Leo Kennedy | |
|---|---|
| Born | John Leo Kennedy (1907-08-22)August 22, 1907 Liverpool, England |
| Died | 2000(2000-00-00) (aged 92–93) Pasadena, California, U.S. |
| Pen name | Arthur Beaton, Leonard Bullen, William Crowl, Helen Laurence, Edgar Main, Peter Quinn |
| Language | English |
| Citizenship | British subject |
| Genre | poetry, social criticism |
| Notable works | The Shrouding |
| Spouse |
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| Children |
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John Leo Kennedy (August 22, 1907 – 2000) was aCanadian poet and critic, who in the 1920s and 1930s was a member of theMontreal Group ofmodernist poets.The Canadian Encyclopedia says of him that "Kennedy helped change the direction ofCanadian poetry in the 1920s."[1]
Born inLiverpool, Kennedy emigrated with his family – his father, John Kennedy, aship chandler, and his mother, Lillian Bullen – to Canada in 1912.[2] Leo Kennedy quit school at 14, after having to repeat Grade 6;[citation needed] "he took to the sea and held a variety of jobs."[1] In the mid-1920s Kennedy was writing an advice column for theMontreal Star under the name "Helen Laurence."[citation needed]
In the early 1920s he was writing anadvice column for theMontreal Star.[3] At the same time, "he was admitted to theMontreal campus ofLaval (now theUniversité de Montréal), where he studied English for two years."[citation needed]
"While working at various jobs, Kennedy became affiliated withLeon Edel and others in the McGill Group" or Montreal Group.[2] Becoming a "friend ofA. J. M. Smith,F. R. Scott,A. M. Klein, and Leon Edel, he contributed to theMcGill Literary Supplement and then to its replacements, theMcGill Fortnightly Review, andCanadian Mercury."[1]
After theFortnightly ceased in 1927, Kennedy and Scott founded theCanadian Mercury in 1928, which put out seven issues through 1929: "though short-lived, the magazine published important work by the editors (including Kennedy's manifesto 'The Future of Canadian Literature') as well as by Smith and A.M. Klein."[3]
TheCrash of 1929 destroyed theMercury, but Kennedy continued to write and publish. "During theDepression he regularly contributed poems, short stories, and essays to theCanadian Forum andSaturday Night."[3] By that time he was a family man, with a wife, Miriam, and a son, Stephen.[4]
In 1931 Kennedy became friends with novelist and poetRaymond Knister when the latter moved to Montreal. Kennedy and Knister began planning an anthology, similar to Knister'sCanadian Short Stories (1928), of Canadianmodernist poetry.[5] Knister died the next year, but Scott and Smith got involved in the project. In 1933, at the urging of poetE.J. Pratt,Macmillan publishedThe Shrouding," Kennedy's one poetry book. It was dedicated to Knister.[3] In 1936 the anthology of modernist poetry was published asNew Provinces: Poems by several authors. Kennedy, represented with ten poems, was one of six authors.[citation needed]
By the time he appeared with Smith, Scott, Klein, Pratt, andRobert Finch inNew Provinces in 1936, Kennedy had repudiated his early work and was seeking a poetry that could contribute to social and political reform."[3] He had become "part of a politically active circle of intellectuals in Montreal and Toronto in the 1930s"[1] and a frequent contributor to leftist magazines. He joined the editorial committee ofNew Frontier (1936–38), a journal ofleft-wing opinion and culture, and contributed essays and verse.[3]
At the same time, some "of hissocialist writings were publishedpseudonymously, for he was working throughout the 1930s foradvertising agencies in Montreal,Toronto, andDetroit."[citation needed] Pseudonyms he was known to use include Arthur Beaton, Leonard Bullen, William Crowl, Edgar Main, and Peter Quinn)"[2]
AfterNew Frontier closed down, Kennedy "left for theUnited States to pursue an advertising career,"[3] while "continuing to publish reviews and witty verse pseudonymously"[2] "In 1942 he moved to aChicago agency and [also] freelanced as a book reviewer for theChicago Sun."[citation needed]
Kennedy spent the rest of his working life as a copywriter in the United States,[1] eventually settling inNorwalk, Connecticut, where he served as a staff writer forReader's Digest.[citation needed]
The Shrouding "was reprinted in 1975 with an introduction by Leon Edel, who described Kennedy as the sprightly leader of Canada's ‘graveyard school’ ofmetaphysical poetry." Kennedy's "short story ‘A priest in the family’, first published inThe Canadian Forum (April 1933), was reprinted inGreat stories of the world (1972)."[citation needed]
In 1976 Kennedy "returned to his literary friends in Montreal," where he lived for ten years with his daughter-in-law.[citation needed] There "he worked on literary memoirs he was not to finish,"[3] spending his time writing "poems for children, satiric verse, and broadsides."[1]
Kennedy eventually retired "to a hotel inPasadena,California." He reportedly died in 2000.[citation needed]
Kennedy's "one volume,The Shrouding (1933, rpt. 1975), reveals the modernist influence ofT.S. Eliot and A.J.M. Smith; traditional in form,metaphysical in technique andmotif."[2] The poetry is "marked by a fascination with death and symbolicresurrection."[1] "Under the influence of themetaphysical andmythic sensibilities of T.S. Eliot and SirJames Frazer, [Kennedy] wrote poems that sought salvation from the winter wasteland of death and oblivion by fusing Christian faith in the resurrection with the myth of renewal found in the order of nature: buried bones are like crocus bulbs awaiting the spring to sprout heavenward."[citation needed]
Kennedy later repudiated the poems of his first book, as "too unengaged with social issues."[2] "By 1936, when his poems were included in the modernist anthologyNew Provinces, he was already turning his back on much of what he began, writing committed criticism of social realities for radical periodicals"[citation needed]
In aNew Frontier article called "Direction for Canadian Poets," Leo "Kennedy pointed to the impotence of members of the McGill group because they were still preoccupied with the concerns of the twenties. Kennedy's article ends by describing a type of poetry that only came to prominence a decade later:"
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