Franklin Rosemont (1943–2009) was an American poet, artist, historian, street speaker, and co-founder of the Chicago Surrealist Group. Over four decades, Franklin produced a body of work, of declarations, manifestos, poetry, collage, hidden histories, and other interventions.

Early life

He was born in

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, to Henry, a

typographer Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), an ...

and labor activist, and Sally, a

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

musician. In 1960, he dropped out of

Proviso East High School Proviso East High School is a public secondary school in Maywood, Illinois which serves the educational needs of Maywood and three other villages within Proviso Township, Cook County, Illinois: Broadview, Forest Park and Melrose Park. It is ...

, Maywood, Illinois, but was admitted to

Roosevelt University Roosevelt University is a private university with campuses in Chicago and Schaumburg, Illinois. Founded in 1945, the university was named in honor of United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The unive ...

in Chicago in 1962, studying under African-American scholar

St. Clair Drake John Gibbs St. Clair Drake (January 2, 1911 – June 15, 1990)Calloway, Earl (June 28, 1990). "Memorial services held for Dr. Drake, noted author and Roosevelt professor." ''Chicago Defender'', p. 10. was an African-American sociologist and anthr ...

Career

A self-identified anarchist, Rosemont edited the 1960s anarchist publication ''Rebel Worker''. He edited and wrote an introduction for ''What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings of André Breton'', and edited '' Arsenal/Surrealist Subversion'', ''The Rise & Fall of the DIL Pickle: Jazz-Age Chicago's Wildest & Most Outrageously Creative Hobohemian Nightspot'' and ''Juice Is Stranger Than Friction: Selected Writings of T-Bone Slim''. With his wife

Penelope Rosemont Penelope Rosemont (born 1942 in Chicago, Illinois) is a visual artist, writer, publisher, and social activist who attended Lake Forest College. She has been a participant in the Surrealist Movement since 1965. With Franklin Rosemont, Bernard Mar ...

, herself the author and editor of several books and active in the Chicago Surrealists, and poet and storyteller

Paul Garon Paul Arthur Garon (July 6, 1942 – July 26, 2022) was an American author, writer, and editor, noted for his meditations on surrealist works, and also a noted scholar on blues as a musical and cultural movement. Born in Louisville, Kentucky ...

, he edited ''The Forecast is Hot!''. His work has been deeply concerned with both the history of surrealism (writing a forward for ''

Max Ernst Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German (naturalised American in 1948 and French in 1958) painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealism ...

and

Alchemy Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, ...

: A Magician in Search of Myth'') and of the radical labor movement in America, for instance, writing a biography of Joe Hill. According to ''PoetrySoup.com'' Franklin Rosemont "became perhaps "the most productive scholar of labor and the left in the United States." Rosemont was a member of the

Industrial Workers of the World The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), members of which are commonly termed "Wobblies", is an international labor union that was founded in Chicago in 1905. The origin of the nickname "Wobblies" is uncertain. IWW ideology combines genera ...

and

Students for a Democratic Society Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s, and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships ...

. In 1964, he helped organize a strike among fellow blueberry pickers in Michigan.

Publications

Rosemont is the author of the poetry collections ''The Morning of a Machine Gun: Twenty Poems & Documents. Profusely Illustrated By the Author'', ''The Apple of the Automatic Zebra's Eye'', and ''Penelope: A Poem'', as well as ''An Open Entrance to the Shut Palace of Wrong Numbers'', a book that explores the phenomenon of "wrong numbers" from a surrealist perspective, which was published by Black Swan Press in 2003. He also edited and introduced ''Hobohemia: Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, Ben Reitman & other agitators & outsiders in 1920s/30s Chicago'', by Frank O. Beck. In 1990 he published a collected edition of short stories by the socialist utopian author

Edward Bellamy Edward Bellamy (March 26, 1850 – May 22, 1898) was an American author, journalist, and political activist most famous for his utopian novel ''Looking Backward''. Bellamy's vision of a harmonious future world inspired the formation of numerou ...

, titled ''Apparitions of Things to Come''. He is co-editor, with

Archie Green Archie Green (June 29, 1917 – March 22, 2009) was an American folklorist specializing in laborlore (defined as the special folklore of workers) and American folk music. Devoted to understanding vernacular culture, he gathered and commente ...

David Roediger David R. Roediger (born July 13, 1952) is the Foundation Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Kansas, where he has been since the fall of 2014. Previously, he was an American Kendrick C. Babcock Professor o ...

, and Salvatore Salerno, of ''The Big Red Songbook'' (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2007).

References

External links

Franklin Rosemont 1943–2009
This "cyber-

tombeau A tombeau (plural tombeaux) is a musical composition (earlier, in the early 16th century, a poem) commemorating the death of a notable individual. The term derives from the French word for "tomb" or "tombstone". The vast majority of tombeaux date ...

" at ''Silliman's Blog'' by poet

Ron Silliman Ron Silliman (born August 5, 1946) is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. He is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman wr ...

includes comments, tributes, and links
Remembering a Wobbly Surrealist
an extensive tribute to Rosemont
Franklin Rosemont, fellow worker, surrealist poet, great American
comprehensive set of links to obituaries on Rosemont found around the web as of April 2009
Franklin and Penelope Rosemont collection of IWW Publications
at

Newberry Library The Newberry Library is an independent research library, specializing in the humanities and located on Washington Square in Chicago, Illinois. It has been free and open to the public since 1887. Its collections encompass a variety of topics rela ...

Franklin W. Rosement Papers
at th
Newberry Library
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rosemont, Franklin 1943 births 2009 deaths Writers from Chicago American male poets Surrealist poets Burials at Forest Home Cemetery, Chicago Industrial Workers of the World members American surrealist writers American surrealist artists 20th-century American poets American Book Award winners 20th-century American male writers American anarchists