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Jack London - Sublimated Poet
by Michael Linnard
London was a Maverick. He was a professional writer and wrote for money. He could tell you the price of every word that any magazine or newspaper of the time would pay at any given situation. He played them all like a gambler strokes a deck. If you study his life carefully and the land/property he bought/built and businesses he got involved in, the 35 foot boat he had built and the ranch he built, you begin to understand that this was a man who needed to earn. I mean earn large amounts of money to fund his life. Borrowing plots or bits of verse was part of the process - which has plagued his memory and certainly in this country his reputation, but despite all this, outside of the USA it is undiminished. This was heavily weighted by the fact that he was Socialist, but strangely his agenda would seem quite acceptable to most Republican's today!! Simply put he was a man far, far ahead of his day - it must have been frustrating for him.
The fact that he wanted to be a poet and assiduously studied poetry for 3 years is testament to this aspiration and motivation that poetry had in his life. Regrettably, as many poets today realize, he could not make a living and understandably he gave up the full time pursuit of this goal and decided to concentrate on fiction and nonfiction, but never lost the poetic sensibilities. A fact that our book puts forward as the genesis of his writing style. We assert that he was essentially a poet who wrote fiction and nonfiction, not a writer of fiction and nonfiction who also wrote poetry. The fact that his books are still read today around the world is the self-referencing truth of this because of the wonderful lyrical prose, which has its derivation in his (self-taught) studies in classic prosody. Until our book few outside of Jack London scholars were aware of his poetic past or the full measure of his poetic output.
There was a great quote from a letter sent about the time he decided to be a writer "for money" circa 1900, where he said to his friend Anna Strunsky (with whom he co-wrote a book later):
"As to the box. Please take good care of the contents. And don’t mix them up, please. I haven’t written any poetry for months. Those you see are my experiments (studies in structure and meter) and though they be failures I have not surrendered. When I am financially secure, some day, I shall continue with them — unless I have prostituted myself beyond redemption."
In his last years he was beginning to fulfill this intention but died in 1916, after writing 51 books in the intervening year (UTTERLY REMARKABLE ACHIEVEMENT), plus 200 plus short stories, countless other pieces of journalism and reviews, plus responding to a staggering amount of letters and correspondence - possibly as high as 20,000 in a 12 month period. He produced 1,000 publishable words a day!!! He died at 40 years of age and literally worked himself to death. Regrettably for the world (whilst American, he was a true world writer, and there are few) his soul, as a poet, was left unfulfilled by his untimely death.
When you receive the book you will find that it has much more than just his poetry, it contains all the verse he put in his books; 127 of them (118 correctly attributed), inscriptions he wrote on the inside cover of his first editions given to his wife and two plays in verse, plus very interesting Appendixes and indexes.
BOOK REVIEWS
“The world knows Jack London the adventurer, Jack London the Klondike Argonaut, Jack London the scientific farmer, Jack London the social crusader, and—above all—Jack London the master story–teller. Now, thanks to the remarkable research of Dan Wichlan, the world will know Jack London the poet. Wichlan’s comprehensive collection provides invaluable testimony to yet another measure of this world-famous author’s extraordinary creative genius.”
— Earle Labor, Wilson Professor of American Literature, Centenary College of Louisiana.
“With publication of 'The Complete Poetry of Jack London' Dan Wichlan, an authority on the celebrated author, has rendered a singular service to the study of American Literature. ...Aside from the book’s obvious virtue of being complete and therefore unique, Wichlan’s introductory essay stands as a significant commentary into London’s poetic aspirations. Another commendable inclusion are the extracts from London’s personal logs that depict his study into the mechanics of poetic form. These are priceless glimpses into the workings of an author best known for works of prose – but prose that is infused with poetry.”
— Dale L. Walker, Editor of In a Far Country: Jack London’s Tales of the West, and other London studies.
“A groundbreaking and definitive work that will be welcomed by both general readers and scholars alike. Wichlan not only gathers the complete array of London’s published and unpublished poetry, he examines the poetry of others embedded in London’s writings. Crisp and apt annotations throughout reveal London’s passion for language, as well as his astute business sense. A modest title covers immense riches.”
— Clarice Stasz, Professor Emerita of History, Sonoma State University, CA.
“Ascholarly tour de force, revealing Jack London as never before, this one of a kind study examining his passion for the power of poetry demands that we take a fresh look at an often under-appreciated writer and confirms the importance of his prose style as true art made with words.”
— Marc Goldsmith, Associate Professor of Humanities, Mitchell College, New London, CT
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