Three Stories and Ten Poems

by Ernest Hemingway

"His prose is of first distinction," declared critic Edmund Wilson of Hemingway upon the  1923 publication of Three Stories and Ten Poems, the author's first foray into the literary world. These short stories ("Up in Michigan," "Out of Season," and "My Old Man") and their accompanying poems captured the attention of other influential critics as well, anticipating the future Nobel Laureate's emergence as a prominent voice of the Modernist movement.
Succinct and lucid in his prose style, American novelist and short story writer Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) exercised an enormous influence over English-language authors of the twentieth century. A member of the expatriate Lost Generation circle, Hemingway cultivated a larger-than-life image of vigorous masculinity complemented by an intense sensitivity. He drew upon his adventures as a big-game hunter, bullfighter, and fisherman for his fiction as well as his service as a World War I ambulance driver and a reporter during the Spanish Civil War and World War II.

Genres: Poetry, Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Literature, American, Coming Of Age

64 pages, Paperback

First published August 13, 1923

About the author

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Best known for an economical, understated style that significantly influenced later 20th-century writers, he is often romanticized for his adventurous lifestyle, and outspoken and blunt public image. Most of Hemingway's works were published between the mid-1920s and mid-1950s, including seven novels, six short-story collections and two non-fiction works. His writings have become classics of American literature; he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature, while three of his novels, four short-story collections and three nonfiction works were published posthumously.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he spent six months as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star before enlisting in the Red Cross. He served as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in World War I and was seriously wounded in 1918. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. He married Hadley Richardson in 1921, the first of four wives. They moved to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s' "Lost Generation" expatriate community. His debut novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926.
He divorced Richardson in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer. They divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War, where he had worked as a journalist and which formed the basis for his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. He and Gellhorn separated after he met Mary Welsh Hemingway in London during World War II. Hemingway was present with Allied troops as a journalist at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. He maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, in the 1930s and in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s. On a 1954 trip to Africa, he was seriously injured in two plane accidents on successive days, leaving him in pain and ill health for much of the rest of his life. In 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where, on July 2, 1961 (a couple weeks before his 62nd birthday), he killed himself using one of his shotguns.

Reviews

[Murray · Rating 3 out of 5]

✍🏻 You see the clean, strong, bold strokes that would become his signature style developing. This was published in 1923 and I believe is his first published work, preceding Torrents of Spring by three years.

I did not like Up in Michigan. It was controversial then and remains controversial now.

Out of Season I found disjointed and weak.

My Old Man is strong and tragic. It would merit 4 stars.

The poetry does not work. Especially when he tries to force rhymes instead of leaving it free verse. The only poem I liked was Along with Youth.

"He looks out upon the world without prejudice or preconception and records with precision and economy, and an almost terrifying immediacy, exactly what he sees."
-The New York Times

This is partially true. That’s Hemingway’s flat, unemotional style. But every artist makes a few judgment calls including him.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises, was published for the 30-year-old Oak Park, IL author to worldwide acclaim in 1926, but his first book publication was this slim book, in 1923, which I listened to today. You can ignore the poetry altogether, except maybe to say they are stripped down, non-lyrical, some of them published in Poetry, but not in my opinion good. But the stories are great; one of the stories, “Up in Michigan,” is part of the Nick Addams stories. But there is one true gem in the slim and early collection (it was initially published in only 500 copies), “My Old Man,” one of his (and there are many) best stories.

The story is told by a young boy, maybe ten, who adores his aging jockey father who, due to financial needs, gets involved with gamblers to make a living. The boy doesn’t really kmow they are bad guys, and only reveals that he knows things are “funny,” sometimes. He can’t admit that his father is anything but terrific, but Hem reveals enough to us through the kid so we know what he can’t fully accept. It’s a sweet and anguished story about fathers and sons and the loss of innocence, so much hidden beneath that iceberg surface.

To the story to read right now:

http://cafelitt.ca/down/My%20old%20ma...

a 27 minute film version worth watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sj7Q...

[Ayz · Rating 4 out of 5]

oh boy are these early poems awful or what? sheesh. besides that, a very interesting debut by one of the great writers of english lit. the three stories are fascinating and even a couple of poems are better than decent, especially the last one. all in all you can see the early promise of hemingway.

he hasn’t learned to cut his stories to the bone yet, but you can sense where he’s headed in the future. or rather what he’s trying to do, and one day will.

[Deacon Tom (Feeling Better) · Rating 4 out of 5]

“3 Stories Nd 10 Poems our time” is Ernest Hemingway‘s first published book. It’s obvious he doesn’t have a polished writing skills that work like later in his lustrous career. It’s a collection of three stories in about 10 poems that are specifically directed at topics and in no way connect to one another.

