Alfred Kreymborg was born in 1883 to a German father and an American mother in New York City. Though he did not go on to inherit the family cigar business, he did inherit his father\u2019s prodigious chess skills. Though he was capable of playing blindfolded and on par with the World Champion, this heritage is not what makes Kreymborg relevant today. Kreymborg went on to become one of the most important figures in the history of the modernist Little Magazine, but in some ways the seeds of his importance came from his other early passion, music.<\/p>\n
The world of the avant-garde has a crucial social structure, the salon culture, which, according to Stephen Voyce \u201coften facilitated progressive experiments in community and collective aesthetic exchange\u201d (627). When Kreymborg\u2019s day job selling music collided with this vibrantly daring and daringly social world, a string of meetings\u2014perhaps serendipitous, perhaps fateful\u2014swept Kreymborg into the center of the movement in many ways. While selling music rolls for his day job, Kreymborg met Alanson Hartpence, who convinced him to pursue art full time. As Kreymborg fell deeper into the artist world and began frequenting artist hangouts, he met\u00a0\u00a0 Marsden Hartley who invited him to Alfred Stieglitz\u2019s Round Table. At the Round Tables he met Man Ray and Samuel Halpert, with whom he moved to a rural cottage in New Jersey, known as Ridgefield Cottage or the Grantwood Colony, and founded his first Little Magazine, Glebe<\/em>.<\/p>\n As the editor of Glebe<\/em>, Kreymborg became very influential, and his zealous protection of this ability to hold influence is arguably the character trait that most shaped his career. He expected to be \u201c\u201cunhampered in his editorial inclinations\u201d at Glebe.<\/em> When the wealthy backers of the publication became too controlling, Kreymborg resigned, and Glebe<\/em> could not survive without him.<\/p>\n Kreymborg, however, now entrenched in the world of the avant-garde, was just fine without Glebe<\/em>. Before long the stars aligned again: Walter Arensberg and Alfred Kreymborg met at a party hosted by Allan Norton, and the Little Magazine Others <\/em>was born of this partnership. Ultimately, though, the magazine was Kreymborg\u2019s; his ideas about how the Little Magazine should be run were particular and set in cement, leading to the dissolution of his partnership with Arensberg. However, this particular victory of Kreymborg\u2019s need for control did not come at the cost of the Little Magazine. Others <\/em>thrived despite a rocky beginning.<\/p>\n One of the best examples of the success of Others<\/em> is, of course, Mina Loy, whose \u201cLove Songs\u201d wound up \u201con everyone\u2019s coffee table\u201d (Black 22). Seeing as Others <\/em>was intentionally not well circulated, the ubiquity of the work is very impressive. Others <\/em>also seems to constitute the majority of the connection between Loy and Kreymborg, though Loy did also play the lead in the Provincetown Player\u2019s production of Kreymborg\u2019s self-directed play \u201cLima Beans.\u201d<\/p>\n In the great avant-garde mythology that art historians and literary scholars alike are left to sift through, the relationship between Kreymborg and Loy is difficult to get a good handle on. The artists\u2019 world seems enveloped in a sort of magic when one reads about it\u2014evenings of raucous academia, an idea that might have seemed heretofore oxymoronic; cottages by the river where the boldest and finest artists could gather to discuss their latest endeavors; and a sense that fate is building a web by degrees of separation to cause cosmic collisions of artistic potential. In this world, Loy and Kreymborg fall together more regularly than in the real world. When Charles Allen describes the Norton party where Kreymborg and Arensberg met, he reports that Norton was throwing the party for the contributors to his Little Magazine Rogues<\/em>, a list that included Mina Loy (420). All of a sudden Loy is now present the night that Others <\/em>was born. Loy was also, according to the autobiographies of both William Carlos Williams and Kreymborg, present at Grantwood Colony. Of course, as Suzanne Churchill points out, when Mina Loy arrived in New York in 1916, Others<\/em> was approaching the two year anniversary of its inception and the Grantwood Colony had long since disbanded.<\/p>\n On the whole, Kreymborg was a crucial figure to the avant-garde movement. Frank Waldo writes, \u201cHe has more claim to be called a founder [Of the American Theater] than Eugene O\u2019Neill\u201d (1). And as for his Little Magazines, Charles Allen said, \u201cTheir significance is no greater or no less than the estimate that one places on the desirability of securing the reputations of such poets as Williams, Moore, and Stevens\u201d (423).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n “Alfred Kreymborg is Dead at 82; Poet and Playwright in ‘Village’.” New York Times <\/em><\/p>\n (1923-Current File),<\/em> Aug 15, 1966. \u00a0 http:\/\/ezproxy.lib.davidson.edu\/login?url=https:\/\/search.proquest.com\/docview\/117695870?accountid=10427.