Harry Kemp

The Last Bohemian

Dr. William Brevda

1986
278 pages
ISBN 0-8387-5086-9

This book provides the first critical biography of the American writer, Harry Kemp (1883-1960). Kemp materials - including letters, manuscripts, and newspaper clippings - in public, private, and university collections have been located and examined for the first time. The facts and themes of Kemp's life and works are recorded, interpreted, and appraised in a narrative that demonstrates their interrelation and significance.
Harry Kemp first attracted attention while a student at the University of Kansas between 1906 and 1911, where he was tagged the "Tramp Poet." Upton Sinclair believed that in Kemp America had found a modern Walt Whitman. In 1912, Kemp arrived in Greenwich Village. There his half-congenital, half-practiced nonconformity brought him accolades rather than opprobrium; Kemp became the quintessential bohemian in the new bohemia of 1912-17. Bohemian values elevated youthful impecunious genius to an ideal, and Kemp acted out with unsurpassed flair his romanticized vision of himself as a great poet. Harry Kemp insisted on transmuting the world into a place of drama and romance, an act of pure imaginative will that he defined as "creative wonder."

About the author:

William Brevda was born in Brooklyn and raised in Huntington, New York. After graduating from the New School for Social Research, he earned an M.A. from the State University of New York at New Paltz and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Connecticut. Professor Brevda has taught at Illinois State University and currently teaches literature and writing at the University of Mississippi.