InContext of how many Waze books is pretty clear to see that this is a start. We all have to start somewhere, so I would recommend getting the short easy broken try and see if it starts USB a fan of having away, like I am.

[Théo d'Or]

For we have thought the longer thoughts

And gone the shorter way .

And we have danced to devil's tunes ,

Shivering home to pray.

To serve one master in the night

Another in the day.

[Wally Flangers · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, you have to take a dump and are looking for some quick reading material because you’re sick of playing apps on your iphone or doing boring-ass crossword puzzles…. THIS book can get you through that long, grueling struggle and help loosen the fabric – or at the very least, kill some time, while remaining entertained.

Privately published in 1923, “Three Stories and Ten Poems” is a short story collection written by Ernest Hemingway. You can find these stories and poems in other Hemingway collections as well, but this is a nice collection that you can knock out in a single session if you want to.

This is going to be a very short review, as the book is really not long enough to provide too many details without giving away any spoilers. Chances are, if you are reading this book it is probably not your first Hemingway experience anyway so I won’t bother getting too deep on how profound the author can detail a scene and / or environment. I’m sure you already know the dude can write, otherwise you wouldn’t have picked it up.

As with all my short story collection reviews, I rate each story individually and then calculate the average rating as the total rating for the book. However, I do provide a brief synopsis of each individual story. Some readers may not want to know as much information that I have provide, so stand forewarnd. I write my short story reviews this way for future reference to remind me of which ones are worth the time re-reading and which ones are not. But, you can avoid learning more than you would like to know about these stories by skipping to the very bottom of the review, where it says “FINAL VERDICT”. That is where my overall review for “Three Stories and Ten Poems” is listed. The stories within the collection include;

UP IN MICHIGAN – This story is about a born romantic, who thinks she’s in love with a dude who’s got one thing on his mind (who would’ve thought?)…. She later realizes the feelings that she had for him was not love at all. Just a crush that manifested into obsession because she’s a dreamer. This story was terrific and is pretty good depiction of the mindset of a typical female verses a typical male. I highly recommend checking this one out. This story was also included in “The Fifth Column” and “The First Forty-Nine Stories”.

OUT OF SEASON – Peduzzi has two hobbies…. Getting plastered and fishing. Phenomenal combination, by the way…. But, THAT basically sums up this story – at least for me. I wasn’t fond of this one a single bit and, quite frankly, didn’t even get the point of it. If you give a shit, the story was also included in his next collection of stories titled, “In Our Time”.

MY OLD MAN – This was a sad story about a young man and his fat old man, who loves betting on horses. He is the butt of all jokes and the son, obviously, takes issue with that. The ending twist ended the short stories on a high note and set the tone (a depressing one at that) for the upcoming poems. This is another story that was also included in his next collection, “In Our Time”.

FINAL VERDICT: I give this book 3 out of 5 stars. This was definitely not Ernest Hemingway’s best work, in my opinion…. However, “Up in Michigan” was well worth the read and managed to keep the book above the 3 star mark for me. The book concluded with ten poems (no shit, huh?) that contained some well, though-out metaphors. I liked the blend of short stories with the poems to show how versatile an author he was. I would recommend reading everything except “Out of Season”. I’d rather stare at an hourglass (not in motion) than read that story again.

[tortoise dreams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ernest Hemingway's first book, published in an edition of 300 copies.

Book Review: Three Stories and Ten Poems was published in 1923 by a small, modernist, Parisian press for expat writers, Contact Editions, whose owner took a chance on the then-unknown future Nobel Prize laureate. Just as it says in the title, this slim volume contains three stories:

"Up in Michigan" - The story that (according to Hemingway) Gertrude Stein felt was good but unpublishable (inaccrochable was her word), and so a waste of time to write. In the story a young woman receives an unbearably brutal, illusion-destroying introduction to the world and the essential nature of men at the hands of man with whom she's infatuated, despite her essential decency and innocence. It was not included in Hemingway's first story-collection, In Our Time (1925), as the publisher was afraid of the obscenity laws. It wasn't published again until 1938 in the collection The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories.

"Out of Season" - Some consider this the "story that marks the true beginning of his mature style."
Here, a weak man, a fish out of water, allows himself to be manipulated and exploited by an illiterate drunk. Recognized as the first example of Hemingway's "iceberg theory," that what is not in the story can be understood through context. To that end he excised the original ending. The story was later included in his first story collection, In Our Time.