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Allen, Charles. \u201cGlebe and Others.\u201d College English<\/em>, vol. 5, no. 8,<\/p>\n 1944, pp. 418\u2013423. JSTOR<\/em>, JSTOR www.jstor.org\/stable\/371453.<\/p>\n Black, Cheryl D. “The Women of Provincetown, 1915-1922.” Order No. 9908923<\/p>\n University of Maryland, College Park, 1998. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. <\/em>Web. 19 Sep. 2017.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Churchill, Suzanne M. “Making Space for Others: A History of a<\/p>\n Modernist Little Magazine.” Journal of Modern Literature<\/em> 22.1 (1998): 47-67. ProQuest. <\/em>Web. 15 Sep. 2017.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Moore, Marianne. “Letters.” Partisan Review<\/em> 64, no. 4 (Fall, 1997): 597-608. http:\/\/ezproxy.lib.davidson.edu\/login?url=https:\/\/search.proquest.com\/docview\/237122854?accountid=10427<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n SARLOS, ROBERT KAROLY. “THE PROVINCETOWN PLAYERS: EXPERIMENTS IN<\/p>\n STYLE. (VOLUMES I AND II).” Order No. 6605392 Yale University, 1966. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. <\/em>Web. 19 Sep. 2017.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Voyce, S. “‘Make the World Your Salon’: Poetry and Community at the<\/p>\n Arensberg Apartment.” Modernism\/modernity<\/em>, vol. 15 no. 4, 2008, pp. 627-646. Project MUSE<\/em>, doi:10.1353\/mod.0.0039<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Waldo, Frank. “MR KREYMBORG WOOS AMERICA.” The Dial; a Semi – monthly <\/em><\/p>\n Journal of Literary Criticism, Discussion, and Information (1880-1929)<\/em> 07 1925: 72. ProQuest. <\/em>Web. 19 Sep. 2017<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bio Template<\/p>\n Alfred Kreymborg was born in 1883 to a German father and an American mother in New York City. Though he did not go on to inherit the family cigar business, he did inherit his father\u2019s prodigious chess skills…. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-draft2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3258,"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3256\/revisions\/3258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\n
\n Name<\/td>\n Alfred Kreymborg<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Date of Birth<\/td>\n 1883<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Place of Birth<\/td>\n New York<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Date of Death<\/td>\n August 14th, 1966<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Place of Death<\/td>\n Nursing home in Milford CT<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Country of origin, citizenship<\/td>\n US<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Gender<\/td>\n M<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Race<\/td>\n Caucasian<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Kind of Artist\/Cultural worker (writer, painter, photographer, gallery director, editor, etc)<\/td>\n Director, editor, writer<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Address in Florence or New York<\/td>\n Grantwood, NJ\/Ridgefield NJ\/29 Bank Street, Grenwich village<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Dates & Places of Overlap with Loy<\/td>\n 1916 through her departure from new york<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Avant-garde movements the figure was associated with [list]<\/td>\n New Poetry<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Brief summary of the figure\u2019s Biographical\/Historical significance<\/td>\n His greatest contributions to the movement were the establishment of Glebe, and even more so, Others. He was also a member of the Arensberg circle and worked with many famous figures in the movement. He was a judge on the pulitzer committee, a member of a number of literary societies. Charles Allen said “\u201cThe significance of Glebe and Others is no greater or no less than the estimate that one places on the desirability of securing the reputations of such poets as Williams, Moore, and Stevens\u201d and Frank Waldo said \u201cHe has more claim to be called a founder [Of the American Theater] than Eugene O\u2019Neill.\u201d<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Brief summary of the figure\u2019s Relationship to Loy:<\/td>\n In addition to being her editor, the fact that they ran in the same circles, and her performance in a play he wrote, there is additional mythology to their relationship, her presence at the Grantwood colony orin association with the fateful birth of Others.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n What was the nature of their overlap or connection?<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Was it social, literary, artistic? Were they involved in collaborative ventures (publications, exhibitions, performances, readings)?<\/td>\n Largely artistic\/collaborative–she performed in his play, he published her works. Little is said about the two of them in a social setting besides the fact that they ran in the same social circles<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"