What do you think?
Rate this book
Kenneth Fearing: Selected Poems:
Poet, journalist, and crime novelist, Kenneth Fearing wrote poems filled with the jargon of advertising and radio broadcasts and tabloid headlines, sidewalk political oratory, and the pop tunes on the jukebox. Seeking out what he called “the new and complex harmonies . . . of a strange and still more complex age,” he evoked the jitters of the Depression and the war years in a voice alternately sardonic and melancholy, and depicted a fragmenting urban world bombarded by restless desires and unnerving fears.
But, in the words of editor Robert Polito, “Fearing’s poems carry no whiff of the curio or relic. If anything, his poems . . . insinuated an emerging media universe that poetry still only fitfully acknowledges.” This new selection foregrounds the energy and originality of Fearing’s prophetic poetry, with its constant formal experimenting and its singular note of “We must be prepared for anything, anything, anything.” As a chronicler of mass culture and its discontents, Fearing is a strangely solitary figure who cannot be ignored.
About the American Poets Project
Elegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and introduced by today’s most discerning poets and critics.
But, in the words of editor Robert Polito, “Fearing’s poems carry no whiff of the curio or relic. If anything, his poems . . . insinuated an emerging media universe that poetry still only fitfully acknowledges.” This new selection foregrounds the energy and originality of Fearing’s prophetic poetry, with its constant formal experimenting and its singular note of “We must be prepared for anything, anything, anything.” As a chronicler of mass culture and its discontents, Fearing is a strangely solitary figure who cannot be ignored.
About the American Poets Project
Elegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and introduced by today’s most discerning poets and critics.
- GenresPoetry
230 pages, Hardcover
First published March 30, 2004
5 people are currently reading
102 people want to read
About the author
Kenneth Fearing
40 books35 followersKenneth 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."
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."
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
September 30, 2014
Near as I can reckon THE noir poet. Even the editor of this volume, Robert Polito, has written a bio of Jim Thompson, AND Fearing wrote two crime novels reissued by NYRB. I don’t know that Fearing’s work has received a lot of attention in the poetry world, as it’s not formally inventive and not part of any of the innumerable schools and isms of the 20th c., but it is very strong, direct, and immediately engaging. But even as his language assaults you with its journalistic street tone it’s also rife with melancholy, misanthropic compassion (assuming that’s possible), and even a sophisticated ambiguity at times.
I don’t know much about him as a person, other than that he was a pessimist, fairly extreme leftist, anti-capitalist, and all-around writer, cranking out pulp fiction, pornography, journalism, and some highly regarded crime novels.
I like how his poems get right to it. Check out these first lines:
His journalistic chops are certainly in evidence in these opening lines.
Some of his poems are also so filled with events and suggestions of events that they could easily be expanded into short novels. And while the poems are atmospheric, redolent of 30’s, 40’s & 50’s Manhattan and its alleys and gangsters and stagnant bars, often opposing these to the wealth and “progress” of Madison Ave. and Times Square neon, they are anything but impressionistic. These are hard-hitting aggressive poems filled with strong breathless words fighting against the downward spiralling toilet currents of a broken world.
Now for a free deli sample:
I don’t know much about him as a person, other than that he was a pessimist, fairly extreme leftist, anti-capitalist, and all-around writer, cranking out pulp fiction, pornography, journalism, and some highly regarded crime novels.
I like how his poems get right to it. Check out these first lines:
“We cough. We shiver. We have seizures of pain, and weakness. Often there is blood.”
“Years in sporting goods, rich in experience, were followed by years in soda, candy, and cigars.”
“The juke-box has a big square face.”
“Someone, somewhere, is always starting trouble.”
“Bought at the drug store, very cheap; and later pawned.”
His journalistic chops are certainly in evidence in these opening lines.
Some of his poems are also so filled with events and suggestions of events that they could easily be expanded into short novels. And while the poems are atmospheric, redolent of 30’s, 40’s & 50’s Manhattan and its alleys and gangsters and stagnant bars, often opposing these to the wealth and “progress” of Madison Ave. and Times Square neon, they are anything but impressionistic. These are hard-hitting aggressive poems filled with strong breathless words fighting against the downward spiralling toilet currents of a broken world.