"My Old Man" - This one was selected for the 1923 edition of The Best Short Stories (later The Best American Short Stories, which is still published) series. A boy makes the painful discovery that his father is simply a man, with a life of his own marked by the imperfections, flaws, and weaknesses that are humanity. The piece was included in In Our Time.

One of the elements that we don't realize about these stories is how revolutionary their style was at the time. The simple, stripped-down writing was still uncommon, and so was quite striking to readers even apart from all other aspects. Hemingway left out extraneous words, and even extraneous plot, believing excised portions could be discerned through the rest of the story. For modern readers, familiar with contemporary approaches, however, the writing style can seem and sound too simple, too "see Jane run."

Three Stories and Ten Poems also includes the titular poems, in which Hemingway tried to push the limits, to make them revolutionary, or at least conspicuous in a bluntly realistic style. I find it interesting that like Bukowski, Hemingway's early start was as a poet as much as a writer of fiction, seemingly incompatible with his stereotypical image as a macho man's man. The poems are worth discussing. Six of the ten poems were originally published in the important Chicago modernist magazine Poetry (which in 1915 first published the then impenetrable "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and is still publishing today) in January 1923. Gertrude Stein noted that she liked the poems more than his contemporaneous fiction. Despite these commendations, Hemingway's poetry is not the basis of the reputation that led to the Nobel Prize. The poems have an always traditionally-masculine edge, mostly straightforward without too much embellishment, using words rarely used in English-language poetry at the time (gonorrhea, whore, stomach-pump), just as "Up in Michigan" addressed a subject more directly than was usually done. Published in 1923, some of these are war poems, reminiscent (though not as well done) of the British poets of the First World War. The ten poems with my simple notes are:

"Mitraigliatrice" - There's some confusion about how to spell the title of this poem -- apparently wrong in the book but correct when it was published in Poetry. Here Hemingway compares his Corona typewriter (sent to him for his birthday by his wife Hadley) to a machine gun. Wishful thinking, perhaps. The metaphor no doubt became more obvious after the invention of the electric typewriter.

"Oklahoma" - Open to interpretation: I see it as the author writing about one thing, but thinking of another to make the last line hit hard. Yes, I mean metaphor.

"Oily Weather" - The triumph of man over nature. Which you'd think Hemingway would've understood is a mirage.

"Roosevelt" - Meaning Teddy, since FDR's fame was a ways off back then. Here Hemingway mocks the self-mythologizing, macho manly-man President. Which is a little ironic, perhaps projecting, since no one was more aware of his own image than the author.

"Captives" - Not a brilliant poem perhaps, but accurate and honest in its emotion.

"Champs D'Honneur" - My guess is that this ("Fields of Honor" in English) is Hemingway's reply after reading Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est." Owen was a great war poet.

"Riparto D'Assalto" - A war poem, good enough, mixing thoughts of soft, warm prostitutes with the misery of the war zone. Hemingway watching "shock" or "storm" troops between battles.

"Montparnasse" - A cynical comment about the ex-pat, Bohemian life on the Left Bank of Paris. Hemingway was one of those people who felt he could expound on the lives of others, not realizing how little we know about the desperation contained in the lives of others.

"Along with Youth" - A coming-of-age poem, as with the Nick Adams' stories or "My Old Man." Given the subject, not terrible.

"Chapter Heading" - I enjoyed this one, a good poem. Reminded me of Edna St. Vincent Millay; that's a compliment. It was selected for Best Poems of 1923 and was Hemingway's first publication in a book in the U.S.

If Hemingway's poetry speaks to you, you could seek out Complete Poems, edited by Nicholas Gerogiannis, published by University of Nebraska Press (Bison Books). It's too obvious to say, but true, that Three Stories and Ten Poems is interesting more for its historical value and as an insight into Hemingway's growth as a writer, than valuable for the lasting quality of the work. Regardless, the collection is worth the price of admission. [3★]

[Meg · Rating 1 out of 5]

My first Hemingway. I'm so disappointed...I didn't know what to expect but it certainly wasn't this.

The first story, Up in Michigan, I hated. The other two were painfully boring.

The poems weren't to my taste either. The last one, titled Chapter Heading, I did however really like:

For we have thought the larger thoughts
And gone the shorter way.
And we have danced to devil's tunes,
Shivering home to pray;
To serve one master in the night,
Another in the day.

I will have to give him another try. I'll try a novel next, but i'm not convinced..

[Benny Blanco · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first story “Up in Michigan” is one of the most strongest Hemingway passage I have ever read with its controversial (at the the time) topics it covered and shows you that Hemingway knows how to write from a woman’s perspective. Also, the other two stories are good in their own right especially the final one “My Old Man.” His poetry is hit or miss, but the final one will make you think about life a bit.

