Madison Julius Cawein (March 23, 1865 – December 8, 1914) was a poet from

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...

Biography

Madison Julius Cawein was born in

on March 23, 1865, the fifth child of William and Christiana (Stelsly) Cawein. His father made patent medicines from herbs. Thus as a child, Cawein became acquainted with and developed a love for local nature. After graduating from high school, Cawein worked in a pool hall in Louisville as a cashier in Waddill's New-market, which also served as a gambling house. He worked there for six years, saving his pay so he could return home to write. His output was thirty-six books and 1,500 poems. His writing presented Kentucky scenes in a language echoing

Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley ( ; 4 August 17928 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achie ...

and

John Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculo ...

. He soon earned the nickname the "Keats of Kentucky". He was popular enough that, by 1900, he told the Louisville ''Courier-Journal'' that his income from publishing poetry in magazines amounted to about $100 a month. In 1912 Cawein was forced to sell his Old Louisville home, St James Court (a -story brick house built in 1901, which he had purchased in 1907), as well as some of his library, after losing money in the 1912 stock market crash. In 1914 the Authors Club of New York City placed him on their relief list. He died on December 8 later that year and was buried in

Cave Hill Cemetery Cave Hill Cemetery is a Victorian era National Cemetery and arboretum located at Louisville, Kentucky. Its main entrance is on Baxter Avenue and there is a secondary one on Grinstead Drive. It is the largest cemetery by area and number of buria ...

Influence

In 1913, a year before his death, Cawein published a poem called "Waste Land" in a Chicago magazine which included

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

as an editor. Scholars have identified this poem as an inspiration to T. S. Eliot's poem ''

The Waste Land ''The Waste Land'' is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the Octob ...

'', published in 1922 and considered the birth of

modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

in poetry.Hitchens, Christopher. ''Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere''. New York: Verso, 2001: 297. The link between his work and Eliot's was pointed out by Canadian academic Robert Ian Scott in ''

The Times Literary Supplement ''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp. History The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to ''The Times'' but became a separate publication i ...

'' in 1995. The following year

Bevis Hillier Bevis Hillier (born 28 March 1940) is an English art historian, author and journalist. He has written on Art Deco, and also a biography of John Betjeman, Sir John Betjeman. Life and work Hillier was born in Redhill, Surrey, where the family liv ...

drew more comparisons in ''

The Spectator ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world. It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''The ...

'' (London) with other poems by Cawein; he compared Cawein's lines "...come and go/Around its ancient portico" with Eliot's "...come and go/talking of Michelangelo." Cawein's "Waste Land" appeared in the January 1913 issue of

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

magazine ''Poetry'' (which also contained an article by

on London poets). Cawein's poetry allied his love of nature with a devotion to earlier English and European literature, mythology, and classical allusion. This certainly encompassed much of T. S. Eliot's own interest, but whereas Eliot was also seeking a modern language and form, Cawein strove to maintain a traditional approach. Although he gained an international reputation, he has been eclipsed as the genre of poetry in which he worked became increasingly outmoded.