Now for a free deli sample:
LUNCH WITH THE SOLE SURVIVOR
Meaning what it seems to when the day’s receipts are counted and
locked inside the store and the keys are taken home;
Feeling as it does to drive a car that rides and rides like a long,
low, dark, silent streak of radio waves;
Just the way the hero feels in a smash-hit show;
Exactly like the giant in a Times Square sign making love across the
sky to a lady made of light;
And then as though the switch were thrown and all of the lights went
out;
Then as though the curtain fell and then they swept the aisles and
then it’s someone’s turn to go,
Smoke the last cigarette, drink the last tall drink, go with the last
long whistle of the midnight train as it fades among the hills –
Meaning what it seems to mean but feeling the way it does,
As though the wind would always, always blow away from
home.
June 2, 2024
Kenneth Fearing In The American Poets Project
Kenneth Fearing (1902 -- 1961) is probably best known for his 1946 noir novel "The Big Clock" and for its 1948 film adaptation starring Ray Milland. Fearing was a poet who wrote of the complexity, impersonality, and commercialization of life in New York City during the Depression and WW II. Fearing sometimes is called the "Chief Poet of the American Depression", but his poetry tends to be little read today. This book of Fearing's "Selected Poems" was published in 2004 by the American Poets Project of the Library of America and edited with and Introduction by Robert Polito, a poet and biographer who also edited a two-volume collection of Crime Novels from the 1930s -- 1950s for the Library of America.
The volume includes selections from each of Fearing's books of poetry, including "Angel Arms" (1929), "Poems" (1935), "Dead Reckoning" (1938), "Collected Poems" (1940), "Afternoon of a Pawnbroker" (1943), "Stranger at Coney Island" (1948) and "New and Selected Poems" (1956). Fearing's poetry shows a high degree of continuity; the stronger and more characteristic poems tend to be in the earlier volumes.
The immediate impression Fearing's poems made on me was that of a noir poet with the themes of loneliness, loss, alienation on the streets and in the office, and corruption expressed in film noir and in noir novels and stories. The writing has a sharp, hard-boiled feel with lengthy, rat-a-tat lines punctuated by slang, advertising slogans, graffiti, and the like. Fearing is a poet of the city with an ambivalent attitude to it. He is heavily critical of its commercialization and of its loneliness and violence of all kinds. The poetry may also have an implicit sense of renewal.
With their origins in the Depression, Fearing's poems have a strong economic component. He was part of a group of writers on the Left, and he was frequently associated with communism. The poems certainly talk about the crassness and materialism of business and American life as well as about the impact of poverty and hopelessness during the Depression years. The ideological component of the poems should not be over-emphasized, and Fearing himself declined to categorize his work in this way. The poems are better seen as works of imagination and vision and of the poet's reflections on what he saw in New York City streets.
Here is a sample of Fearing's poetry, the poem "Andy, Jerry, and Joe" from "Angel Arms".
"We were staring at the bottles in the restaurant window,
We could hear the autos go by.
We were looking at the women on the boulevard,
It was cold,
No one else knew about the things we knew.
We watched the crowd, there was a murder in the
papers, the wind blew hard, it was dark,
We didn't know what to do.
There was no place to go, and we had nothing to say,
We listened to the bells, and voices, and whistles, and
cars,
We moved on,
We weren't dull, or wise, or afraid,
We didn't feel tired, or restless, or happy, or sad.
There were a million stars, a million miles, a million
people, a million words,
A million laughs, a million years,
We knew a lot of things we could hardly understand,
There were liners at sea. and rows of houses, and
clouds in the sky, and songs in the halls,
We waited on the corner,
The lights were in the stores, there were women on
the streets, Jerry's father was dead.
We didn't know what we wanted and there was
nothing to say.
Andy had an auto and Joe had a girl."
