Description

FIRST EDITION of this collection of 41 poems first published in the magazines The New Masses, Dynamo, The American Caravan, The Nation, New York Herald Tribune Books, The New Republic and The Menorah Journal. 

The book is illustrated with two ink drawings by Hungarian artist Gyula Zilzer (1898-1969).

Originally from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Isidor Schneider moved to the United States at the age of 6. There he contributed to a number of liberal journals, publishing first texts influenced by the Imagist movement and then, from the 1920s, pro-Communist poems urging workers to take social action. This collection spans the two periods of his work, with 25 Imagist poems and 16 pro-Communist poems separated by the essay "Toward Revolutionary Poetry", in which the author justifies the transformation of his approach: "Individualism had become more and more a malady. [...] As a consequence love poetry has fallen into morbid eroticism ; and the regard for nature into the contemplation of a wasteland. The world cries for a new social cohesion, and poets for a new theme."

FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE AMERICAN NOVELIST SHIRLEY JACKSON and her husband, the literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman.

"For Shirley and Stanley
With affection
Isidor Schneider

A celebrated author of horror novels based on psychic disintegration (The Haunting of Hill House, We have Always Lived in the Castle...), Shirley Jackson signa également la nouvelle "The Lottery" ("La Loterie") qui fit scandale lors de sa publication dans le New Yorker. Le couple, qui comptait parmi leurs amis de nombreux sympathisants communistes, fut fréquemment inquiété par le Maccarthysme. Quoi qu'ils n'aient jamais été ouvertement poursuivis, Shirley Jackson dénonça à plusieurs reprises cette "chasse aux sorcières" dans son ouvrage de vulgarisation à destination des enfants sur les procès de sorcellerie de Salem, The Witchcraft of Salem Village.