The Spectra Hoax

by William Jay Smith

Middletown, Wesleyan Univeristy Press, 1961. First Edition. Signed by lead hoaxer Witter Bynner [as "Emanuel Morgan"], presented to Kenneth L. Ball, the student who first discovered his identity. Octavo, 158 pp, beige cloth with black and white imprinting, jacket. Fine book in near fine jacket showing trace edgewear. A singular copy of the book about "the hoax" . In the early years of the twentieth century, all of the arts - particularly poetry - were thriving in the midst of a post-industrial-revolution swell of excitement, creativity and new aesthetic "schools"; poetry, for its part, rolled out Imagism, Vorticism, Futurism, Chorism, and a rogue's gallery of other new poetic genres, each based on its own aesthetic theorizing. Appearing in the midst of this rather joyous and certainly passionate carnival were Emanuel Morgan, expatriate painter-turned-poet reunited with his native Pittsburgh, and his close friends and colleagues, the beautiful Hungarian poet (who wrote in Russian) Anna Knish, and barrister Elijah Hay. In 1916, Morgan and Knish took the poetry world by storm with their Spectrist school of poetry, which was based on three visions of the term - spectra, the task of the artist to perceived beauty in its component colors, rather than as the glorious white light in which it occurs naturally; the reflex vibrations of that same light which occur only within the artist, like the light phenomena in our eyes; and spectre, the yet more difficult task of uncovering the subtle, hidden spirits behind and within beauty. Morgan used regular rhymed stanza in his spectrism offerings, while Knish used only free verse, but they were attempting the same thing. The poetic world was quickly awash in discussion and analysis of the spectrist school; a few thought the intellectual foundation to be a bit pretentiously framed, others thought it strange

Genres: Poetry

172 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

William Jay Smith was an American poet. He was appointed the nineteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1968 to 1970.

Reviews

[Nathanael Myers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hahahaha. This book made me giggle all the way through. Of course the hoax worked.

[Robin Helweg-Larsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

In ten days in 1916, two brash young poets - Witte Bynner and Arthur Davison Ficke - produced a volume of poetry parodying the Imagists. Writing as Emanuel Morgan and Anne Knish, and claiming to represent a whole new school, the Spectrics, their manuscript of Morgan's formal poetry and Knish's free verse, together with the blathery and pretentious preface, was unexpectedly accepted by a serious publisher and for 18 months was a major success on the American poetry scene. Poetry's editor requested half a dozen of their poems, but unfortunately the hoax was uncovered before publication; the editor was embarrassed and therefore angry.

This book tells the full story of the Spectrism hoax, its defense, its termination, and how the hoaxers were in turn hoaxed by others... as well as telling the story of other 20th century poetry hoaxes from Australia and the US. It also contains the full text of Bynner and Ficke's hoax poetry book, "Spectra", and a selection of subsequent poems.

As Bynner and Ficke and others subsequently acknowledged, their parodies were unfortunately strong, better than much of the work of the Imagists and in some ways better than their own regular poetry. Consider these:

If bathing were a virtue, not a lust,
I would be dirtiest.

To some, housecleaning is a holy rite.
For myself, houses would be empty
But for the golden motes dancing in sunbeams.

Tax-assessors frequently overlook valuables.
Today they noted my jade.
But my memory of you escaped them.

- Anne Knish, Opus 118

Hope
Is the antelope
Over the hills;
Fear
Is the wounded deer
Bleeding in the rills;
Care
Is the heavy bear
Tearing at meat;
Fun
Is the mastodon
Vanished complete...

And I am the stag with the golden horn
Waiting till my day is born.

- Emanuel Morgan, Opus 2 

Whatever else they are, the poems are fun. The story of the hoax and the collection of poems are both worth reading (especially if you like the Imagist poets), and go extremely well together in this book by William Jay Smith.

[Jeff Laughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an awesome account of a true literary hoax perpetrated by talented people. In a way, it's Yes Men for the lit world (before websites, of course). Thoroughly enjoyable.