Birth
1883, New York, U.S.A.
Death
August 14, 1966, Milford, CT., U.S.A.
Country of Origin/Citizenship
United States/ American
Kind of Artist/Cultural Worker
writer, painter, photographer, gallery director, publisher, editor
Avant-Garde Movements Associated With
Modernism, New Poetry, Futurism, Dadaism
Date & Places of Overlap with Loy
They overlapped as long as Loy was in New York but were connected to the same social circles long before Loyâs arrival in NY. Loy was published in the first edition of others in 1915 and the two had an ongoing professional and personal relationship.
Although relatively unknown, Alfred Kreymborg was an influential magazine editor, poet, playwright, literary historian, and node in the networks of the historical avant-garde. He was born in 1883 to a German father and an American mother in New York City. Though he did not go on to run the family cigar business, he did inherit his fatherâs prodigious chess skills (Churchill, “Making Space” 49). As a young man juggling a day job to support nightly artistic pursuits, Kreymborg met Alanson Hartpence, who convinced him to pursue art full time. As he began frequenting artist hangouts, Kreymborg met Marsden Hartley who invited him to Alfred Stieglitzâs âRound Table” of struggling artists. At the Round Table he met Man Ray and Samuel Halpert, with whom he moved into a rural cottage in New Jersey, known as Ridgefield Cottage or the Grantwood Colony (50). It was there that he founded his first little magazine The Glebe 1913 (Allen 418). As the editor of The Glebe, Kreymborg expected to be âunhampered in his editorial inclinationsâ (419). However, The Glebeâs wealthy backers, the Boni brothers, had a proclivity for European writers that clashed with Kreymborgâs preference for Americans. When the brothers became too controlling, Kreymborg resigned as editor. The Glebe did not survive without him.
Undeterred, Kreymborg moved onto his next project. After meeting Walter Arensberg at a party, they partnered up and conceived the idea for the little magazine Others. Kreymborgâs determination to publish a simple magazine featuring American poets proved irreconcilable with Arensbergâs more international, cosmopolitan vision (Allen 418). Despite the dissolution of its founding alliance, Others ran from 1915-1919 and played an important role in Kreymborgâs relationship with Loy. As Churchill argues, “Mina Loy was, for a time, virtually synonymous with Others” (Little Magazine 179). The magazine featured Loyâs âLove Songs” in its debut issue in July 1915 and dedicated a special issue to her revised, extended version of the poem, âSongs to Joannes,â in April 1917. Others “not only propelled [Loy] into the public eye, but also provided ample space for her to develop her groundbreaking poetic style” (180). Her experiments in Others paved the ground for her first volume of poetry, Lunar Baedecker, in 1923 (Churchill, “Making Space” 65-66).
Kreymborg admired Loy, seeing her as âexpressing herself freelyâ in her work (Burke 5). He appreciated her honest âuse of subject matterâ and her elimination of punctuation marks in her poetics, as well as the âaudacious spacing of her linesâ (5). He claims to have revered Loyâs poems âeven when he didnât understand themâ (Burke 206). Furthermore, he often contradicted critics of Loy by positing that her writings only âprovoked outrage because they challenged artistic and sexual proprietyâ (Burke 8).
Loy co-starred with William Carlos Williams in the Provincetown Playersâ production of Kreymborgâs Lima Beans (Sarlos). âNeglecting the magazineâ and embracing his proclivity for the stage, Kreymborg took a collection of three of his own plays on a national tour, and eventually became a co-director of the One-Act Reparatory Company, which showed on Broadway (Burke 286). Frank Waldo writes, âHe has more claim to be called a founder [of the American Theater] than Eugene OâNeillâ (1). In addition to his theatrical exploits, Kreymborg went on to edit a third âfree-spiritedâ little magazine entitled Broom (Burke 302). Founded by Harold Loeb, Broom introduced Americans to the European avant-garde through new and experimental art and writing contributions from the likes of Loy and many others. This publication continued until its âendowmentâŠdried upâ in 1924 (Burke 320).
By the end of his life at the age of eighty-two, Kreymborg had edited notable little magazines, âwritten forty books; lectured; taught; and served as associate director of the Federal Radio of the W.P.A., president of the Poetry Society of America, and judge of the Pulitzer prize competitionâ (Churchill, “Making Space” 67). Multi-talented as he was, Kreymborgâs legacy survives not through his chess prowess or even his original poetry, but through his editorial work on little magazines that helped to launch the careers of Mina Loy and other prominent modernist writers.
Related
Works Cited
Allen, Charles. âGlebe and Others.â College English, vol. 5, no. 8, 1944, pp. 418â423. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/371453.
Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1996.
Churchill, Suzanne W. âMaking Space for âOthersâ: A History of a Modernist Little Magazine.â Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 22, no. 1, 1998, pp. 47â67. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3831751.
Churchill, Suzanne W. The Little Magazine Others and the Renovation of Modern American Poetry. Ashgate Publishing Co., 2006.
Sarlos, Robert Karoly. âThe Provincetown Players: Experiments in Style (Volumes I and II).â Order No. 6605392 Yale University, 1966. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Web. 19 Sep. 2017.
Waldo, Frank. âMr Kreymborg Woos America.â The Dial; a Semi â monthly Journal of Literary Criticism, Discussion, and Information (1880-1929) 07 1925: 72. ProQuest. Web. 19 Sep. 2017
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