General-Zod wrote:

> Will Dockery wrote:
>>
>> Harry Kemp (American poet)

>> Poems
>> "[http://www.daypoems.net/poems/1326.html Blind]"
>> *[http://www.poemhunter.com/harry-kemp/ Harry Kemp] at [[PoemHunter]] (36
>> poems)
>> *[http://allpoetry.com/Harry-Kemp Harry Kemp] at AllPoetry (38 poems)

>> Books
>> * {{Gutenberg author |id=Kemp,+Harry | name=Harry Kemp}}

>> About
>> *[http://www.eoneill.com/library/newsletter/iv_1-2/iv-1-2f.htm Harry Kemp:
>> Lest we forget], ''The Eugene O'Neill newsletter''
>> *[http://www.jstor.org/stable/20570273?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents review
>> of ''The Cry of Youth]'' in ''[[Poetry (magazine)|Poetry]]''

>> Wiki Biography:
>> http://pennyspoetry.wikia.com/wiki/Harry_Kemp

>> This article is about the 20th-century American poet. For the 20th-century
>> English poet & teacher, see Harry Kemp (UK poet).

>> Harry Hibbard Kemp (December 15, 1883 - August 5, 1960) was an American poet
>> and prose writer of the twentieth century. He was known as (and promoted
>> himself as) the "Vagabond Poet", the "Villon of America", the "Hobo Poet",
>> or the "Tramp Poet", and was a well-known popular literary figure of his
>> era.

>> Kemp was born in Youngstown, Ohio, the only son of a candymaker. He was
>> raised by his grandmother, in a house by the local train yards.

>> At the age of 17 he left home to become a common seaman. After returning to
>> the United States he traveled across the country by riding the rails as a
>> hobo, carrying copies of Shakespeare, Shelley, and other poets in his
>> rucksack.

>> He later attended the University of Kansas, and while a student he began
>> publishing verse in newspapers and magazines.

>> Tramp poet
>> Kemp had a knack for self-promotion, what he called "the Art of
>> Spectacularism," and early learned to collaborate with and manipulate
>> journalists to attract attention to his work. He spent time in Paris in the
>> early 1920s, along with the more famous members of the Lost Generation.
>> Among those influenced by, and working on the same path as Kemp were, in his
>> autobiographical novel of Hobohemianism, W.H. Davies' The Autobiography of a
>> Super-Tramp (1908), and the grim yet poetic realism of Maxim Gorky.

>> Kemp spent much of his maturity traveling; he stayed in a number of planned
>> communities for varying lengths of time, then wrote autobiographical novels
>> about his experiences. When not traveling he was a regular denizen of
>> Greenwich Village in New York City and Provincetown on Cape Cod in
>> Massachusetts, where he was associated with the Provincetown Players.

>> Kemp was also known as the "poet of the dunes." He lived on and off in a
>> shack in the dunes of Provincetown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, for a period of
>> about 40 years, and he died there in 1960. A 1934 Kemp poem, "The Last
>> Return," was written for the Coast Guard men who steadfastly worked to save
>> the lives of those shipwrecked on Cape Cod's coast.

>> Kemp's Tramping on Life: An autobiographical narrative (1922) was one of the
>> best selling "tramp autobiographies" of the 1900–1939 period.

>> Kemp knew many of the bohemian and progressive literary and cultural figures
>> of his generation, including Elbert Hubbard, Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell,
>> Bernarr MacFadden, Sinclair Lewis, Max Eastman, Eugene O'Neill, Edmund
>> Wilson, John Dos Passos, E.E. Cummings, and many others. Kemp played a role
>> in the first stage production of O'Neill's earliest play, Bound East for
>> Cardiff. Kemp was physically imposing, "Tall, broad-shouldered, and robust,"
>> Wetzsteon, p. 334. and gained a reputation as a lover, sometimes of other
>> men's wives; he was involved in various scandals throughout his career. His
>> part in Upton Sinclair's divorce was especially notorious in its day.