Works

Volumes of poetry

*''Blooms of the Berry'', J. P. Morton (Louisville, KY), 1887. *''The Triumph of Music and Other Lyrics'', J. P. Morton, 1888. *''Accolon of Gaul, with Other Poems'', J. P. Morton, 1889. *''Lyrics and Idyls'', J. P. Morton, 1890. *''Days and Dreams: Poems'', Putnam (New York and London), 1891. *''Moods and Memories: Poems'', Putnam, 1892. *''Red Leaves and Roses: Poems'', Putnam, 1893. *''Poems of Nature and Love'', Putnam, 1893. *''Intimations of the Beautiful, and Poems'', Putnam, 1894. *''The White Snake and Other Poems, Translated from the German into the Original Meters'', J. P. Morton, 1895. *''Undertones'', Copeland & Day (Boston), 1896. *''The Garden of Dreams'', J. P. Morton, 1896. *''Shapes and Shadows: Poems'', R. H. Russell (New York, NY), 1898. *''Idyllic Monologues: Old and New World Verses'', J. P. Morton, 1898. *''Myth and Romance, Being a Book of Verse'', Putnam, 1899. *''One Day & Another: A Lyrical Eclogue'', Badger (Boston), 1901. *''Weeds by the Wall: Verses'', J. P. Morton, 1901. *''Kentucky Poems'', Dutton (New York, NY), 1902. *''A Voice on the Wind and Other Poems'', J. P. Morton, 1902. *''The Vale of Tempe: Poems'', Dutton, 1905. *''Nature-Notes and Impressions'', Dutton, 1906. *''The Poems of Madison Cawein''. Volumes 1–5. Small, Maynard (Boston), 1907. *''An Ode Read August 15, 1907, at the Dedication of the Monument Erected at Gloucester, Massachusetts, in Commemoration of the Founding of Massachusetts Bay Colony in the Year Sixteen Hundred and Twenty-Three'', J. P. Morton, 1908. *''New Poems'', Grant Richards (London), 1909. *''The Giant and the Star: Little Annals in Rhyme'', Small, Maynard, 1909. *''The Shadow Garden (A Phantasy) and Other Plays'', Putnam, 1910. *''Poems by Madison Cawein'', Macmillan (New York, NY), 1911. *''The Poet, the Fool and the Faeries'', Small, Maynard, 1912. *''The Republic, A Little Book of Homespun Verse'', Stewart & Kidd (Cincinnati), 1913. *''Minions of the Moon: A Little Book of Song and Story'', Stewart & Kidd, 1913. *''The Poet and Nature and the Morning Road'', J. P. Morton, 1914. *''The Cup of Comus: Fact and Fancy'', Cameo Press (New York, NY), 1915.

Musical versions

* In 2017

Mad Duck Mad, mad, or MAD may refer to: Geography * Mad (village), a village in the Dunajská Streda District of Slovakia * Mád, a village in Hungary * Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport, by IATA airport code * Mad River (disambiguation), several ri ...

recorded a version of ''At the sign of the skull'' and ''City of darkness'' in the album ''Braggart stories and dark poems''

Brochures

*''Let Us Do the Best We Can'', P.F. Volland (Chicago), 1909. *''So Many Ways'', P. F. Volland, 1911. *''The Message of the Lilies'', P. F. Volland, 1913. *''Christmas Rose and Leaf'', Forest Craft Guild (New York), 1913. *''Whatever the Path'', Forest Craft Guild, 1913. *''The Days of Used to Be'', Forest Craft Guild, 1913.

Anthology contributions

*''Library of Southern Literature'', edited by Edwin Anderson Alderman and Joel Chandler Harris, Martin & Hoyt (New Orleans), 1907 *''Modern American Poetry: A Critical Anthology'', 4th revised edition, edited by Louis Untermeyer, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1930.

References

* * ''A Literary History of Kentucky'' (University of Tennessee Press, 1988), William S. Ward *"Madison Cawein." ''Contemporary Authors Online''. Detroit: Gale, 2003. ''Gale Biography In Context''. Web. 29 December 2010. *Rothert, Otto Arthur. ''The Story of a Poet: Madison Cawein''. Louisville, KY: J.P. Morton & Co., 1921. * ''Times Literary Supplement'', letter from Robert Ian Scott (8 December 1995). *The University of Chicago Library. "American Poetry Full-Text Database Bibliography." Chadwyck-Healey, Inc. Web. 29 December 2010.

External links

* * *
Bevis Hillier on Eliot and Cawein (pdf)Poems and information about Madison Julius Cawein
at Poemist
Books of Cawein's poems onlinePoems, selected by Cawein (1911)
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Picturography

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cawein, Madison 1865 births 1914 deaths Poets from Kentucky Writers from Louisville, Kentucky Burials at Cave Hill Cemetery 19th-century American poets 20th-century American poets American male poets 20th-century American male writers Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters