Tuesday 5 February 2013

Faking It


Jason Guriel fetes a school of poets too amazing to be believed:
"From 1916 to 1918, the Spectrists had the attention of figures like Edgar Lee Masters and editors of magazines like this one. Harriet Monroe accepted Spectric poems; Alfred Kreymborg kitted out an entire issue of Others with the stuff. Knish and Morgan’s anthology, Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments (1916), was covered in the papers and, like all novelties perceived to be cutting edge, divided readers. An impromptu fanbase dispatched letters to Pittsburgh, the improbable locale where the movement’s masters made camp. Even William Carlos Williams struck up a correspondence. Knish was said to be Hungarian, the prized object of suitors’ duels. Morgan was said to be one of the 
duelists. That the Spectrists have largely been forgotten shouldn’t be counted against contemporary memories, however, or some vision of stubborn, steamrolling history; oblivion is the proper fate of figures who never quite existed in the first place."

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