, speech, and mannerisms, did more in his humble way for poetry than could be claimed by most of those who laughed slyly at his oddities.

A man whom I knew far better, over a longer term of years, is likewise a definite and memorable individual. In this case, for fear of embarrassing him, I will not give the actual name, but will christen him Jim Maynor. I first met him in the early twenties, and I knew from the beginning that he was a real poet--though one whose production was exceedingly scanty, and who would give more time to polishing a phrase than other poets will take in completing a sonnet. At the time of our first meeting, he had published a brochure of poems, one copy of which he proudly presented to me--only to request its return sometime later when, being engaged, he found that he had no copy to inscribe to his fair one. His engagement, incidentally, had come about in true romantic fashion: he had met the young lady in the lamp factory in which they were both employed (he for a period of weeks only); and being treated to a harrowing tale of how she was about to be locked out of the house by a cruel stepfather named (believe it or not!) Proudfit, he rushed to the rescue of her imperilled innocence, and promptly wooed and married her, though neither of them had a penny put aside for bread or rent.

Jim Maynor, as you will divine from the above, was not one who cared too much for the ways of this grubbing, mundane world. Not that he had not tried often enough to conform with the dull laws of society, but that something in his own nature forbade him to continue in any of a long succession of jobs as librarian, postal carrier, book salesman, department store clerk, caretaker in a city park, choir singer in a church, and other occupations more numerous than I can recall. Finally, during the depression days of the thirties, he found his vocation. At least, he will swear to you that it _is_ his vocation; and, certainly, it has given him greater contentment than any conventional job. More than once, walking on the streets of New York, I have heard a strong tenor voice wafted across a distance; and drawn toward the source of the sound, I have seen Jim on a street or in the court of an apartment house, an unsought minstrel bowing as he collected the pennies, dimes, or quarters thrown him by passers-by or from windows above. On one occasion, in a subway train, I heard that same voice; listened to the strains of a sentimental song strangely competing with the crashing tumult of the cars; and saw Jim approaching, raggedly dressed, and smiling at me out of his thin, slightly worn, not unintelligent face. In the eyes of the unappreciative world, this may seem like begging, but not to Jim, who insists that he repays the people in pleasure for every cent they throw to him--he is like one of the roving troubadours of old, though born, unfortunately, a few hundred years too late.

The ways of the modern world, to be sure, are hard; the returns of itinerant singing have not sufficed to cover the expenses of an apartment in the Bronx, plus a wife and two children; and Jim has had to supplement his income by occasional night-club singing and by his wife’s wages from a downtown department store. But somehow he has managed to exist. When I last saw him, a year or two ago, he was browned from his outdoor activities; and looked well and happy. Meanwhile he continues to write a rare poem, and never one without quality.

A poet of a more volatile disposition, whom I knew even before my first acquaintance with Maynor, became my friend owing to a letter of introduction given me by a man I was never to see again, to a woman I was to see but once. During my lonely first autumn in New York, I did not refuse any chances for possible human contacts; one Sunday afternoon found me in Brooklyn, at the home of the middle-aged Sophie, whom a certain Jackson in California had insisted that I must know. At Sophie’s apartment I met her much younger sister Bertha, a quick-witted, dark-eyed, vivacious girl who might have passed for an Italian, though she was actually a Russian Jewess; and there also I met the tall, straight-limbed, flaming-eyed youth who, two or three years later, was to become Bertha’s husband: Ignace M. Ingianni--the “Ignace” being a mere decoration so far as I was concerned, for, like all our mutual acquaintances, I never called him by any other name than “Johnnie.” The son of an immigrant family, he had come to New York in early childhood; and he showed all the volcanic fire of his Sicilian origin. Despite our common poetic interests, he met me with prejudice, I should almost say passionate antagonism; he had recently read one of my poems in a Sunday paper, and had (doubtless justifiably) conceived an intense dislike of it. Having disapproved of the poem, he likewise disapproved of its author, even before seeing him; and his hostility found expression in a roof-shaking argument, though not on poetry--no, on warfare, whose advantages Johnnie defended in a tumult of words that was almost like private warfare; while I, who have never been able to see the militaristic point of view, answered him blow for blow during a long, overheated debate. And what was the result? That we went our way in mutual disgust, and saw no more of each other? Or that we became lifelong enemies? On the contrary, the result was that we went our way in mutual pleasure, and became lifelong friends.

Johnnie was, at the time I met him, a writer of free verse; my analysis of his work, which I did not keep from him, was that it contained the raw material of poetry but not the finished fabric. He would be able, I suggested, to write good rhymed lyrics--and this proved to be the case, as was shown by his subsequent poems that appeared in various magazines, and in the volume _Songs of Earth_. Johnnie, who had passed the bar examination but never practiced law, and earned his living in the unlikely-seeming occupation of title examiner for the City of New York, sometimes discussed with me the possibility of our joint launching of a poetry magazine; but we never advanced further than to decide on a title, _Flame_. When I actually did become the editor and proprietor of a magazine, it was not known as _Flame_ (a title, incidentally, later used by another poetry journal); and Johnnie was not concerned with the enterprise except as an interested bystander and occasional contributor.

