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1881-1968 poet, playwright,
editor and essayist Harold Witter Bynner was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1881, but at age 7 his family moved to Brookline, Massachusetts after the death of his father. In 1898 he began his studies at Harvard University where he served on the editorial board of the Harvard Advocate (1900-1902). After graduating in 1902, Bynner worked for four years as associate editor of McClure's Magazine before retreating from the pressures of the New York literary world and devoting himself to writing. As a poet Bynner had a remarkable facility for catching the cadences of other writers and cultures. Although his first book, An Ode to Harvard and Other Poems (1907), was only mildly successful, he went on to publish several plays and seventeen other volumes of poetry over the course of his life. He is, however, perhaps best remembered for the Spectra hoax* (1916), a spoof on literary "schools," initiated by Bynner in conjunction with Arthur Davison Ficke. He rented a bedroom/study from his college friend, sculptor Homer Saint-Gaudens and was a nine year resident of Cornish, N.H.'s flourishing art community. After leaving Cornish, Bynner was elected President of the Poetry Society of America (1921-1923) and traveled extensively in the Orient, where he became influenced by Chinese poetry. From those travels, he collaborated with Dr. Kaing Kung-Ho in the translation of 300 Chinese poems. The Jade Mountain (1929), an anthology of T'ang Dynasty poems, eventually became Bynner’s "greatest contribution to twentieth-century literature." His other works include several plays and essays; a reminiscence of D. H. Lawrence, Journey with Genius (1951); and such volumes of poetry as Grenstone Poems (1917), Indian Earth (1929), Selected Poems (1943), Take Away the Darkness (1947), and New Poems (1960). Bynner spent the latter part of his life in New Mexico. He died in 1968. Sources:
www.slider.com/enc/9000/Bynner_Witter.htm www.izaak.unh.edu/specoll/mancoll/bynner.htm |
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Witter Bynner [