>> As a means of kidding Harry Kemp, George Nathan and I pretended to a vast
>> interest in Greenwich Village, and one day asked him to take us there and
>> show us the sights. He accepted eagerly, and we walked all the way from 331
>> Fourth Avenue. Whenever he pointed out a celebrity... we would stop short,
>> stare fixedly, and make a show of being tremendously impressed. Finally,
>> almost with bated breath, Kemp indicated a second-story window in a
>> ramshackle house, and said: "When Oscar Wilde was in New York his girl lived
>> there." "His girl?" demanded Nathan. "What in hell, Mr. Kemp, was Mr. Wilde
>> doing with a *girl*?" For some reason unknown, this greatly upset Kemp, and
>> he spent half an hour trying to convince Nathan and me that, in addition to
>> his homosexual practice, Wilde also indulged in more normal sin. We
>> professed to regard it as a slander upon his principles, and denounced Kemp
>> for spreading such stories about a dead and defenseless man. He then got
>> into a considerable lather and proposed to produce the woman, but we begged
>> him to say no more about a painful subject.

>> Later Years
>> In addition to his original books, Kemp translated a play by Tirso de Molina
>> as The Love-Rogue (1923), and edited The Bronze Treasury (1927), "an
>> anthology of 81 obscure English poets." Kemp's views turned somewhat more
>> conservative with age; he rejected leftist and anarchist sympathies and
>> wrote approvingly of Jesus Christ as the "divine hobo" and the "Super
>> Tramp."

>> The hobo poet Harry Kemp hailed Jesus Christ as the "super-tramp" and
>> "divine hobo" for the man Jesus preached a social gospel, and consorted with
>> outcasts and criminals. It wasn't Jesus' fault if the chuches that claimed
>> him had grown repressive and corrupt. He had stood for voluntary poverty,
>> not self-satisfied greed. He had stood for justice and identified with the
>> downtrodden, saying that what you do the least of God's creatures, you do to
>> me.

>> Writing
>> According to Louis Untermeyer (editor of Modern American Poetry), Kemp's
>> early collections (The Cry of Youth and The Passing God) are "full of every
>> kind of poetry except the kind one might imagine Kemp would write. Instead
>> of crude and boisterous verse, here is precise and over-polished poetry."
>> Untermeyer's opinion was that Chanteys and Ballads is "riper," with "the
>> sense of personality more pronounced."<ref?Louis Untermeyer, ed., Modern
>> American Poetry, Fourth Revised Edition, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co.,
>> 1930; p. 376. Print.</ref>

>> Recognition
>> Kemp's reputation had declined into obscurity by the time of his death in
>> 1960; but his role in the history of modern American literature and the
>> American Left has brought renewed interest and further publication of his
>> work.

>> There is a street named for him, Harry Kemp Way, in Provincetown.

>> In 1995, the Provincetown Chamber of Commerce made plans to create a First
>> Landing Park to commemorate the Pilgrims' voyage in 1620. Ms. Ruth Hiebert
>> made a donation in the name of her late father, Dr. Daniel Hieber, who,
>> along with Harry Kemp, the celebrated "Tramp Poet" of the 1920s literary
>> world who abandoned Greenwich Village for life in a Provincetown dune shack,
>> would reenact the first landing every year, complete with dubious costumes
>> Kemp imagined the intrepid voyagers might have worn."It was all somewhat
>> silly, but it did keep the true history alive," Ms. Hiebert told the Globe.

>> Publications
>> The Cry of Youth. New York: Kennerley, 1914.
>> The Thresher's Wife. New York: A. & C. Boni, 1914.
>> The Passing God: Songs for lovers (with introduction by Richard Le
>> Gallienne). New York: Brentano's, 1919; London: Brentano's, 1922.
>> Chanteys and Ballads: Sea-chanteys, tramp-ballads, and other ballads and
>> poems. New York: Brentano's, 1920.
>> The Sea and the Dunes, and other poems. New York: Brentano's, 1926.
>> Don Juan's Note-Book. New York: privately published; printed by Alex L.
>> Hillman, 1929.
>> Where Now Green Gardens? Harry answers Omar. Provincetown, MA: Provincetown
>> Publishers, 1945.
>> The Poet's Life of Christ: Songs of the living Lord. Provincetown, MA:
>> Provincetown Publishers, 1946.
>> Provincetown Tideways (1948)
>> Poet of the Dunes: Songs of the dunes and the outer shore, with others in
>> varying modes and moods. Provincetown, MA: Provincetown Publishers, 1952;
>> Provincetown, MA: Cape Cod Pilgrim Memorial Association, 1988.
>> Rhyme of Provincetown Nicknames. Providence, MA: Providence Publishers,
>> 1954.

>> ------------------------------------------------------------

>> Found in Drafts file.

> Again... Kemp is quite fantastic....!

Good evening, agreed.