I was reminded in reading Fearing of two other writers of his time who I have read and who are probably even more obscure today than is Fearing. The poet Horace Gregory was a close friend of Fearing's who also wrote poems about the down and out in New York streets in books such as "Chelsea Rooming House" and "Chorus for Survival" during the years Fearing was active. The novelist and essayist Edward Dahlberg championed Fearing's work and wrote an introduction to "Angel Arms" which is not included in this selection of Fearing's poems but which I would like to read.
In these days of pandemic and social and economic dislocation, Fearing's voice is worth hearing and remembering. The American Poets Project publishes small uniform volumes of American poets, revealing the high accomplishment of many American writers and the variety of their poetry. It is an outstanding series for thinking about the United States and its art. The poems of Kenneth Fearing are a worthy component of this series. The volume will interest those readers interested in Depression writings and readers who want to see Fearing within the broad range of American poetry.
Robin Friedman
Kenneth Fearing (1902 -- 1961) is probably best known for his 1946 noir novel "The Big Clock" and for its 1948 film adaptation starring Ray Milland. Fearing was a poet who wrote of the complexity, impersonality, and commercialization of life in New York City during the Depression and WW II. Fearing sometimes is called the "Chief Poet of the American Depression", but his poetry tends to be little read today. This book of Fearing's "Selected Poems" was published in 2004 by the American Poets Project of the Library of America and edited with and Introduction by Robert Polito, a poet and biographer who also edited a two-volume collection of Crime Novels from the 1930s -- 1950s for the Library of America.
The volume includes selections from each of Fearing's books of poetry, including "Angel Arms" (1929), "Poems" (1935), "Dead Reckoning" (1938), "Collected Poems" (1940), "Afternoon of a Pawnbroker" (1943), "Stranger at Coney Island" (1948) and "New and Selected Poems" (1956). Fearing's poetry shows a high degree of continuity; the stronger and more characteristic poems tend to be in the earlier volumes.
The immediate impression Fearing's poems made on me was that of a noir poet with the themes of loneliness, loss, alienation on the streets and in the office, and corruption expressed in film noir and in noir novels and stories. The writing has a sharp, hard-boiled feel with lengthy, rat-a-tat lines punctuated by slang, advertising slogans, graffiti, and the like. Fearing is a poet of the city with an ambivalent attitude to it. He is heavily critical of its commercialization and of its loneliness and violence of all kinds. The poetry may also have an implicit sense of renewal.
With their origins in the Depression, Fearing's poems have a strong economic component. He was part of a group of writers on the Left, and he was frequently associated with communism. The poems certainly talk about the crassness and materialism of business and American life as well as about the impact of poverty and hopelessness during the Depression years. The ideological component of the poems should not be over-emphasized, and Fearing himself declined to categorize his work in this way. The poems are better seen as works of imagination and vision and of the poet's reflections on what he saw in New York City streets.
Here is a sample of Fearing's poetry, the poem "Andy, Jerry, and Joe" from "Angel Arms".
"We were staring at the bottles in the restaurant window,
We could hear the autos go by.
We were looking at the women on the boulevard,
It was cold,
No one else knew about the things we knew.
We watched the crowd, there was a murder in the
papers, the wind blew hard, it was dark,
We didn't know what to do.
There was no place to go, and we had nothing to say,
We listened to the bells, and voices, and whistles, and
cars,
We moved on,
We weren't dull, or wise, or afraid,
We didn't feel tired, or restless, or happy, or sad.
There were a million stars, a million miles, a million
people, a million words,
A million laughs, a million years,
We knew a lot of things we could hardly understand,
There were liners at sea. and rows of houses, and
clouds in the sky, and songs in the halls,
We waited on the corner,
The lights were in the stores, there were women on
the streets, Jerry's father was dead.
We didn't know what we wanted and there was
nothing to say.
Andy had an auto and Joe had a girl."
I was reminded in reading Fearing of two other writers of his time who I have read and who are probably even more obscure today than is Fearing. The poet Horace Gregory was a close friend of Fearing's who also wrote poems about the down and out in New York streets in books such as "Chelsea Rooming House" and "Chorus for Survival" during the years Fearing was active. The novelist and essayist Edward Dahlberg championed Fearing's work and wrote an introduction to "Angel Arms" which is not included in this selection of Fearing's poems but which I would like to read.
