HARRY KEMP---POET
In southern Kansas near the town of Hutchinson in a quiet country graveyard rises a modest tombstone worn by the sun and rain of twenty-two years. Unknown, unnoticed, the one whose grave it marks has slept all these years under sunny, changing Kansas skies.
In 1886 a humble contractor of Youngstown, Ohio, moved with his family to Hutchinson. The family consisted of father, mother and the three-year-old son. They left their home in Ohio and came to Kansas in the hope that the change in climate would cure the disease of consumption, with which the wife and mother was afflicted. But the disease had gone too far, and, in a few short months the wife died and was buried at Hutchinson. The father, Wilbert Kemp, and his three-year-old son Harry returned to their home in Youngstown, Ohio.
At Mount Hermon.
Five years ago, a tall, gaunt, long-haird youth was strolling about the grounds of Mount Hermon, a school founded by Dwight L. Moody for boys in Massachusetts. He always had under his arm a volume of Keats or Byron. When he could be induced to study the modern languages in the classroom, he used a text book written by William Herbert Carruth of the University of Kansas. He had noted the fact that Professor Carruth was a Kansan. He had not forgotten that his mother was buried in the same state. He had admired the book and he longed to return to the state where his life had ended its first epoch and begun a new one at the age of three. First, he started for Chicago University, but when he reached there, the desire to come to Kansas was with him and grabbing an "outbound freight," he started south.
Begius "Hobo" Life.
But let us continue the romantic story of his life where we left it. After he returned to Youngstown, Ohio, his father left him and went to Arlington, New Jersey, to secure work in a celluloid factory. Until Harry was twelve years old, he lived with his grandmother in Youngstown and then went to join his father at Arlington. He remained here four years. In the winter time working in the factory and in the summer time "hoboing it" around the adjacent country. Here he also attended school until he reached the sixth grade. In the meantime he had been studying Latin and Greek and had become a disciple of Keats and Byron. The last year he spent at Arlington, he attended the high school, but was dismissed for playing boyish tricks.
Then he left home, not to return until he had circled the earth and experienced the vicissitudes that sound more like an adventure tale from the imagination of Robert Louis Stevenson than the actual story of two years in
"I have rotted three long months in a steel-barred Texan jail,
"And felt the bitter mockery of law."
Again at Mount Hermon.
When he escaped from the clutches of the law, he went to Mount Hermon, Massachusetts, and remained a year and was a second time dismissed from school, because, as he says, his heterodoxy did not suit the conventional religious views of the institution. Then seeking the school where the methods of thinking were congenial to his scattered, but rebellious ideas of the future, he went to Elbert Hubbard's settlement at East Aurora, N.Y. He did not remain here long as he had trouble over a poem which he asserts Elbert Hubbard had used without giving him credit. He then returned to Mount Hermon for another year, but was again asked to leave. It was then that he decided to go to Chicago University, but eventually came to Kansas. This is, in brief, the narration of the more prominent events in the life of Harry Kemp, poet and student in the University of Kansas.
lived off and on until a few weeks ago.
When Harry Kemp reached the University of Kansas in the winter four years ago he was "broke". He had come from Chicago on a freight train and existed as a tramp on the journey. When he arrived here he went to Professor Carruth, who gave him temporary assistance and helped him in securing a place to work for his board. The next two years, he says, was a time of despair. Professor Carruth taught him how to milk a cow and he secured a job of milking and doing chores and held it, he says, until the cow went dry owing to his inability to get all the milk. He lost his position as milkman and went to stay with a restaurant keeper by the name of "Bony Lowne", with whom he has
Came Here on a Freight.
Is Now Prosperous.
He is now more comfortably situated than ever before since he left his grandmother's home in Youngstown, Ohio, and is having success with his poetry and has also entered the lecture field where he is making some money. But it has been a long struggle and Kemp may claim that he has as well as genius that rarer quality of self abnegation. Destitute of money, housed in a bare cold room, the floor littered with notices of rejected manuscripts, the writer saw him often during this time of his extreme poverty. One night he says he actually contemplated ending all his misery, but hope of success held back the fatal deed.
