New & Selected Poems

by Kenneth Fearing

Author Jim Whitehead's copy. Signed by Whitehead FEP. Some very occasional underlining by him as well. Dust jacket chipped and aged, in mylar. A crisp, clean and tight copy. 6 1/4" x 9 1/4". 143 pp. No marks. Binding is tight, covers and spine fully intact. Dust Jacket price-clipped. All edges are clean. Not Ex-Library. All books offered from DSB are stocked at our store in Fayetteville, AR. Save on shipping by ordering multiple titles. Poetry; Inventory 027712.

Genres: Poetry

143 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1956

About the author

Kenneth Fearing (July 28, 1902 – June 26, 1961) was an American poet, novelist, and founding editor of Partisan Review. Literary critic Macha Rosenthal called him "the chief poet of the American Depression."

Fearing was born in Oak Park, Illinois, the son of Harry Lester Fearing, a successful Chicago attorney, and Olive Flexner Fearing. His parents divorced when he was a year old, and he was raised mainly by his aunt, Eva Fearing Scholl. He went to school at Oak Park and River Forest High School, and was editor of the student paper, as was his predecessor Ernest Hemingway. After studying at the University of Illinois in Urbana and the University of Wisconsin, Fearing moved to New York City where he began a career as a poet and was active in leftist politics.

In the 1920s and 1930s, he published regularly in The New Yorker and helped found Partisan Review, while also working as an editor, journalist, and speechwriter and turning out a good deal of pulp fiction. Some of Fearing's pulp fiction was soft-core pornography, often published under the pseudonym Kirk Wolff.

In 1950, he was subpoenaed by the U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C.; when asked if he was a member of the Communist Party, he is supposed to have replied, "Not yet."

Reviews

[Cooper Renner · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fairly mild sort of protest poetry, a bridge maybe between Jeffers and Ginsberg. Not as elemental, fierce and grand as Jeffers; not as flip as Ginsberg but equally “modern” in setting and content.