H. H. Lewis
Harold Harwell Lewis, or H.H. Lewis as he become known, was an American poet and communist during the 1930s through the 1970s. He was one of four children born to Thomas and Catherine Tisdale Lewis on January 13, 1901, near Cape Girardeau, Missouri.[1]
He received his secondary education at the Southeast Missouri State Normal School Training School, which is now named Southeast Missouri State University. During the Great Depression, Lewis traveled as a common laborer in the Southwest. Away from his parents for the first time, Lewis was incredably poor and many of his encounters and experiences traveling would fuel his future career.
That "stove-devil," heat-blanched and heat-crazed, gaunt and flagrantly dirty, up against it for twelve hours daily, received $60 per month. The waiters got $1.25 per day. The restaurant belonged to a chain of such for dime-gripping bums and low-paid working-stiffs. Came gringos and greasers for coffee and stew, hash, beans—a large bowl of brown beans for a dime. Came Negroes, humblest of all. Came "mouthmen" and "wolves," proletarian beasts of the ghastliest ilk. From the poverty of America, in this bottomless hell, came these contorted and condemned souls.
— H.H. Lewis on his slide into poverty. Found in the Anvil, 1933[2]
He eventually returned to the family farm to pursue a career of freelance writing, including publishing his own magazine,The Outlander.[1] For a brief period in the 1930s Lewis enjoyed a small measure of acclaim. Malcolm Cowley in The New Republic in 1932 called him "the red-starred laureate, the Joe Hill of the Communist Movement." An editor of Partisan Review, in a testy exchange with Lewis, called him "a necrophilic son of a cretin." He was heralded as a rising star of proletarian literature by V. F. Calverton and editors of the Soviet publication, International Literature, Lewis seemed destined to stir up controversy.[2]
H.H. Lewis had a close friendship with famous writer William Carlos Williams, to whom Lewis represented a fresh and vigorous voice in the search for the "low-down Americano," or common man. With such support, both magazines began to published Lewis's prose and poetry in the 1930s, including Mencken's The American Mercury, Conroy's The Anvil, The New Republic, and numerous others. In 1937, Lewis's poetry won the prestigious Harriet Monroe Literary Prize.Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 H. H. Lewis Collection, Special Collections and Archives, Southeast Missouri State University. Descriptive Overview.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Wixson, Douglas C. (2006) [http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/william_carlos_williams_review/v026/26.1wixson.html In Search of the Low-Down Americano: H. H. Lewis, William Carlos Williams, and the Politics of Literary Reception, 1930–1950], William Carlos Williams Review 26.1 75-100 (page 79)