Showing posts with label The Gypsy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Gypsy. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

George Elliston, editor of The Gypsy poetry magazine

"... a reporter who was tough as nails and could spit the same."
-- George Elliston as described by Kevin Grace in Cincinnati's Literary Heritage (History Press, 2021)
Sun, Mar 24, 1935 – 24 · The Birmingham News (Birmingham, Alabama) · Newspapers.com
George Elliston (1883-1946) founded and edited The Gypsy all poetry magazine in Cincinnati, Ohio. Elliston's Gypsy published two poems by Kansas native Clare Harner, "Immortality" (December 1934) and Where You Go (June 1936). Clare Harner's Immortality is nowadays more popularly known by its first line "Do not stand by my grave and weep" or "Do not stand at my grave and weep." 

From the Birmingham AL News, March 24, 1935:
... George Elliston, an Ohio newspaper woman and poet with a delightful personality, will speak on poetry and read some of her poems. Miss Elliston has gained wide recognition for her poetry and through her newspaper work. Her poems have been printed in worthwhile anthologies, reprinted in the Literary Digest, set to music, used over radio, chosen for illumined motto cards, reproduced on “movie” screens and translated into Russian and German. In the Spring of 1928 she won in Vienna, with Ilse Huebner, a prize much coveted since the time of Bach by poets and composers, the Oesterreichische Music Pad Reichsverband award. 

She is owner and editor of the poetry journal Gypsy, which rates as one of the best poetry magazines on the market. She has a number of books of poetry to her credit and, in spite of her work as a poet and editor, she finds time to be a member of the news staff of The Cincinnati Times-Star. She writes news and features and is a syndicate writer for numerous papers.

Miss Elliston is past chairman of poetry for the League of American Pen Women and her many other activities are to be found in “Who’s Who in America.” During the Summer months Miss Elliston forgets all of these activities and retires to her estate of 15 acres, in the midst of which “Catalpa Cabin,” nestles, named for the huge catalpa which umbrellas it, and here in her studio, “Rhyme Hole,” she writes most of the lovely, haunting lyrics that have made her so well known....
Sun, Mar 24, 1935 – 24 · The Birmingham News (Birmingham, Alabama) · Newspapers.com
Link to George Elliston bio in The Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky:

https://books.google.com/books?id=Zc0eBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA299&lpg=PA299&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false

Monday, August 6, 2018

Where You Go

Sat, Aug 8, 1936 – 4 · The Central New Jersey Home News (New Brunswick, New Jersey) · Newspapers.com

WHERE YOU GO
By Clare Harner

I am tired of wandering;
I would have a fire
And I would have a window
Where I could view a spire.

I would have a cottage,
A dog, a Persian cat;
And I would have some chickens
And sparrows' friendly chat.

But I love your restless spirit . . .
You shall never know
That I would want a garden
Where yellow asters grow.

—From The Gypsy
Reprinted from The Gypsy poetry magazine, volume 12 (June 1936) page 15. This is the second of two poems by Clare Harner in The Gypsy. The first was Clare Harner's Immortality, published in the December 1934 issue.

Sunday, July 29, 2018

Immortality in Kansas City

Found this item too late for inclusion in my Notes and Queries article (forthcoming September 2018 but published online now). As explained therein, the reprinting of "Immortality" in the Kansas City Bar Bulletin Volume 15, Number 2 (December 1938) gave due credit on page 18 to
Clare Harner, in 'The Gypsy.' 
I did not guess how KC lawyer Samuel L. Trusty, the eulogist who recited "Clare Harner's beautiful little poem of 'Immortality'" at the funeral service for Benjamin D. Pugh, knew about The Gypsy: all poetry magazine where "Immortality" had appeared in the December 1934 issue. Turns out, Trusty could have copied or clipped it from the local newspaper. The entire poem was reprinted in the Kansas City Times (morning edition of the Kansas City Star) on Friday, February 8, 1935 and attributed, just as in the Kansas City Bar Bulletin more than three years later, to
Clare Harner, in "The Gypsy."
Kansas City Times (Kansas City, Missouri) - February 8, 1935
via GenealogyBank

IMMORTALITY. 

Do not stand
   By my grave, and weep.
I am not there,
   I do not sleep—

I am the thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints in snow,
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle, autumn rain,
As you awake with morning's hush,
I am the swift, up-flinging rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight,
I am the day transcending night.

Do not stand
   By my grave, and cry—
I am not there,
   I did not die.
Clare Harner, in "The Gypsy."
[As reprinted in the Kansas City Times on February 8, 1935.]