Twentieth Century Writers

William Butler Yeats Interviewed (Theatre Arts Magazine, 1924)

When the writer and editor Montrose J. Moses (1878 – 1934) got some quality time with the fifty-four year old poet and playwright William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939) they discussed Irish theater, contemporary poetry, the collective literary merits of their generation and a good deal more. Unlike their visits in earlier days, Yeats was by then a respected icon in the republic of letters (having been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature a year earlier).

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Jules Romains and THE DEATH OF NOBODY (Vanity Fair, 1915)

This very brief column appeared in Vanity Fair Magazine during the winter of 1915 as one element in the publicity campaign supporting the distribution of The Death of Nobody, Jules Romains’ (1885 – 1972) 1911 novel.

Prior to the First World War Romains was primarily known as a poet and founder (along with fellow poet Georges Chennevière) of Unanimisme, a movement that combined concept of international brotherhood with the psychological ideal involving a shared group consciousness. At the time of this printing, the novelist was serving in the French Army.

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Karl Shapiro, Poet (Yank Magazine, 1945)

In 1944, Karl Jay Shapiro (1913 – 2000) was pulling in the big-bucks as a U.S. Army Private stationed in New Guinea, but unlike most of the khaki-clad Joes in at least a ten mile radius, Shapiro had two volumes of poetry under his belt (Person Place and Thingstyle=border:none and Place of Love) in addition to the memory of having been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. In this short interview, he explains what a poet’s concerns should be and offers some fine tips for younger poets to bare in mind.

A year latter, while he was still in uniform, Shapiro would be awarded the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for poetry

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Karl Shapiro, Poet (Yank Magazine, 1945)

In 1944, Karl Jay Shapiro (1913 – 2000) was pulling in the big-bucks as a U.S. Army Private stationed in New Guinea, but unlike most of the khaki-clad Joes in at least a ten mile radius, Shapiro had two volumes of poetry under his belt (Person Place and Thingstyle=border:none and Place of Love) in addition to the memory of having been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. In this short interview, he explains what a poet’s concerns should be and offers some fine tips for younger poets to bare in mind.

A year latter, while he was still in uniform, Shapiro would be awarded the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for poetry

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Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon (Saturday Review of Literature, 1932)

In 1932, one of the few English speaking fans of bull-fighting was given the task of reviewing Ernest Hemingway’s (1899 – 1961) Death in the Afternoonstyle=border:none, and came away thinking:

Ernest Hemingway, in the handling of words as an interpretation of life, is not a brilliant and ephemeral novillero, but a matador possessed of solid and even classic virtues.


Click here to read about Hemingway, the war correspondent.

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