[Ritika · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars for the poems.

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

The stories are better than the poems.

[Luke Crawford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exactly what it says on the tin. Personally,I think I enjoyed it more as I started out reading 'a movable feast' and would cut out and read whatever Hemingway had gotten published as it was published. I got some backstory that way. "Out of Season" I think, is rather more interesting (and rather darker) if you have some context and background.

Note, all of the three short stories in question are pretty dark, but really, so is most of his work, or at least, that's how I read it. "inaccrochable" isn't the word I'd use, but who am I to argue with Stein?

I'd give the tacked-on introduction to the kindle edition one star, though. they give him all of six sentences and manage to use several of those to talk about his suicide in a way that I felt was neither respectful nor interesting.

[Moniek · Rating 5 out of 5]

"My old man sat there and sort of smiled at me but his face was white and he looked sick as hell and I was scared and felt sick inside because I knew something had happened and I didn't see how anybody could call my old man a son of a bitch and get away with it."

Ostatnio zdałam sobie sprawę, że coś jest z tym Hemingwayem, że przez te wszystkie lata okresu mojego leczenia się po traumie był ze mną, i pochłaniał moją energię, kiedy emocji było we mnie za dużo, i chyba zawdzięczam jego twórczości trochę dojścia do siebie. Dzisiejszy dzień jest okropny i wstrętny, i nie potrafię... się do końca uspokoić, ale chciałam dokończyć wczoraj rozpoczęty zbiór jego opowiadań, i postanowiłam spróbować. Nie mówię, że czuję się dobrze, ale trochę cieplej.
Ernest, nie sięgnęłam po ciebie od lipca, ale wróciłam do ciebie w najlepszym momencie.

Opowiadania zawarte w zbiorze ("Up in Michigan", "Out of Season" i "My Old Man") są mi znajome, bo czytałam je już przedtem w polskim przekładzie, niektóre po kilka razy, ale pierwszy raz doświadczyłam ich w oryginale i zostałam zaskoczona. Jestem zauroczona bardzo kobiecą narracją i wrażliwością w "Up in Michigan". Opowiadanie to to kolejny dowód, że Ernesta Hemingwaya bardzo trudno jest zaklasyfikować do jednej kategorii, zaszufladkować, "ogarnąć"; był tak niesamowicie swobodny w swojej narracji. Przypomniało mi to komentarz pani z dokumentu "Hemingway" (2021), że "Pożegnanie z bronią" mogłoby być napisane przez kobietę, i że to komplement - dla mnie "Up in Michigan" ma dokładnie te same vibes. Co do "Out of Season" to przez chwilę miałam wrażenie, że nigdy wcześniej nie spotkałam się z tym opowiadaniem; potem mi się lekko rozjaśniło, ale sądzę, że po prostu we mnie wcześniej nie poruszyło, za to w oryginale bardzo. Uwielbiam atmosferę niepokoju i napięcia w tej historii. A "My Old Man"... to nie jest tajemnica, że darzę to opowiadanie szczególnym uczuciem, a oryginał jeszcze bardziej pokazuje, jakie... bezbronne wrażenie robi narracja Hemingwaya. Takich rzeczy nie mogła napisać osoba bez ogromnej dozy wrażliwości.
A styl Ernesta zostaje niezrównany. Czytałam ostatnio "Shakespeare and Company" Sylvii Beach, przyjaciółki Hemingwaya, i razem ze swoją partnerką życiową zgadzała się, że tak jak każdy autor podbierał coś od drugiego, to Ernest był, mimo oczywistych wpływów, bardzo własny.
Co do wierszy, to dotąd miałam tylko styczność z poezją Hemingwaya powstałą w późniejszych latach. Słyszałam, że ta twórczość Ernesta akurat wybitna nie była, więc nie miałam zbyt wysokich oczekiwań. Trudno mi się je czytało, zwłaszcza ze względu na tematykę wojenną, teraz zbyt bliską, i rzeczywiście, nie jest to arcydzieło poetyckie; jednak dla mnie te wiersze są piękne, i tak jak wszystko Hemingwaya, ogromnie wrażliwe, i też trochę niewinne, i też trochę przypominające małego dziecka w wielkim obcym świecie (mam nadzieję, że Ernest by się na mnie nie pogniewał, bo ja wiem, że mówię to w najbardziej pozytywnym sensie).

Wydawnictwo "Marginesy" planuje wydanie kolekcji Hemingwaya w nowym przekładzie, i tak jak nie pozwolę sobie na zebranie wszystkich dzieł, to na pewno skuszę się na moje ulubione. Rozmawiałam dzisiaj z panią z mojej ukochanej lokalnej księgarni, i zwróciła uwagę na to, że nowy przekład pochodzi od tłumaczki, i że może być to bardzo obiecująca perspektywa. Tak jak dotąd mieliśmy wspaniałe tłumaczenia Hemingwaya, to rzeczywiście kto wie, co kobieta wyciągnie z jego twórczości.

Boję się nadchodzących tygodni i miesięcy ogromnie, i boję się dzisiejszej nocy, bo ogrom uczuć pojawił się dzisiaj w moim umyśle. Chciałabym w tym momencie zrobić prywatny ustęp i zachęcić was do szerzenia sprawdzonych informacji o sytuacji w Ukrainie, do wspierania waszych znajomych, sąsiadów, kolegów ze studiów, których ojczyzna teraz cierpi, i do w miarę możliwości przekazania datków na sprawdzone zrzutki.

Ernest, zostań ze mną przez ten czas.

[Olivia · Rating 1 out of 5]

it is not often that i am strongly compelled to write reviews, but holy sht. every time i read something by him i'm further convinced that he was actually gay (bc holy sht he hates women) i actually like how hemingway writes usually but this one... the first short story is straight up just a r*pe story, not even disguised as anything else. and many poems talk about dead non-white people, it's overall just great

[Baylor Heath · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bought for $3 and read cover to cover on my plane ride. My first Hemingway (outside of high school AP Lit).
Three simple stories that all have something to do with foolish drunkards and the senseless damage they cause to those in their lives. Ten marginal poems that pinnacle with a pretty good one:

Chapter Heading:

For we have thought the longer thoughts
And gone the shorter way.
And we have danced to devil’s tunes,
Shivering home to pray;
To serve one master in the night,
Another in the day.

[Moraa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The writing style was wonderful and the narrator did all the stories and poems such justice. Definitely enjoyed this.

[Nicholas Trandahl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Those first sparks of brilliance meeting the dry tinder of what was to come.

[molly · Rating 2 out of 5]

truly don’t know why i picked this up. i can’t stand hemingway

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just love Hemingway

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three Stories = Good!

Ten Poems = Not so much.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three Stories and Ten Poems was Hemingway’s first published book. A privately published collection, it had a run of three hundred copies in 1923. Even this early work hinted at a major new talent on the literary horizon. They are the only early works that remained after someone stole a suitcase of his manuscripts when his wife was bringing them to him.

In December 1922, Hemingway, age 23, was covering the Lausanne peace conference for the Toronto Daily Star. Hadley, Hemingway’s first wife, remained in Paris. They had only been married a year and Hemingway missed her. He asked that she come for an extended stay.

For reasons unknown, she brought with her a suitcase of his manuscripts. Perhaps he was going to show his work to an editor, or maybe she brought it on her own accord. Whatever the reason, while Hadley waited to catch her train at Gare de Lyon, a porter offered to put her suitcases in her compartment.

Once she boarded, she realized the trip would be long and she had not been feeling well, so she went for some water and left her bags unattended. When she returned to her train compartment, her bags were gone.

When she told Hemingway of the loss, he told her not to worry since he had carbon copies. He was wrong. She had packed even those in the suitcase. Only a couple stories and poems were back in Paris. Everything else he had written, including work on his first novel, was gone.

Though these stories and poems are not his best work (in fact, the poetry was generally dismissed), the stories are important since they begin to develop the Hemingway style. The influential critic Edmund Wilson wrote that the “poems are not particularly important, but his prose is of first distinction.” The Kansas Star, a newspaper where Hemingway once worked, wrote that his book “contains some of the best writing …seen from the pen of contemporary American authors. I say this primarily of the stories.”

The poetry consists mainly of descriptions of outdoor pursuits and is clearly a form of writing where Hemingway’s talents did not lie. I will not write about those here. (Some spoilers below)

The stories, however, show his experiments with style and his willingness to explore risky topics.

“Up in Michigan” was one of the two stories that were left back in Paris. Written in 1921, it was banned in the United States until 1938. The story is a frank picture of desire and a disturbing one of rape.

Jim Gilmore, a blacksmith, buys a shop in Horton Bay, Michigan. Seemingly a quiet and good man, Liz Coates, a waitress, develops an obsessive crush on the man she frequently waits upon. He, on the other hand, barely notices her.

One day, after Jim returns from a deer hunt, he goes to the backroom of the restaurant where Liz works and begins touching her. Shocked, but finding his touch arousing, she agrees to go for a walk with the drunk man.

As they come to the edge of town, Jim begins to undress her. She tells him to stop, but he continues. After raping her, he passes out and Liz places her coat over him.

Interestingly, Hemingway focuses on Liz’s desire rather than on Jim’s unthinking and unfeeling violence against her. Most of his work is from a male perspective.

Though the plot is simple and the subject difficult, underneath the young Hemingway’s words lie the complex and nuanced world of sexual desire, the violence and fear associated with rape, and the sadness of unrequited romantic feelings.

Furthermore, the story leaves readers with questions about rape, seduction, and discrepancies between internal feelings and spoken words. It is a story that follows desire from its beginnings to infatuation, to disillusionment.

“Out of Season,” written in 1923, is the story of an expatriate and his wife spending the day fishing with a guide in Italy. Their guide, Peduzzi, is the gardener for the hotel in which they were staying. An alcoholic, Peduzzi asks to be paid in liquor. The husband agrees which makes his wife angrier; she was already upset with her husband about something else. She also worries they will be caught fishing during the official no-fishing season. Eventually, she decides to return to the hotel and leave the men.

Once at the river, the men realize they had forgotten the sinkers for their fishing poles so sit and drink. They agree to try again the following morning, but the husband realizes he will not see the man again.

Ultimately, the story is about alienation, being “out of season” with the times, men hiding behind “manly” activities, and the inability to communicate without confusion that which is important.

The story is important because this is the first one Hemingway wrote in which he experimented with what he called the “iceberg theory.”

Having been trained as a journalist, Hemingway realized that it was possible to convey a story without giving lots of backstory, interpretation, or details. He thought that by distilling a story to its essence the reader would find the “deeper meaning” or “truth” of a story below the words on the paper. This truth would be truer than a story with many made up details. This omission of information became a hallmark of his writing.

In his book, A Moveable Feast, Hemingway wrote that "I omitted the real end [of "Out of Season"] which was that the old man hanged himself. This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything… and the omitted part would strengthen the story." Now, I must admit, that ending must be a lot deeper below the surface than I can dive!

He went on to write in a later essay, “The Art of the Short Story”, that “a few things I have found to be true. If you leave out important things or events that you know about, the story is strengthened. If you leave or skip something because you do not know it, the story will be worthless.”

He also wrote that “you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted, and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.” In short, Hemingway believed that if the writer knows his characters well, he can leave out information that the reader will intuit beneath the surface. It is there where a story gains truth and meaning.

“My Old Man” is the third story in the collection. Because a publisher already had a copy of it, the story survived the theft of his manuscripts. The narrator is a twelve-year-old boy, Joe, who lives in Italy with his dad. His dad, a jockey, has trouble keeping down his weight so follows a rigorous exercise routine

Later, after an apparent altercation between his dad and some other men, Joe and his dad move to Paris where some of the best racetracks are located. Joe, however, thinks the city is too complex and difficult to figure out.

While Joe’s dad waited for his license to jockey, he spent time in the cafes drinking and began to put on weight. Later, after he started riding, he was unable to get a full-time job.

One day, while watching a race in St. Cloud, Joe’s dad thought a particular horse, Kzar, would win but then Kzar’s jockey told him not to bet on it. Joe’s dad followed his advice and bet on the other horse. When Kzar lost, his dad told Joe that it took a great jockey to make that horse lose.

Later, as Joe and his dad spent more time in Paris and his dad put on weight and was unable to find steady work, they spent time talking about his dad’s youth and dreamed about riding all over Europe and even Egypt.

One day, Joe’s dad bought a new horse and prepared to race it. But in the second race, he suffered a fatal accident as two horses collided. Even his horse had to be killed. As Joe waited for the ambulance to take away his father, he overheard some men calling his dad a crook and saying he got what he deserved. Joe thought, "When they get started, they don't leave a guy nothing."

While the story is about growing up, gaining knowledge, and losing the innocence of childhood, it also suggests something more. Like many other authors writing after World War I, Hemingway wrote about the confusion, alienation, and difficulty of living in a changed and unknown world. Some people could never make the adjustment.

Joe’s confusion arises mostly because of his youth, however, it mirrors that of the young adults following World War I. They do not understand the modern world and feel like lost children, a lost generation. Their dreams and understanding no longer match the reality of a world that could leave more than 20 million persons dead due to war. Their illusions are shattered as they face a dishonest and cruel world that judges harshly and loves inadequately.





Though these stories, and certainly the poetry, do not represent Hemingway at his best, they do hint at the writer he was to become and are, therefore, significant and worth reading.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

With the three stories you can see the foundation of a master. With the ten poems...well he's no Wilfred Owen.

