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=                             Harry_Kemp                             =
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                            Introduction
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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, the "hero of adolescent
Americans."


                           Life and work
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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 seventeen 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. In his early twenties he attended Mount
Hermon School, from which he was expelled around December 1906, and
later the University of Kansas. While a student he began publishing
verse in newspapers and magazines.

In 1910, Upton Sinclair and his wife Meta built a house in the
single-tax village of Arden, Delaware. In 1911, Sinclair invited Kemp
to camp on the couple's land there. Meta soon became enamored with
Kemp, and in late August she left Sinclair for the poet. His part in
the Sinclairs' divorce became especially notorious in its day.

He 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. Kemp's 'Tramping on
Life: An Autobiographical Narrative' (1922) was one of the best
selling "tramp autobiographies" of the 1900-1939 period. 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.  There is a street named for
him, Harry Kemp Way, in Provincetown.  Harry Kemp was also known as
the "poet of the dunes." Kemp lived on and off in a shack in the dunes
of Provincetown, Cape Cod for a period of about 40 years, and he died
there in 1960. A 1934 Kemp poem titled, "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 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.

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," and gained a reputation as a
lover, sometimes of other men's wives; he was involved in various
scandals throughout his career.

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 as the "divine
hobo" and the "super tramp."

Kemp's reputation had declined into obscurity by the time of his death
in 1960.


                          Critical opinion
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According to Louis Untermeyer (editor of 'Modern American Poetry'),
Kemp's early collections ('The Cry of Youth', '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."


                           Selected works
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* 'The Cry of Youth' (1914)
* 'The Thresher's Wife' (1914)
* 'The Passing God: Songs for Lovers' (1919)
* 'Chanteys and Ballads: Sea-Chanteys, Tramp-Ballads and Other Ballads
and Poems' (1920)
* 'Tramping on Life: An Autobiographical Narrative' (1922)
* 'Boccaccio's Untold Tale and Other One-Act Plays' (1924)
* 'More Miles: An Autobiographical Novel' (1926)
* 'Sea and the Dunes and Other Poems' (1926)
* 'Don Juan's Note-Book' (1929)
* 'The Golden Word' (1930)
* 'Love Among the Cape Enders' (1931)
* 'Mabel Tarner, An American Primitive' (1936)
* 'The Poet's Life of Christ' (1946)
* 'Provincetown Tideways' (1948)
* 'Poet of the Dunes' (1952)


                           External links
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*
*
* [http://hdl.handle.net/10407/3549488078 Harry Kemp Papers] housed at
the [http://spencer.lib.ku.edu Kenneth Spencer Research Library],
University of Kansas


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