But he himself was eventually to start his own magazine, and therein rests an irony. Years later, after I had left New York and he had come under new influences, he returned to the _vers libre_ of his earlier days, but went beyond the freedoms of his earlier days, and embraced that very extremism which I have always battled against. And he launched the _avant-garde_ magazine, _Symbolica_, a mimeographed periodical of irregular publication, to which he gives himself devotedly, and for which he serves as typist and mimeographer no less than as editor. Since therefore we are poetically at opposite extremes--as far apart, let us say, as an atheist and a fundamentalist, though I do not mean to compare us to either--what has happened to our friendship? Nothing at all. I still see Johnnie from time to time (for he has retired from his services to New York City, and moved to California), and we still hold discussions with reminders of the old-time fervor; but poetry is not among our topics of debate.

Whereas Johnnie has moved westward, another poet, whom I met in the west, has since gone east. Our meeting was, I think, one of the strangest and grimmest that ever paved the way for a friendship. During the summer of 1930, Flora and I had come to California for our annual vacation; and remembering the redwood forests and the far-looking hills of Mill Valley, among which I had occasionally hiked while a youth at college, I suggested that we rent a cottage there for a month. Flora, little suspecting that she was to fall so deeply in love with the environment as to wish to live there all the rest of her life, seemed to think that two weeks would suffice; nevertheless, we did pass a month, which seemed all too short, in two furnished rooms in the upper story of a reconverted old church, from which we had a gratifying view across a tree-clad range. Toward the end of our stay, we spent a pleasant day with Anne Heller and another young woman, friends of a New York friend of Flora’s, who were passing by on a hitch-hiking expedition; and I remember how gay and carefree we were on the long walk to Muir Woods via the green windings of the Pipe Line Trail, then undesecrated by the demands of that modern devourer, the automobile. We bade the travelers a hearty good-bye, little forseeing the sequel.

Two mornings later, as I picked up a San Francisco paper at a newsstand, I was startled by the headlines: “HITCH-HIKER KILLED.” With a shock, I glanced at the bold letters staring from the top of the first page, and was almost felled to read--the name of Anne Heller.

That very evening, Anne was to reach out to us as if from beyond the grave. I had gone to look for mail at the post office, when Flora heard a rapping at the door, and opened to see two immaculately dressed strangers: one a slender, tall, conspicuously handsome youth of about twenty-seven; the other a short, dark-complexioned man in his forties, severe and dignified of aspect, and with a European formality of manner.

Having made sure that they had come to the right door, the younger man held forth an envelope. “Here,” he said, “is a letter of introduction from Anne Heller.”

Flora gasped. “But don’t you know,” she blurted out, “don’t you know Anne Heller is no longer here?”

The men gaped at her, speechless. Their eyes narrowed; tears trickled down; they seemed ready to weep as Flora told the dread tidings in the morning’s paper.

The letter from Anne--probably the last she ever wrote--had been given to the younger man after a chance meeting with him the day before, the very day that was to see her stretched bleeding and lifeless beneath the wheels of a speeding automobile on a northern California highway.

Reeling, the men left with a few mumbled words, but not before promising to get into further touch with us. This promise they kept; and thus began a close friendship with them both, a friendship cemented all the more firmly because of the sorrowful circumstances surrounding its inception. The older man, the Portuguese Vice-Consul and for long periods Acting Consul at San Francisco, bore the formidable name of Guillermo de Amaral, but we got around the difficulty by simply calling him “Bill”; the younger man, at that time an assistant at the Consulate though he had no Portuguese blood, was Douglas V. Kane, who was truly the poet that he looked, a sensitive being whose beauty-loving poems have deservedly appeared in many magazines, and whom we have ever since numbered among our dearest friends. Strange, strange that we should have been brought together by Anne Heller, whom neither of us knew very well, and who so suddenly and tragically departed from this earth so many years ago.

Tragedy is also connected with another poet, whom I knew under totally different circumstances. Not long ago a letter from Mary, the wife of LeGarde S. Doughty, saddened us with the news of the death of her husband--shot by his own hand. Perhaps it was only fitting that this man, who lived turbulently, amid struggle and difficulty, should have died violently. Across more than twenty years, a picture comes back to me of a forceful, intelligent face, already deeply crisscrossed and corrugated by life though the man could not have been beyond his early forties. I see him in the only environment that somehow seems appropriate: the pines of the Georgia hill-lands rising all about him on soil too badly exhausted to bear any other crop; the red slash of a road, which he told me was the celebrated “Tobacco Road,” rambling among wild jasmine and honeysuckle and past houses that were mostly mere unpainted shanties.