Walked to Emporia.
It was soon after this that he went to Emporia to spend Thanksgiving day with Charles Vernon, a student in the University, who was a great friend of William Allen White. Miss Ida Tarbell, of the American Magazine was in the city at the time and Harry accompanied her to the theatre on Thanksgiving eve. He had walked all the way to Emporla and that too without a hat. These eccentric performances attracted attention in the newspapers of the country and from this time on the journey of life became somewhat smoother for the poet.
Seventy Poems Published.
Harry Kemp has had published in the New York magazines during the last two years no less than seventy poems. At the present time he has a contract with one magazine to furnish a poem each month, and several other publications are accepting his poetry regularly. At the instigation of some of the literary people of New York city he is now engaged in compiling a collection of his poems for publication in book form.
Kemp prides himself on being the poet of modern life. Most of the poems he has had published deal with modern industrial conditions. A span of a bridge, a child dying in a coal mine, the hum of machines, the clang of anvils, a lurid flame of fire belching from a blast furnace, clouds of lowering smoke pierced by factory smoke stacks are all more poetical to the mind of Harry Kemp than the the fables of mythology or the scenes of nature. Kemp is fond of nature and its beauties, but he says he loves human life more and human life is artificial. He hates, he detests the artificiality of society which grinds the toilers to a life of misery. A number of his published poems have been euologist of the workers of the world. "The Toilers' Dead" appeared in The New York Independent.
Let us raise up a monument to these
Such as a monarch for his tomb decrees.
They did not perish in a patriot war
With glory leading onward like a star
Nor for some cause, pre-eminent,
alone.
Die and their fame in human hearts
enthrone.
No! But upon their bones our cities rise
No! But upon their bones our cities rise
That, towering, take the morning from the skies.
Untold, unknown, innumerous brotherhood.
They have cemented empires with their blood.
They have gone down with roaring in their ears.
To dedicate with death our outflung piers,
And where great-breasted ships now sail the sand
They clove a path asunder through the land
With a thousand flashing picks, while as with fire
Their bones were racked with aches and fevers dire.
They hewed the forests down and cleared the ground
Where now the wheels of industry resound;
Beneath the crashing tree oftimes fell
And knew nor funeral train nor passing bell.
Deep in the din, wide-washing seas they sleep.
Having sowed their bones that luxury might reap.
They knew the mad machine, the Moloch mill,
Vociferous, has slain and slays them still,
And where the hot blast lights the sky with flame
They perish day by day, unknown to fame.
Let us seek out the noblest spot on earth
And, Eiffel-like in height, of pyramid girth,
Rear up, tremendous, to salute the sun,
Some witness of the perished million
Who went down unto death with none to cheer
And with their lives bought all we prize as dear,
This wonder and this glory and this shame
Called "civilization" when tongues name the name.
Let us build up a monument to these
Such as a monarch for his tomb decrees.
Writes of Modern Life.
Because of the injustice and inequalities he sees all around him Kemp is a socialist. He doesn't stop to ask why socialism is a balm for social wrongs. He only sees the fact that gross social wrongs do exist and he condemns them in harsh tones. But he has too firm a belief in the principals of evolution to be a radical revolutionist. As all socialists Kemp hates a pessimist but not much worse than he does an optimist. He is a meliorist and believes the world is growing better, but only by efforts of man. Conscious, unceasing, uncompromising war with the present wrongs and the traditions that bind us to them is the only means of progress.
Belief in God.
Harry Kemp is not an atheist; he is not a believer in all the teachings of Christianity. He believes in a God. He says he knows there is a God, and will not for that reason allow himself to be called an agnostic. But he will not attempt to define his God. He says the Creator he reverences cannot be measured by earthly standards. His only religion is truth—truth as taught by modern science. He believes firmly in an immortal soul. In a short poem "God and the Soul" he says:
But let the universe Back into darkness roll. Two lights death cannot dim, God and the Soul. His contempt for the formalities and egotistic claims of