Harry Kemp

Harry Hibbard Kemp (December 15, 1883 - August 5, 1960) was an American poet and prose writer of the twentieth century. He was known as (and promoted himself as) the "Vagabond Poet", the "Villon of America", the "Hobo Poet", or the "Tramp Poet", and was a well-known popular literary figure of his era.

Youth
Kemp was born in Youngstown, Ohio, the only son of a candymaker. He was raised by his grandmother, in a house by the local train yards.

At the age of 17 he left home to become a common seaman. After returning to the United States he traveled across the country by riding the rails as a hobo, carrying copies of Shakespeare, Shelley, and other poets in his rucksack.

He later attended the University of Kansas, and while a student he began publishing verse in newspapers and magazines.

Tramp poet
Kemp had a knack for self-promotion, what he called "the Art of Spectacularism," and early learned to collaborate with and manipulate journalists to attract attention to his work. He spent time in Paris in the early 1920s, along with the more famous members of the Lost Generation. Among those influenced by, and working on the same path as Kemp were, in his autobiographical novel of Hobohemianism, W.H. Davies' The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908), and the grim yet poetic realism of Maxim Gorky.

Kemp spent much of his maturity traveling; he stayed in a number of planned communities for varying lengths of time, then wrote autobiographical novels about his experiences. When not traveling he was a regular denizen of Greenwich Village in New York City and Provincetown on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, where he was associated with the Provincetown Players.

Kemp was also known as the "poet of the dunes." He lived on and off in a shack in the dunes of Provincetown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, for a period of about 40 years, and he died there in 1960. A 1934 Kemp poem, "The Last Return," was written for the Coast Guard men who steadfastly worked to save the lives of those shipwrecked on Cape Cod's coast.

Kemp's Tramping on Life: An autobiographical narrative (1922) was one of the best selling "tramp autobiographies" of the 1900–1939 period.

Kemp knew many of the bohemian and progressive literary and cultural figures of his generation, including Elbert Hubbard, Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, Bernarr MacFadden, Sinclair Lewis, Max Eastman, Eugene O'Neill, Edmund Wilson, John Dos Passos, E.E. Cummings, and many others. Kemp played a role in the first stage production of O'Neill's earliest play, Bound East for Cardiff. Kemp was physically imposing, "Tall, broad-shouldered, and robust," Wetzsteon, p. 334. and gained a reputation as a lover, sometimes of other men's wives; he was involved in various scandals throughout his career. His part in Upton Sinclair's divorce was especially notorious in its day.


 * As a means of kidding Harry Kemp, George Nathan and I pretended to a vast interest in Greenwich Village, and one day asked him to take us there and show us the sights. He accepted eagerly, and we walked all the way from 331 Fourth Avenue. Whenever he pointed out a celebrity... we would stop short, stare fixedly, and make a show of being tremendously impressed.  Finally, almost with bated breath, Kemp indicated a second-story window in a ramshackle house, and said: "When Oscar Wilde was in New York his girl lived there."  "His girl?" demanded Nathan. "What in hell, Mr. Kemp, was Mr. Wilde doing with a *girl*?" For some reason unknown, this greatly upset Kemp, and he spent half an hour trying to convince Nathan and me that, in addition to his homosexual practice, Wilde also indulged in more normal sin. We professed to regard it as a slander upon his principles, and denounced Kemp for spreading such stories about a dead and defenseless man. He then got into a considerable lather and proposed to produce the woman, but we begged him to say no more about a painful subject.

Later Years
In addition to his original books, Kemp translated a play by Tirso de Molina as The Love-Rogue (1923), and edited The Bronze Treasury (1927), "an anthology of 81 obscure English poets." Kemp's views turned somewhat more conservative with age; he rejected leftist and anarchist sympathies and wrote approvingly of Jesus Christ as the "divine hobo" and the "Super Tramp."


