American Poetry Recovery
2 total works
Edwin Rolfe (1909-54) is best known as the poet laureate of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, the Americans who volunteered to help defend the elected Spanish government during its 1936-39 civil war. His career began in the revolutionary Left in New York in the 1920s and continued into the 1950s, when Rolfe wrote searing poetry attacking the McCarthy-era witch-hunts.
This is the collected work of a major, versatile American poet passionately engaged with everything from the Holocaust and the Spanish Civil War to his love for New York City and his wife. The editors argue that his long poem sequence, Denmark Vesey, stands as the most ambitious poem about African American history ever written by a white American. Wicked Times includes previously unpublished poems and the first detailed account of Kramer's life, along with photos and extensive explanatory notes.