Most of us are familiar with his novels and even his short stories. Hemingway did write numerous poems however, only 25 of which were even published in his lifetime. While many people have never read even one line of Hemingway’s poetry, it is interesting to know that he was prolific at writing it.
There is one book in particular, Ernest Hemingway: 88 Poems, that takes great care to present some of his previously unpublished poems. In fact it was the first authorized edition of his poetry. Many previous books of poetry were pirated and unauthorized editions. The authorized edition was edited by Nicholas Gerogiannis and is expertly done.
The 88 poems are presented with notes to help explain to the reader who or what Hemingway was making reference to in each piece. There is a short piece of information for each poem at the end of the book that helps the reader understand Hemingway’s motivations for some of the poems, as well as where they were written. While none of these were published while he was alive, Hemingway saved all of them in various places, and they were later found scattered literally across the country. From an old restaurant in Key West to his home in Idaho. They are all housed now at the Kennedy Library, and are presented here for us to read.
Hemingway’s poetry is short at times and even crass. A few of the poems are nothing more than convenient rhymes, written to warm him up before he sat down and seriously went at a project for the day. Others are biting commentaries on ex-friends, colleagues, and even editors. One poem, “To A Tragic Poetess”, is a longer poem written in reference to Dorothy Parker and her multiple and unsuccessful suicide attempts. It was read aloud at a party in which Ms. Parker was luckily not in attendance of, and Hemingway lost more than a couple of friends after reading it. “Portrait of a Lady,” is two rhyming lines prefaced by several sentences letting you know why it was written about Gertrude Stein. After informing us for an entire paragraph that it is a dumb poem, and written by an envious boy, we finally read, “Gertrude Stein was never crazy. Gertrude Stein was very lazy.” After that, our “little poem” he had told us about, Hemingway reflects, “Now that it is all over with perhaps it made a great difference if it was something you cared about.”
Go To Page: 1 2
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Erica Davis's Classic Authors topic, please visit the Discussions page.