 * The hobo poet Harry Kemp hailed Jesus Christ as the "super-tramp" and "divine hobo" for the man Jesus preached a social gospel, and consorted with outcasts and criminals. It wasn't Jesus' fault if the chuches that claimed him had grown repressive and corrupt. He had stood for voluntary poverty, not self-satisfied greed. He had stood for justice and identified with the downtrodden, saying that what you do the least of God's creatures, you do to me.

Writing
According to Louis Untermeyer (editor of Modern American Poetry), Kemp's early collections (The Cry of Youth and The Passing God) are "full of every kind of poetry except the kind one might imagine Kemp would write. Instead of crude and boisterous verse, here is precise and over-polished poetry." Untermeyer's opinion was that Chanteys and Ballads is "riper," with "the sense of personality more pronounced."<ref?Louis Untermeyer, ed., Modern American Poetry, Fourth Revised Edition, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1930; p. 376. Print.

Recognition
Kemp's reputation had declined into obscurity by the time of his death in 1960; but his role in the history of modern American literature and the American Left has brought renewed interest and further publication of his work.

There is a street named for him, Harry Kemp Way, in Provincetown.

In 1995, the Provincetown Chamber of Commerce made plans to create a First Landing Park to commemorate the Pilgrims' voyage in 1620. Ms. Ruth Hiebert made a donation in the name of her late father, Dr. Daniel Hieber, who, along with Harry Kemp, the celebrated "Tramp Poet" of the 1920s literary world who abandoned Greenwich Village for life in a Provincetown dune shack, would reenact the first landing every year, complete with dubious costumes Kemp imagined the intrepid voyagers might have worn."It was all somewhat silly, but it did keep the true history alive," Ms. Hiebert told the Globe.

Publications

 * The Cry of Youth. New York: Kennerley, 1914.
 * The Thresher's Wife. New York: A. & C. Boni, 1914.
 * The Passing God: Songs for lovers (with introduction by Richard Le Gallienne). New York: Brentano's, 1919; London: Brentano's, 1922.
 * Chanteys and Ballads: Sea-chanteys, tramp-ballads, and other ballads and poems. New York: Brentano's, 1920.
 * The Sea and the Dunes, and other poems. New York: Brentano's, 1926.
 * Don Juan's Note-Book. New York: privately published; printed by Alex L. Hillman, 1929.
 * Where Now Green Gardens? Harry answers Omar. Provincetown, MA: Provincetown Publishers, 1945.
 * The Poet's Life of Christ: Songs of the living Lord. Provincetown, MA: Provincetown Publishers, 1946.
 * Provincetown Tideways (1948)
 * Poet of the Dunes: Songs of the dunes and the outer shore, with others in varying modes and moods. Provincetown, MA: Provincetown Publishers, 1952; Provincetown, MA: Cape Cod Pilgrim Memorial Association, 1988.
 * Rhyme of Provincetown Nicknames. Providence, MA: Providence Publishers, 1954.

Plays

 * Judas. New York: Brentano's, 1913.
 * The Prodigal Son: A comedy in one act. New York: E. Arens, 1919.
 * Solomon's Song: A pastoral tragi-comedy in one act. 1922; Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2004.
 * Boccaccio's Untold Tale and other one-act plays. New York: Brentano's, 1924.
 * Bocaccio's Untold Tale. Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2004.

Novels

 * More Miles: An autobiographical novel. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1926.
 * Love Among the Cape Enders. New York: Macauley, 1931.
 * Mabel Tarner, An American Primitive. New York: L. Furman, 1936.

Non-fiction

 * Tramping on Life: An autobiographical narrative. Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing, 1922; 2nd edition, New York: Boni & Liveright, 1922.
 * The Golden Word: A religion for all creators of beauty. Provincetown, MA: privately published, 1930.

Edited

 * The Bronze Treasury: An anthology of 81 obscure English poets together with their biographical portraits. New York: Macauley, 1927.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.