Madison Cawein

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Madison Cawein (March 23, 1865 - December 8, 1914) was a poet from Louisville, Kentucky.

Life
Madison Julius Cawein was born in Louisville, Kentucky on March 23, 1865, the fifth child of William and Christiana (Stelsly) Cawein. His father made patent medicines from herbs. Cawein thus became acquainted with and developed a love for local nature as a child.

After graduating from high school, Cawein worked in a pool hall in Louisville as a cashier in Waddill's New-market, which also served as a gambling house. He worked there for six years, saving his pay so he could return home to write.

His output was thirty-six books and 1,500 poems. His writing presented Kentucky scenes in a language echoing Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats. He soon earned the nickname the "Keats of Kentucky". He was popular enough that, by 1900, he told the Louisville Courier-Journal that his income from publishing poetry in magazines amounted to about $100 a month.

In 1912 Cawein was forced to sell his Old Louisville home, St James Court (a two-and-a-half story brick house built in 1901, which he had purchased in 1907), as well as some of his library, after losing money in the 1912 stock market crash. In 1914 the Authors Club of New York City placed him on their relief list. He died on December 8 later that year and was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery.

Influence
In 1913, a year before his death, Cawein published a poem called "Waste Land" in a Chicago magazine which included Ezra Pound as an editor. Cawein's "Waste Land" appeared in the January 1913 issue of Chicago magazine Poetry (magazine)Poetry (which also contained an article by Ezra Pound on London poets).

Though there is no evidence that Eliot ever saw the poem (he was not mentioned in Pound's article), some scholars see this poem as an inspiration to T.S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land, published in 1922 and considered a highwatermark birth of modernist poetry in English.

It is also possible that Ezra Pound, who had certainly read that issue of Poetry, and who edited The Waste Land almost a decade later, came up with the title. (Eliot`s original and working title was He Do the Police in Different Voices.)

The link between Cawein's work and Eliot's was pointed out by Canadian academic Robert Ian Scott in The Times Literary Supplement in 1995. The following year Bevis Hillier drew more comparisons in The Spectator (London) between other poems by Eliot and Cawein; he compared Cawein's lines "...come and go/Around its ancient portico" with Eliot's "...come and go/talking of Michelangelo."

Cawein's poetry allied his love of nature with a devotion to earlier English and European literature, mythology, and classical allusion. This certainly matched Eliot's own interest, but whereas Eliot was also seeking a modern language and form, Cawein strove to maintain a traditional approach. Although Cawein gained an international reputation, he was eclipsed as styles changed in the 20th century.

Poetry

 * Blooms of the Berry, J.P. Morton (Louisville, KY), 1887.
 * The Triumph of Music and Other Lyrics, J. P. Morton, 1888.
 * Accolon of Gaul, with Other Poems, J. P. Morton, 1889.
 * Lyrics and Idyls, J.P. Morton, 1890.
 * Days and Dreams: Poems, Putnam (New York and London), 1891.
 * Moods and Memories: Poems, Putnam, 1892.
 * Red Leaves and Roses: Poems, Putnam, 1893.
 * Poems of Nature and Love, Putnam, 1893.
 * Intimations of the Beautiful, and Poems, Putnam, 1894.
 * The White Snake and Other Poems, Translated from the German into the Original Meters, J.P. Morton, 1895.
 * Undertones, Copeland & Day (Boston), 1896.
 * The Garden of Dreams, J.P. Morton, 1896.
 * Shapes and Shadows: Poems, R.H. Russell (New York, NY), 1898.
 * Idyllic Monologues: Old and New World Verses, J. P. Morton, 1898.
 * Myth and Romance, Being a Book of Verse, Putnam, 1899.
 * One Day & Another: A Lyrical Eclogue, Badger (Boston), 1901.
 * Weeds by the Wall: Verses, J.P. Morton, 1901.
 * Kentucky Poems, Dutton (New York, NY), 1902.
 * A Voice on the Wind and Other Poems, J.P. Morton, 1902.
 * The Vale of Tempe: Poems, Dutton, 1905.
 * Nature-Notes and Impressions, Dutton, 1906.
 * The Poems of Madison Cawein. Volumes 1-5.  Small, Maynard (Boston), 1907.
 * An Ode Read August 15, 1907, at the Dedication of the Monument Erected at Gloucester, Massachusetts, in Commemoration of the Founding of Massachusetts Bay Colony in the Year Sixteen Hundred and Twenty-Three, J.P. Morton, 1908.
 * New Poems, Grant Richards (London), 1909.
 * The Giant and the Star: Little Annals in Rhyme, Small, Maynard, 1909.
 * The Shadow Garden (A Phantasy) and Other Plays, Putnam, 1910.
 * Poems by Madison Cawein, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1911.
 * The Poet, the Fool and the Faeries, Small, Maynard, 1912.
 * The Republic, A Little Book of Homespun Verse, Stewart & Kidd (Cincinnati), 1913.
 * Minions of the Moon: A Little Book of Song and Story, Stewart & Kidd, 1913.
 * The Poet and Nature and the Morning Road, J.P. Morton, 1914.
 * The Cup of Comus: Fact and Fancy, Cameo Press (New York, NY), 1915.

Brochures

 * Let Us Do the Best We Can, P.F. Volland (Chicago), 1909.
 * So Many Ways, P.F. Volland, 1911.
 * The Message of the Lilies, P.F. Volland, 1913.
 * Christmas Rose and Leaf, Forest Craft Guild (New York), 1913.
 * Whatever the Path, Forest Craft Guild, 1913.
 * The Days of Used to Be, Forest Craft Guild, 1913.

Anthologized

 * Library of Southern Literature, edited by Edwin Anderson Alderman and Joel Chandler Harris, Martin & Hoyt (New Orleans), 1907
 * Modern American Poetry: A Critical Anthology, 4th revised edition, edited by Louis Untermeyer, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1930.