In these days of pandemic and social and economic dislocation, Fearing's voice is worth hearing and remembering. The American Poets Project publishes small uniform volumes of American poets, revealing the high accomplishment of many American writers and the variety of their poetry. It is an outstanding series for thinking about the United States and its art. The poems of Kenneth Fearing are a worthy component of this series. The volume will interest those readers interested in Depression writings and readers who want to see Fearing within the broad range of American poetry.
Robin Friedman
November 10, 2009
This anthology covers the breadth of Kenneth Fearing's career in poetry. His earlier work relies heavily on pastiche, but Fearing's later work is outstanding and resonant. He's a world weary lyricist; a gray meek guy whose soul screams fire and rage. Fearing was lamenting the problems of technology mechanizing human interactions, and impersonal media blaring out trivia to the soporific masses in the late 30s and 40s. Examine that: the man was tortured by technology in the 1930s & 1940s! Fearing was pissed about where modern life was headed as the century was about to shift into full gear.
The poems have aged well. For all that his work touches upon, Fearing could easily be a downbeat loner ready to kill a boring co-worker pestering him with an unwanted iPhone demo. Aside from the occasionally obscure pop reference, usually posited as a non-sequitur, Fearing's despair is timeless. Dark alleys, five am. Drunk, sad, work starts at 9, or starve to death kind of despair.
My only beef with this collection isn't with Fearing; it's with the editor, an academic named Robert Polito. He brought this work to light, and did not let it languish in some fly-specked library. Polito has done an invaluable service to Americans letting everyone know about the US's noir heritage, digging up THE NOIR POET. His taste is impeccable; I loved the Library of America selections for the two volume crime novel set. That said, Polito does not belong on the "Kenneth Fearing: Selected Poems" dust jacket looking "rad" and "urban savage" in a black leather jacket while Fearing despondently moons on a title page. Polito did his duty as an editor, but needs to save his glamour shots for his own books.
The poems have aged well. For all that his work touches upon, Fearing could easily be a downbeat loner ready to kill a boring co-worker pestering him with an unwanted iPhone demo. Aside from the occasionally obscure pop reference, usually posited as a non-sequitur, Fearing's despair is timeless. Dark alleys, five am. Drunk, sad, work starts at 9, or starve to death kind of despair.
My only beef with this collection isn't with Fearing; it's with the editor, an academic named Robert Polito. He brought this work to light, and did not let it languish in some fly-specked library. Polito has done an invaluable service to Americans letting everyone know about the US's noir heritage, digging up THE NOIR POET. His taste is impeccable; I loved the Library of America selections for the two volume crime novel set. That said, Polito does not belong on the "Kenneth Fearing: Selected Poems" dust jacket looking "rad" and "urban savage" in a black leather jacket while Fearing despondently moons on a title page. Polito did his duty as an editor, but needs to save his glamour shots for his own books.
January 8, 2018
I don't know how I hadn't heard of Fearing before recently, but these modernist poems are one of the bridges between Williams and Ginsberg, a kind of Jack London meets Charles Bukowski meets Ginz. At its weakest moments, the book feels monotonous, but at its best--and it is often at its best--there are verses that capture the rhythm, language, and images of urban America in the first half of the twentieth century.
March 24, 2008
I read the original "Selected Poems". He's a unique and quintescentially American poet. Is neglected and mostly forgotten because of his connections with the far left. the "Dynamo" poets, etc. A must read for people who care about what has been and is being done to all of us.
January 26, 2022
This selection includes poems from seven collections by Kenneth Fearing, including: Angel Arms, Poems, Dead Reckoning, Collected Poems of Kenneth Fearing, Afternoon of a Pawnbroker and Other Poems, Stranger at Coney Island and Other Poems, and New and Selected Poems...
From Angel Arms (1929)...
From Poems (1935)...
From Dead Reckoning (1938)...
From Collected Poems of Kenneth Fearing (1940)...
From Afternoon of a Pawnbroker and Other Poems (1943)...
From Stranger at Coney Island and Other Poems (1948)...
From New and Selected Poems (1956)...
