Orrick Johns - 6 Short Poems (1914-1923)

Forgotten Poems #108

     
              —: From 'Songs Of Deliverance' (1914) :—

       This is the song of youth,
       This is the cause of myself;
       I knew my father well and he was a fool,
       Therefore will I have my own foot in the path
            before I take a step;
       I will go only into new lands,
       And I will walk on no plank-walks.
       The horses of my family are wind-broken,
       And the dogs are old,
       And the guns rusty;
       I will make me a new bow from an ash-tree,
       And cut up the homestead into arrows . . .

       I have no time to wait for them to build bridges for me;
       Where awful the gap seems stretching there is no gap,
       Leaping I take it at once from a thought to a thought.
     

    
              —: Blue Undershirts (1915) :—

       Blue undershirts,
       Upon a line,
       It is not necessary to say to you
       Anything about it—
       What they do,
       What they might do . . .
            blue undershirts.
    

              —: Somewhere (1915) :—

       Now I know
       I have been eating apple-pie for breakfast
       In the New England
       Of your sexuality.
    

    
              —: At the Door (1915) :—

       I have only a tingling remembrance
       Not of his eyes
       But of
       A dandelion . . .
       Nevertheless,
       The whole of him,
       The whole of me,
       There—
       Known, elicited, understood.
    

     
              —: The Little Flowers (1917) :—

       I am not smiling
       Beside this mound
       For a long time now I have forgotten to smile
       At the wrecked and beaten ruin
       Of so many a proud-facaded thought . . .
       But I watch the little flowers
       Growing from it
       Gravely I watch the little indomitable flowers
       Putting their heads up.
       Thrusting out their fingers to the sun.
    

    
              —: Poet and Planter (1923) :—

       Growing leaves are best for books,
       Libraries are something dead;
       Leaf of corn and leaf of rye!—
       To be cooked, not read!

       Here is print; the seeds that fall,
       They make prose of finer gold.—
       Print that is not black and small
       May go wet and mold!

       Fool, the poems of the earth
       Come with every spring afresh!—
       Harvest's eaten . . . what's the worth?
       More unlovely flesh?
    

Orrick Johns (1887-1946) was; “Born in St. Louis, Missouri. Educated at the University of Missouri and Washington University in St. Louis. Was associated for a short time with Reedy's Mirror, as a dramatic critic and book reviewer. In 1912 received first prize for a poem entitled 'Second Avenue' [inspired by a speech by anarchist Emma Goldman] in The Lyric Year, and was afterwards published in that volume.” (The Second Book of Modern Verse, 1920)

Moved to Greenwich Village from 1913-15 where he was known as one of the ‘Lyrical Left’, and was one of the earliest free-verse poets of the post-1913 “new poetry” movement. Also spent time at Man Ray’s artist colony ‘Grantwood’, in New Jersey, where Alfred Kreymborg established the ‘Others’ poetry group, including Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Conrad Aiken, Lola Ridge, Djuna Barnes, Fenton Johnson, and many others. Johns went on to publish three books of poetry, Asphalt (1917), Black Branches (1920), and Wild Plum (1926), as well a novel, Blindfold (1925), and numerous plays.

After living in Italy for a few years Johns returned to America, and in the 1930s became increasingly active in politics, working with labour organisations and as an editor for The Daily Worker and The New Masses, both popular American Marxist magazines. Despite his many successes, Johns clearly struggled mentally, and in 1946 sadly took his own life at the age of 59.

Illustration by William Gropper (The New Masses, Dec. 1926).

     
               —: After Orrick Johns :—
                                [for B.]
                         by Dick Whyte

       indelible—like that plate of chopped fruit
       forgotten in our excitement, knocked off
       the dresser & onto the floor—
       a reminder

       futures are not known but anticipated
       antecedents—animals rushing to the
       waterhole, each making room for
       the other—

       exhausted & satisfied—the way dirt
       is satisfied by rain as it turns to mud
       & later dries out in the sun—
       emboldened
     

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