[Mike Futcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hemingway's first published work and the final one that I have read, in a now-completed reading journey that I've savoured for nearly ten years. I started reading Hemingway's novels in 2012 and he quickly became my favourite writer; his short stories took a little longer to reveal themselves, but when they did, they in many ways outshone the novels. Three Stories & Ten Poems isn't the best of Hemingway, but each of the three stories recommend themselves in their own ways.

'Up in Michigan' and 'My Old Man' pre-date the famous incident on the train when Hemingway's early manuscripts were lost by his wife; 'Out of Season' was the first written after the debacle. 'My Old Man' is an easy-to-read pastiche that benefits from the company of better stories in Hemingway's later collections; in Three Stories it looks rather ordinary. 'Up in Michigan' is an astute, sensitive story that, although it shows little of what Hemingway would become, shows that he already had the author's necessary tool of empathy. The stories are heavily influenced by Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein, respectively.

'Out of Season' is the most difficult story to assess, but also the most interesting. It is here that Hemingway – his writing decks involuntarily cleared by the loss of his manuscripts on the train – begins to develop his new 'iceberg' style of prose writing. It isn't the best example of that style, but it's fascinating to see Hemingway wobble as he begins to walk in his own shoes. The ten poems in this book also show the young Hemingway trying things out, not yet sure of the direction he wants to travel in.

Much of Three Stories & Ten Poems is like this. It's an experiment; a young writer trying to become himself. Experiments are always hit-and-miss, and this book is also damaged by its hastiness: Hemingway had intended to publish something more substantial, but the loss of his early manuscripts scotched that idea and, in his impatience, he put what he did have into print. Despite one or two sparks the poems are filler, and the stories, while interesting, don't burst into full flame either.

As a separate book then, to be judged on its own, Three Stories & Ten Poems can't really be recommended, particularly as its stories have since been annexed by the more substantial short story collections that followed. But for the completist, it's still a charming experience, and for the Hemingway aficionado it's a thrill to see that second story, written in the bold new 'iceberg' style and giving a hint as to where this fledgling writer was going, nestled between two imitations of his literary influences that show where he had been.

[Blake · Rating 2 out of 5]

This first “book” of Hemingway’s is fun for two reasons. The first is that it is 58 pages of self-published creative writing from a 24 year old scenester, making it the 1920s equivalent of a Zine. The second is that reading the juvenilia of a good writer is always enlightening. You get to see what of their voice was congenital, and have the linear relationship between volume of practice and quality of output revealed with vivid clarity.

In terms of content?

I found flashes of insight in the prose of Up in Michigan, but technical aspects I wanted to reach back in time to edit. At least once Hem fucks up a perspective switch, for instance (third person limited is trickier than it looks).

Out of Season and My Old Man were significantly better (which is probably why they rated inclusion in In Our Time). The cool experience with these is seeing embryonic examples of motifs that would recur throughout Hemingway’s career: the incompetence of husbands and fathers, discomfort within zones of moral or social ambiguity, and the omission of major external plot points to place emphasis on the internal and the immediate.

Out of Season is about the circumstances of a would-be fisherman accidentally hiring the village drunk as a guide for an outing that ultimately doesn’t ever commence, making it more of a mood diorama than a story, but that’s fine.

My Old Man is horse track story that gets morose and blunted by the end, with the child protagonist’s level of insight more unclear than unreliable, which would be fine if it read like it was told by the same boy later on rather than like the reflections of an adult. It could use some tightening up.

Poetry is always more subjective, but several of the ten made me laugh and none were moving. The two that would get a passing grade from me were I to teach Poetry 1101 were Montparnasse and Along with Youth. Roosevelt works too, but only because of the dramatic irony of Hemingway himself later becoming an icon of masculinity who could only get in the way of his exaggerated public image by continuing to be alive.

Should you read it? Definitely not before most of what he wrote between 1923 and 1937.

[André La Crout · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short, worthwhile read

It’s not Hemingway’s best work, but even Hemingway’s worst work is excellent. (And I’m not saying this is his worst, for the record.)

Prior to reading it, I had seen somewhere that this was considered controversial at the time of its publication. Some loved it for all the usual reasons someone loves reading Hemingway: the tight, blunt, thought-provoking prose. Some hated it because some of the subject matter is uncomfortable and/or too jarring.

When I saw this, I assumed people were just more prudish in Hemingway’s time and that the subject matter couldn’t be “THAT bad.” I’ve read a lot of Hemingway, and while he’s no stranger to “controversy” or uncomfortable twists (“Hills Like White Elephants” and A Farewell to Arms are a couple examples that immediately come to mind, there’s rarely anything to make a big fuss about.

Once I finished the first story in this collection, which features a sexual assault, I knew the polarized reviews were warranted. There’s also a poem that satirically criticizes imperialist attitudes of Hemingway’s time, specifically discussing the genocide of Native Americans and the events in Oklahoma that Killers of the Flower Moon is based on.

In any case, I recommend this brief collection to any fans of Hemingway or American literature.

[Ross · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection of short stories and poems by Ernest Hemingway initially was privately published in 1923 in a run of 300 copies. It is unfortunate that more copies have been published since that time.

The ten poems are very forgettable. Only “Roosevelt” about Theodore Roosevelt, is at all memorable. The critic Edmund Wilson, in a critique from the early 1920’s, correctly wrote that none of the poems were “particularly important.”

These three stories represent all that remained of Hemingway's early work after a suitcase full of his manuscripts was stolen in Paris at the Gare de Lyon railway station. Hemingway, somewhere in Eternity, may still be angry that someone decided to publish “Up In Michigan.” That story is distasteful and not well written. One of the book’s other two stories "My Old Man" survived because a version had been mailed to Hemingway’s editor prior to the stolen suitcase incident. Versions of this short story and "Out of Season" also were subsequently published in Hemingway’s 1925 short story collection entitled “In Our Time.,” That book is a better collection of Hemingway’s work.

The best thing about “Three Stories and Ten Poems” is that it was a very brief book. 2 STARS

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

While in Key West I spent a few hours at the Hemingway house and learned that many short stories and poems from his earliest days were lost. The three short stories and ten poems in the book are some of the very first of Hemingway’s works to be published (1923).

Although small in size, this collection is a lot. A whole lot. The choppy sentences, awkward sentence phrases, and haphazard punctuation is evidence that even one of the greatest writers in American history had to start somewhere. Grammar aside, bubbling up to the surface readers discover some interesting insights into the young author.

The adage says write what you know. On the heels of the end of WWI and his service as an ambulance driver in Italy, Hemingway’s stories and poems are about war, death, pain, suffering, alcohol, and sex. Write what you know…these topics were at the forefront of his mind and fill his early works.

Up In Michigan is the first of the short stories and I believe it should be widely read by individuals from Middle School and beyond, followed by serious discussions about desire, consent, and sexual assault. Like the young gal in the story, too many individuals find themselves in situations where the line becomes quickly blurred and a life is forever changed. This story was initially banned from publication in the US because of its graphic nature. Let’s stop banning literature and start using it to teach how to create a better society.

[Roberto D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book 115 out of 200 books
"Three Stories and Ten Poems" by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway's first ever published book in the year 1923, "Three Stories and Ten Poems" is the collection of, as the title suggest, Three Stories and Ten Poems. This book was published in Paris.

The Stories and Poems:
-Up In Michigan
-Out of Season
-My Old Man

-Mitraigliatrice
-Oklahoma
-Oily Weather
-Roosevelt
-Captives
-Champs d'Honneur
-Riparto d'Assalto
-Montparnasse
-Along With Youth
-Chapter Heading

MY THOUGHTS:
It took me merely an Hour to get into the book, I didn't find the poems savory, I found them dry. Regarding the Stories, I liked "Up in Michigan" and "My Old Man" the most because the former novel depicted a light image of Michigan, then the latter story because of the relations of the father and the son.

This book is good, but not exactly a great beginner novel to Hemingway.

[Phil Villarreal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ernest Hemingway's first published book is a mixed bag, with plenty of impressive moments that show the promise he would one day fulfill, bogged down with inconsistency and self-indulgent scene painting that goes nowhere.

I found the poems to be largely throwaways, and two of the three stories to be worthwhile. "Up in Michigan" is a heartbreaking tale of misplaced romantic yearning that leads to crass abuse and "My Old Man" is a stirring rumination of a child's experiences in the highs and lows brought on by his father's rise and fall in the corrupt horse racing industry. The other one, "Out of Season," falls victim to Hemingway's worst qualities as a writer, and is a dense bore.

The book is so short that it's worth reading for any Hemingway fan. If you can do without the author's low points, it's skippable.

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wouldn’t take this book too seriously, it is basically a demo tape of stories and poems. There were only 300 books published originally which were probably to get his name out in Paris, as a result it is very rough but does explore the themes Hemingway is known for.

Of the 3 stories “My Old Man” is the standout. I like how the young boy comes to the conclusion about his father without it being preachy.

“Up In Michigan” is a story that stays with you due to it’s content. “Out of Season” is completely forgettable.

As for the poems, well... there is a reason that he is not known for his poetry.

If it wasn’t written by Hemingway then I wouldn’t have bothered reading it but as one of the other reviews said, it is a good book to read on the toilet.