Walter Lowenfels, 1897-1976. American author and editor
Links
Finding-Aid for the Walter Lowenfels Papers [00074]Collection Description
Papers, 1966-19671155 items
Access: Open.
Walter Lowenfels, born in New York City, was an American poet and writer whose liberal political thinking not only influenced his writing and editing, but also kept him at the forefront of 20th-century American political artistic movements. Washington University’s Lowenfels Collection of correspondence and poetry manuscripts, all of which relate to the 1967 anthology Where is Vietnam?, reflects his commitment to creative arts and political activism. From 1914 to 1926 Lowenfels grudgingly worked in his father’s prosperous New York butter business. He began writing poetry following World War I and published his first collection, Episodes & Epistles, in 1925. In 1926 Lowenfels fled to Paris to write and to escape a career in the family business. In 1930 he and Michael Fraenkel founded the Carrefour Press and published the pamphlet Anonymous: The Need for Anonymity, a manifesto in which they declared that anonymous publication was the only way to avoid artistic competition and alienation. A play by Lowenfels, USA with Music, was published anonymously by Carrefour, but a plagiarism suit brought by Lowenfels against George Gershwin in 1932 forced Carrefour and Lowenfels to reveal the author’s identity. In the end, artistic competition stifled the “anonymous movement”; Carrefour Press continued to publish, but identified the authors of its books. Lowenfels wrote more than a dozen books of poetry and edited almost as many, most of which expressed his political beliefs in one way or another. Lowenfels was a member of the Communist Party for most of his life and his editorial work for the Daily Worker kept him from his own writing from the late 1930’s until 1953, when he was arrested and convicted for conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government. The charges were based solely on his membership in the Communist Party and the conviction was overturned in a matter of weeks. Although Lowenfels was recognized as a poet in his own right throughout his life, from the late 1950’s until his death in 1976, he was best known as the pre-eminent American anthologist of the avant-garde. Many of his collections of poetry reflect his commitment to Marxism and opposition to political repression. Among his political anthologies are Where is Vietnam? (1967), In The Time of Revolution (1969), From the Belly of the Shark (1973), and For Neruda, for Chile (1975). Lowenfels died in Tarrytown, New York in 1976.
Bibliography:
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 4. (Detroit: Gale
Research, 1978).
Correspondence, manuscripts, and editorial matter toward Lowenfels’ anthology Where is Vietnam? form the basis of the Washington University’s collection. This anthology, published by Anchor Books at the height of the Vietnam War, includes poetry by 87 American poets, including Robert Bly, James Dickey, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Denise Levertov, Howard Nemerov, Robert Lowell, and Allen Ginsberg. Besides manuscript poems and letters by these and other poets, the Lowenfels Collection includes numerous pamphlets, flyers, and announcements concerning peace readings, protests and publications from the Vietnam era. These papers serve as an important record of the literary community’s response to this unpopular war and as a testimony to Lowenfels’ belief in political change through artistic expression.
Selected Names
Ashbery, John, 1927-. American author.Bukowski, Charles, 1920-1994. American author.
Creeley, Robert, 1926-. American author.
Dickey, James, 1923-1997. American author.
Duncan, Robert, 1919-1988. American author.
Ferlinghetti, Lawrence, 1919-. American author and publisher.
Ginsberg, Allen, 1926-1997. American author.
Hall, Donald, 1928-. American author.
Hecht, Anthony, 1923-. American author.
Hollander, John, 1929-. American author.
Jones, LeRoi, 1934-. American author.
Justice, Donald, 1925-. American author.
Kunitz, Stanley, 1905-. American author.
Laughlin, James, 1914-. American author and publisher.
Levertov, Denise, 1923-1997. American author.
Lowell, Robert, 1917-1977. American author.
Lowenfels, Walter, 1897-1976. American author and editor.
Merton, Thomas, 1915-1968. American author.
Merwin, W. S., 1927-. American author.
Moore, Marianne, 1887-1972. American author.
Nemerov, Howard, 1920-1991. American author.
Olson, Charles, 1910-1970. American author.
Reed, Ishmael, 1938-. American author.
Rexroth, Kenneth, 1905-1982. American author.
Rich, Adrienne, 1929-. American author.
Shapiro, Karl, 1913-2000. American author.
Snyder, Gary, 1930-. American author.
Sontag, Susan, 1933-. American author and critic.
Stafford, William, 1914-1993. American author.
Tate, Allen, 1899-1979. American author and critic.
Van Duyn, Mona, 1921-. American author.
Whalen, Philip, 1923-2002. American author.
Wright, James, 1927-1980. American author.