It was _Wings_ that brought me into contact with LeGarde, as with many another able poet. During the early days of the magazine, I noticed the strikingly original poems sent me under his name, and a correspondence between us arose. At that time he was literary editor of the Augusta _Chronicle_ (a post he subsequently lost owing to his free expression of published opinion). Sometime in 1937 he first invited Flora and me to visit Mary and himself in their home a few miles out of Augusta; and in April, 1938, we were finally induced to accept. Neither of us will ever forget those two days spent with them amid the pine-woods, in a four-room cottage that lacked every modern invention from running water to electricity, but that glowed and bubbled with laughter, good cheer, and good talk, while we and LeGarde and Mary and their hospitable southern friends and neighbors lingered over our coffee until the early morning hours, poems were read, and heated discussions held. LeGarde, a lover of nature, showed me with pride a young redwood and an acacia which I had sent him from California, and which had taken root in the southern soil; and as we rambled together past a beggarly field of undernourished wheat or out along the rutted road, he took as much joy in the red earth of his pine-lands as if they had represented Eden itself.

But how did he manage to subsist in that infertile territory? I never knew for certain. I do recall his delight, at the very hour of our departure, when a letter from a mid-western magazine contained a check for $75 for a story just accepted; and I know that he published other stories and one novel. But could he support himself on the slim reed of literature? I am afraid that he could not; and I suspect that the many rebuffs he received, along with the never-healing wound from the loss of a dearly beloved son in an air accident in World War II, lay in the background of his tragic end. His one published book of poetry, a slim collection of quatrains issued in 1934, bears the suggestive title, _With Lips of Rue_--a title expressive not only of the man’s work but of the man himself. Yet I have always believed that here was one who, had life been a little less difficult and fortune a bit more beneficent, might have been among the luminaries of American poetry if not of American prose.

Now and then, while making new poetic friends, I was being reintroduced to old. I recall an occasion in the early thirties when some members of Hal Bynner’s one-time poetry class held a reunion with Hal in an old farmhouse at Nyack, where we all stayed overnight. This event, perversely, stands out in my memory not so much because of the reestablishment of old bonds as for a certain ride which I would not re-enact for the joy of all the reunions on earth. Now that I look back upon it, it seems almost incredible, and I know that it might have been disastrous--but great are the risks and trials that one will undergo in the name of poetry, particularly when one is young and not too wary!

It was a cold evening in early February, and the snow lay on the ground. At an appointed time after dinner, Flora and I went to an address on Forty-Second Street, where we met two other guests, who were to drive us to Nyack. So far, so good! and having the inconvenient habit of being on time, we arrived at the agreed hour, and were rewarded with a long wait before the journey began. We were, I must admit, just a little taken aback when we saw the intended means of transportation! a broken-down old two-seated automobile, repainted a chilly aluminum, and completely open and exposed in the rear. Had we known then what we knew an hour or two later, one or both of us would instantly have developed chills, or pains in the stomach, or some other appropriate indisposition. But no! two complaisant if somewhat dubious people took their assigned back seats in the automobile.

The beginnings of the trip, before we had reached the New Jersey side of the Hudson, are drowned out of memory by what happened after we had crossed the river and began following the curves of the road along the ridge of the Palisades. We had never before had the faintest idea how cold a February night could be. It may be that the temperature was not many degrees below freezing, but I would have sworn that sixty below zero could not have seemed colder as the unimpeded north winds, edged like the shivery blades of knives and amplified in effect by the speed of the car, swept over us from across the wide dark vacancies of the river. Flora and I shrank down as low as possible, trying to sink into our seats, so as to lessen the cutting power of the gale; we huddled together, beat each other on the back so as to bring back some semblance of warmth. Though dressed in our heaviest--Flora in a thick brown beaver-cloth coat that made her look like a bear but was really not fur at all, and I in my most ponderous woolen coat--we both felt clad in cheese-cloth, if not actually naked in that boundless cold. The frigid air beat at our skins, caressed us, numbed us, and there was no defense, no way of escape. For what seemed hours, endless hours, that tormented drive continued. They tell me that the distance to Nyack is not more than about forty miles; but it seemed hundreds, it seemed infinity itself; each second of torture was minutes long, and the seconds were innumerable. Comparing notes afterwards, we found that our thoughts were similar. “This _is_ hell,” Flora had been saying to herself. “This truly _is_ hell.” And I had been trying to comfort myself with the bleak reflection, “The fundamentalist preachers were all wrong. Hell is not heat and fire. Hell is ice and cold.”

But terrible as was the puffing, panting progress of that tumbledown old car against the blasts of the polar night, a still more appalling possibility lowered before us. What if the ancient engine should break down, and we should be stranded here on the frozen plateau? Automobiles, I knew, had a habit of stalling at the most inconvenient times--as, for example, the one that had balked in mid-journey when bearing Flora and me to the railroad station just after we were married. And if we were to face the full force of the wind, perhaps for hours, unprotected on that lonely night-road--

Here, however, imagination outleapt reality. Finally, after crawling ages, we did reach our destination, so numb that we could hardly walk; we did share in the joy of the expected reunion; we did warm ourselves before a blazing fire, whose heat we could hardly get enough of--a fire that was our salvation, though I have always marveled that neither of us came down with pneumonia.

Ever since that night, it has been my view that there are torments which it is not worth while to endure even for the sake of poetry. And it has likewise been my belief--with which, I am sure, Flora would concur--that when the devil wishes to punish some especially wicked sinner, he entices him forth to the top of a cliff in an open car on an icy night in February.