Spectra: New Poems, A Book of Poetic Experiments

by Anne Knish (Pseudonym), Emanuel Morgan (Pseudonym), Arthur Davidson Ficke

Published by the American poets Arthur Davidson Ficke and Witter Bynner under the pseudonyms of Anne Knish and Emanuel Morgan. Irritated by such new poetic schools as the Imagists, the Futurists, and the Vorticists, Bynner invented the spoof school of "Spectrism" and Ficke joined him in the hoax. They concocted a batch of Spectrist poems (with the help of ten bottles of scotch), Bynner writing as Emanuel Morgan and Fiske as Anne Knish. Kennerley, in on the hoax, published the book in the fall of 1916. Ficke designed the cover and, as Anne Knish, wrote a solemn (and delightful) Introduction. They invented biographies for the Morgan and Knish, and the book was praised by such critics as Edgar Lee Masters, John Gould Fletcher, Eunice Tietjiens, Alfred Kreymborg, and in Reedy's Mirror. Additional poems were published in Poetry, Reedy's Mirror, and The Little Review. After the hoax was exposed in April of 1918, the critics retaliated by insisting that the Spectra poems were better than anything written by Bynner or Ficke. They set out to satirize the high seriousness of "Imagism," "futurism," and the pretensions of literary movements in general, but the hoax was taken seriously by the public, the press, and more than a few poets.

66 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1916