From Angel Arms (1929)...
These are the live,
Not silhouettes or dead men.
That dull murmur is their tread on the street.
Those brass quavers are their shouts.
Here is the wind blowing through the crowded square.
Here is the violence and secret change.
And these are figures of life beneath the sea.
These are the lovely women
And the exhilarations that die.
Here is a stone lying on the side-walk
In the shadow of the wall.
Hey? What saith the noble poet now,
Drawing his hand across his brow?
Claude, is the divine afflatus upon you?
Hey? Hey Claude?
Here are a million taxi drivers, social prophets,
The costume for an attitude,
A back-stage shriek,
The heat and speed of the earth.
Here is a statue of Burns.
There is the modern moon.
That song is the latest dance.
Hey? Of what doth the noble poet brood
In a tragic mood?- Lithographing, pg. 14
From Poems (1935)...
Let us present,
this night of love, and murder, and reckoning, and sleep,
evening of illusion, night filled with thousands intent upon ordained ends,
let us introduce, among a few leading citizens in unrehearsed acts,
That popular ghost, Franklin Devoe, serial hero of the current magazines,
the exact, composite dream of those who read.
An artist in innocence,
tonight the ectoplasm of Mr. Devoe hovers inescapably everywhere about us,
that profitable smile invisible above the skyscrapers, those serene eyes piercing nightcourts, clinics, tenements, that exclusive nicety available in remote villages and farms,
That breadline.
Salvation before coffee and rolls.
"Last night a number of you gentlemen hurried through the banquet and dashed around to the mission next door for another slice of bread.
Is that gratitude? Is that decency? Certified scabies? Starvation preferred?"
That genius, that literateur, Theodore True,
St. Louis boy who made good as an Englishman in theory, a deacon in vaudeville, a cipher in politics,
undesirable in large numbers to any community.
Closing prices: Is This Really a Commercial Age? - 100. That Anguished Soul of Marcel Proust - 150. Liberty or Dangerous Freedom, Which? - 210. That Unknown, Patriotic, Law-abiding Corpse - 305.
We present that talking-picture queen, and the superfilm:
"Will the daughter of the humble whorehouse magnate wed the patrician wardheeler, O America?"
And the Blumberg twins (magistrate Ike, gorilla Mike) in conference with that blond, blond evangelist.
The senator at that microphone. Those spinster sibyls in the rotogravure. That proprietor of the revolution, oracle Steve.
"I killed her because she had an evil eye." "We are not thinking now of our own profits, of course." "Nothing can take back from us this night." "Let me alone you God damn rat." "Two rickeys." "Cash."
These are merely close-ups.
At a distance these eyes and faces and arms,
maimed in the expiation of living, scarred in payment exacted through knife, hunger, silence, hope, exhaustion, regret,
melt into an ordered design, strange and significant, and not without peace.- American Rhapsody (1), pg. 36-38
From Dead Reckoning (1938)...
Get this straight, Joe, and don't get me wrong.
Sure, Steve, O.K., all I got to say is, when do I get the dough?
Will you listen for a minute? And just shut up? Let a guy explain?
Go ahead, go ahead, I won't say a word.
Will you just shut up?
O.K., I tell you, whatever you say, it's O.K. with me.
What's O.K. about it, if that's the way you feel?
What do you mean, how do I feel? What do you know, how I feel?
Listen, Joe, a child could understand, if you'll listen for a minute without butting in, and don't get so sore.
You got to collect it first before you lay it out, sure, I know, you can't be left on a limb yourself.
Me? On a limb? For a lousy fifty bucks?
Take it easy, Steve, I'm just saying
I'm just telling you
Wait, listen
Now listen, wait, will you listed for a minute? That's all I ask. Yes or no?
O.K., Steve, O.K.
O.K.?
O.K., O.K.
O.K., then, and you won't get sore?
O.K., Steve. All I got to say is, when do I get the dough?- How Do I Feel?, pg. 92-93
From Collected Poems of Kenneth Fearing (1940)...
Some take to liquor, some turn to prayer,
Many prefer to dance, others to gamble and a few resort to gas or the gun.
