Kenneth Fearing is known as the chief poet of the American Depression as he lived and wrote during the 1930’s and his subject matter focused upon urban disillusionment resulting from the ills of commercial capitalism. Predatory social behaviors, false expectations, emotional isolation, the commodification of the physical body, empty materialism, anxieties on top of anxieties, and, of course, the corruption of those with power and money on their side, provided Fearing with plenty of fodder to craft his poetry. Not surprisingly, it has much in common with pulp novels, which he also happened to write under a pseudonym. Low brow street talk providing a percentage of his vernacular, but also the use of irony, satire and vivid images to raise the poetry up to the level of literature. I open his selected poems for two random selections (‘Dear Beatrice Fairfax’ and ‘1933’ respectively):

But just the same, baby, and never forget,
….it takes a neat, smart, fast, good, sweet doublecross
….to doublecross the gentleman who doublecrossed the
………..gentleman who doublecrossed
….your doublecrossing, doublecrossing, doublecross
………..friend.

And,

Crawled amorously into bed. Felt among the maggots
……..for the moldering lips. The crumbled arms.
……..Found them.

Its been said before that poetry loss some of its audience in the early part of the 20th century because of the rise of other forms of media, such as radio, movies and eventually television. If this is true, it explains why there are not more Kenneth Fearings lining the poetry sections. While his poetry holds enough technical and historical merit to have it placed into the American canon, it is also poetry that’s FUN, in the same way a Tom Waits album or a graphic novel is fun, and both these mediums likely being what replaced the audience for the style of poetry Fearing wrote. But maybe ‘replaced’ isn’t the best word. Instead, ‘incorporated’ or ‘evolved from’, to help make notice of the similarities.

Part of this artistic fun includes good drama. As much as Fearing placed satire and critiques into his writing, there is an equal amount of melancholic compassion for his ‘characters’ as they struggle in the mire and cement of their urbanely urban lives. When Fearing does lay down his attacks, the portrayals are typically with minimal depth, similar in the way news articles present their stories, preferring a writing that is fractured, purposefully shallow and borderline sensationalistic, quantity over quality being the greed filled way. This thin sporadicism of coverage is something which Fearing artistically emulated, even composing at times from headlines and snippets of broadcasts to have his poetry echo the ways in which mass information is provided to the public (he also worked as a journalist). However, while unapologetically sardonic, what keeps Fearing from falling into an unappealing bitterness are the lone grace notes he plays at the end of his dark alleys, which remind his readers that he remains with hope towards a better future and not without sensitivity to all of our varied and lonely carks. From 'American Rhapsody (I)':

These are merely close-ups.
....At a distance these eyes and faces and arms,
....maimed in the expiation of living, scarred in payment
............exacted through knife, hunger, silence, hope,
............exhaustion, regret,
....melt into an ordered design, strange and significant,
............and not without peace.