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Bynner was born in Brooklyn, New York, and brought up in Brookline, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1902. Initially he pursued a career in journalism at McClure's Magazine. He then turned to writing, living in Cornish, New Hampshire until about 1915.
In 1916 he was one of the perpetrators, with Arthur Davison Ficke, a friend from Harvard, of an elaborate attempted literary hoax. It involved a purported 'Spectrist' school of poets, along the lines of the Imagists, based in Pittsburgh. Spectra, a slim collection, was published under the pseudonyms of Anne Knish (Ficke) and Emanuel Morgan (Bynner). Marjorie Allen Seiffert, writing as Angela Cypher, was roped in to bulk out the 'movement'.
In early 1917 he with Ficke travelled to Japan, possibly to escape the aftermath of the Spectra affair. It was in any case the most significant poetic exchange between the USA and Japan, until after World War II.
He had a short spell in academia in 1918/9, at the University of Berkeley. He then travelled to China, and studied Chinese literature.
He subsequently produced many translations from Chinese. His verse
showed both Japanese and Chinese influences, but the latter were major.
Bynner became more of a modernist,
perhaps in consequence, where previously he had been inclined to parody
Imagism, and dismiss the orientalist pronouncements with which Ezra Pound was free.
He then settled in Santa Fe, in a steady and acknowledged homosexual relationship. He became a friend of D. H. Lawrence, and travelled with him and Frieda in Mexico; he much later in 1951 wrote on Lawrence, while he and his partner Willard Johnson are portrayed in Lawrence's The Plumed Serpent.
On January 18, 1965, Bynner had a severe stroke. He never recovered,
and required constant care until he died on June 1, 1968. His papers
are archived in the New Mexico State University Library.
- An Ode to Harvard and Other Poems (1907)
- Tiger (1913)
- The Little King (1914)
- The New World (1915)
- Iphigenia in Tauris (1916) translator
- Spectra (1916) poems with Arthur Dickson Ficke
- Grenstone Poems (1917) poems
- Pins for Wings
- A Canticle of Pan (1920)
- Roots (1929) poems
- The Jade Mountain (1929) translations from Chinese with Kiang Kang-hu
- Indian Earth (1929) poems
- Guest Book (1935) poems
- Selected Poems (1943)
- The Way of Life, according to Lao Tzu (1944)
- Take Away the Darkness (1947)
- Journey with Genius (1951) memoir of D. H. Lawrence
- New Poems (1960)
- Selected Poems (1978)
""WITTER BYNNER (1881-1968)
By Paul Horgan
In the more than eight decades of his life, he was a tireless member of a rare species in our cultural scenethat of the versatile man of letters, whose whole working career was given to the act of literature, with all its involvements not only in many forms of literary statement, but also in Platonian responses to the civil values of free existence. He was an eloquent orator, in poetic forms, who spoke out for the individual dignity of his fellow men, whether in terms of politics, popular mores, or artistic commitment.
His long career began during his undergraduate days at Harvard, where he was graduated summa cum laude in 1902. He was the Phi Beta Kappa poet in 1907 with Young Harvard, which became his first book. It was followed by a long list of works, extending until 1960, when Alfred Knopf, the publisher of all but a few of his copious bibliography, brought out his last, and in many ways, his most remarkable work entitled New Poems, 1960.
His literary acquaintanceship went back as far as George Merh, to whom he made a youthful pilgrimage, and included such other figures as Mark Twain and Henry James, continuing through the decades to reach out to the young writers of the mid-sixties, when he suffered the series of emotional and physical disasters which rendered him inactive and, in effect, unreachable, until his merciful deliverance by a blessedly placid death on June 1, 1968, at the age of 87. His last words, suddenly articulated despite his paralyzed state, were said to be, "Other people die, why can't I?"
A man of commanding stature, splendid good looks, and infectious energy, he presided throughout five decades, by common consent, over the cultural and convivial life in Santa Fe. His wit was a delight. It ranged through every degree of style, not disdaining ribaldry and brilliant puns, and it often took your breath away with its instant response to an unexpected lead. One early example of the latter: on his first youthful lecture tour he was introduced by a local worthy to a provincial "lyceum" audience as the "eminent American writer, Mr. William Winter." Already rigid with stagefright, Bynner was further appalled by this, but then, joyfully inspired, rose to his feet and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I fear I must be the Witter of your discontent."
Anyone who spent an intimate evening in his fine library, at Santa Fe, with a handful of like-minded men and women of wide culture and high wits, will keenly remember his presencehis gusty humor, his generous sensibility in honor of any honest human manifestation, his range of civilized and often hilarious reference, and above all his feeling for the common cause of human life itself, with all his hopes, wonders, and satisfactions, which he saw as deserving of tolerance and respect even at its most pathetic or misguided. Beyond all this, his generous and time-giving encouragement of younger poets was legendary.
Witter Bynner's own art as a poet of deceptively simplistic technique, embodying forth a unique lyric vision, belongs safely to the future. He was allied to a great tradition of letters entirely beyond the fashions of his timea tradition rooted in those verities of literary art which always survive the fugitive urgencies of any passing hour.""The biggest problem in the world could have been solved when it was small.
A leader is best When people barely know that he exists.
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