(Some are lucky, and some are not.)
Name your choice, any selection from one to twenty-five:
Music from Harlem? A Viennese waltz on the slot-machine phonograph at Jack's Bar & Grill? Or a Brahms Concerto over WXV?
(Many like it wild, others sweet.)
Champagne for supper, murder for breakfast, romance for lunch and terror for tea,
This is not the first time, nor will it be the last time the world has gone to hell.
(Some can take it, and some cannot.)- A La Carte, pg. 102-103
From Afternoon of a Pawnbroker and Other Poems (1943)...
If you watch it long enough you can see the clock move,
If you try hard enough you can hold a little water in the palm of your hand,
If you listen once or twice you know it's not the needle, or the tune, but a crack in the record when sometimes a phonograph falters and repeats, and repeats, and repeats, and repeats -
And if you think about it long enough, long enough, long enough, long enough then everything is simple and you can understand the times,
You can see for yourself that the Hudson still flows, that the seasons change as ever, that love is always love,
Words still have a meaning, still clear and still the same;
You can count upon your fingers that two plus two still equals, still equals, still equals, still equals -
There is nothing in this world that should bother the mind.
Because the mind is a common sense affair filled with common sense answers to common sense facts,
It can add up, can add up, can add up, can add up earthquakes and subtract them from fires,
It can bisect an atom or analyze the planets -
All it has to do is to, do is to, do is to, do is to start at the beginning and continue to the end.- Cracked Record Blues, pg. 120
From Stranger at Coney Island and Other Poems (1948)...
Now, in this moment that has no identical twin throughout all time,
Being yours, yours alone,
Intimate as the code engraved upon your fingertips, and as rare -
Marked as your own features, personal as the voice in which you conduct your daily affairs,
Complex as those affairs, growing always into a new and still more special crisis
(In each of which you have your particular skill at reading the omens and the signs),
Here, in this natural scene, in a numbered house on a street with a name -
Unique as the signature you find upon some letter you had long ago forgotten and mislaid,
Elusive as the mood that letter now recalls, the story and its end as briefly alive,
And now as wholly lost -
As though this long but crowded day, itself, could sometime fade,
Had in fact already slipped through the fingers and now were gone, gone, simply gone -
Leaving no one, least of all yourself, to enact the unfinished drama that you, alone, once knew so well,
No one to complete the triumph, to understand or even believe in the disaster that must be repaired,
No one to glimpse this plan that seemed, at one time, must, must, must be fulfilled.- This Day, pg. 159-160
From New and Selected Poems (1956)...
The Pioneers
They lived with dangers they alone could see,
Aware of them, everywhere and always, with X-ray eyes for the graver and subtle risks of impending evil and future guilt,
Sorcerers of the newsroom, genii of the wide screen, brevet phrenologists of bureau, cabinet, and court,
Consultant wizards of the high, the low, and the middle mirage -
Our forbears, quaint and queer in these posed photographs, stiffly smiling, no hint of their martyrdom revealed,
(But for the diaries they commissioned, we would not know their heartaches, even now) -
Visionaries (but practical), when the guilty fled in long black limousines,
Found clever refuge in opera boxes, night clubs, art galleries and public parks,
Our elders pursued in 300 horsepower sportscars, disguised as playboys, undercover girls,
If the crisis required it, posed successfully as double or triple agents, maniacs, drunks -
For thus they freed that raw, mid-century chaos of little empires from the pestilence of false thought;
Helped write, and signaled, so many of the Magna Cartas in use to this very day;
Issued the first crude registry of licenced Truth;
Sought (and received) patents for the better types of logic, durable humour, authentic taste;
Chartered the standard modes of legal prayer, for lease on a yearly basis,
(Renewable, with the forms filled in and the stamps affixed, for a nominal fee;
This trifling charge scarcely covers the cost;
What matters, of course, is the thought) -
God sometimes spoke to them on sleepless nights (as they told us, often), and they took down every word,
Revised and edited the counsel in the morning, making sure the names and addresses were correct,
Then gave it to the world, stamped: For Immediate Release -
They were not Gods, nor did they claim to be;
They were human, and fallible, content to be just what they were:
God's public relations.- Family Album (1), pg. 162-163
May 8, 2009
So far, so great.
