Pilot Bails Out

by Don Blanding

A selection of poems written by Don Blanding in the hope that their message might contribute to building and maintaining morale and hope in these trying years. A tribute to the Winged Youth of today and tomorrow.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Donald Benson Blanding was an American poet who sentimentalized warm climates and was sometimes described as "poet laureate of Hawaii". He was also known as a journalist, author of prose, artist, and speaker. Born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, he later grew up alongside a young Lucille "Billie" Cassin (later known as Joan Crawford), later assisting her after she cut her foot on a broken milk bottle. Blanding would make this incident the focus of a poem he wrote when the two met years later. He trained between 1913 and 1915 at the Art Institute of Chicago. Blanding pursued further art studies in 1920, in Paris and London, traveled in Central America and the Yucatan, and resumed living in Honolulu in 1921. Finding work as an artist in an advertising agency, he happened into two years of writing poems published daily in the Honolulu Star Bulletin for an advertiser.

The popularity of these ad-poems led Blanding to follow the advice of newspaper colleagues by publishing a collection of his poetry in 1923. When his privately published 2000 copies quickly sold out, he followed it with a commercially published edition the same year, and with additional verse and prose books. For his fifth book in 1928, he no longer used a local or West Coast publisher, but the New York publisher Dodd, Mead & Company. The result, Vagabond's House, was reviewed promptly by the New York Times, and was a great commercial success. By 1948 it went through nearly fifty printings in several editions that together sold over 150,000 copies.

In 1927, he suggested and founded the annual holiday, Lei Day, in Hawaii. While he remained strongly attached to Hawaii, his connections to the world of celebrities drew him often to the mainland, and his income made hotel life and multiple residences feasible. Blanding married Dorothy Binney Putnam, on June 13, 1940, and they lived in Fort Pierce, Florida. He died without issue on June 9, 1957.

For more information about the life and art of this artist and poet, see the website link referenced above.

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

At 85 pages this is, like many single author volumes of poetry, it can be a quick read. The poems are rarely more than one or two pages long and while sometimes heavy of subject they are relatively easy to read through but can be harder sometimes to parse out his exact message. I like the volume because Blanding served in WW1 and 2, and I appreciate the writings of veterans. This turned out to be a timely volume to read right now as the author had settled in Honolulu between the wars so he focuses here on the Pacific region and on aviation - though he was himself not a pilot.

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don Blanding had to have seen a lot being in both World Wars. In Pilot Bails Out he does a wonderful job reflecting on different aspects of military life and what war is. I am really glad I read this collection of poems.

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extra star for the illustrations.