Read
August 3, 2009Kenneth Fearing: Selected Poems
I really love these. Fearing precedes and lays a path for the beat poets. Excellent poetry series, see my Rukeyser review.
I really love these. Fearing precedes and lays a path for the beat poets. Excellent poetry series, see my Rukeyser review.
April 4, 2025
I love this poet's voice. He strikes me as a dark bridge between Whitman and Frank O'Hara, with surreal elements that are not a part of either of those two poets. He could be seen as the younger less optimistic, undercover, fedoraed brother of Carl Sandburg.
It's not uncommon for Fearing's poetry to read like instructions for a script. The Twilight Zone came to mind a couple of times and his poetry is often described as being the poetry version of Film Noir. While Fearing's voice has a gritty, facing-the-ugly-truth aspect to it--and the poems are grounded in the city, they also have political and absurdist leanings that I don't think existed in Film Noir (my knowledge of this genre being very limited).
This book gathers selections of poetry from seven of his books that range from 1927 to 1956. The voice and subject matter of his poetry (often peppered with with colloquial phrases, usually as asides) is clearly of the 1930s. This would be a great book of poetry to accompany a 20th Century history class and a great crossover book for readers of detective novels.
However, don't let all of this categorizing lead you to dismiss or pigeonhole him. He is absolutely a poet of the human condition and much of what he writes about is still recognizable in the way we live today. Some of it was ameliorated by social reform but a lot of it still remains. He is a poet who addresses the illusions of everyday life and of social and political life. He was a poet very aware of how we can think we're solidly in one situation and slip in confusing ways into something else entirely. He's a poet everyone who doesn't mind long lines should give a try. Most of these poems are at least a page in length with a few being longer.
More than half of the 12 poems by Kenneth Fearing at the Poetry Foundation (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...) are in this book, with the exceptions of 5 A.M., Aphrodite Metropolis 1 (#2 is in the book), Caricature of Felice Ricarro, The City Takes a Woman, and A Dollar's Worth of Blood, Please.
They have only one of my favorites, "The Dirge":
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...
I love the weirdness of his use of comic book language in the second half, the way it speeds up and demolishes life's milestones.
It's not uncommon for Fearing's poetry to read like instructions for a script. The Twilight Zone came to mind a couple of times and his poetry is often described as being the poetry version of Film Noir. While Fearing's voice has a gritty, facing-the-ugly-truth aspect to it--and the poems are grounded in the city, they also have political and absurdist leanings that I don't think existed in Film Noir (my knowledge of this genre being very limited).
This book gathers selections of poetry from seven of his books that range from 1927 to 1956. The voice and subject matter of his poetry (often peppered with with colloquial phrases, usually as asides) is clearly of the 1930s. This would be a great book of poetry to accompany a 20th Century history class and a great crossover book for readers of detective novels.
However, don't let all of this categorizing lead you to dismiss or pigeonhole him. He is absolutely a poet of the human condition and much of what he writes about is still recognizable in the way we live today. Some of it was ameliorated by social reform but a lot of it still remains. He is a poet who addresses the illusions of everyday life and of social and political life. He was a poet very aware of how we can think we're solidly in one situation and slip in confusing ways into something else entirely. He's a poet everyone who doesn't mind long lines should give a try. Most of these poems are at least a page in length with a few being longer.
More than half of the 12 poems by Kenneth Fearing at the Poetry Foundation (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...) are in this book, with the exceptions of 5 A.M., Aphrodite Metropolis 1 (#2 is in the book), Caricature of Felice Ricarro, The City Takes a Woman, and A Dollar's Worth of Blood, Please.
They have only one of my favorites, "The Dirge":
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...
I love the weirdness of his use of comic book language in the second half, the way it speeds up and demolishes life's milestones.
June 7, 2021
There were a few poems in this book which are just too beautifully written that I keep reading over and over again!
December 31, 2024
I may write about this…stay tuned
Want to read
February 9, 2009This sounds and looks fascinating!
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews