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Madison Julius Cawein (March 23, 1865 – December 8, 1914) was a poet from Louisville, Kentucky.
After graduating from Louisville Male High School in 1886, Cawein worked in a pool hall in Louisville as a cashier in Waddill's New-market, which also served as a gambling house.Perkins, David. A History of Modern Poetry: From the 1890s to the High Modernist Mode. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976: 102. He worked there for six years, saving his pay so he could return home to write.
His output was thirty-six booksRothert, Otto A. "Appendix A: List of Cawein's Books." The Story of a Poet: Madison Cawein;: His Intimate Life as Revealed by His Letters and Other Hitherto Unpublished Material, Including Reminiscences by His Closest Associates; also Articles from Newspapers and Magazines, and a List of His Poems. 1921. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1971: 457-466. "Madison Cawein." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 29 December 2010. and 1,500 poems.Rothert, Otto A. "Appendix B: Index to Poems in Cawein's Books." The Story of a Poet: Madison Cawein;: His Intimate Life as Revealed by His Letters and Other Hitherto Unpublished Material, Including Reminiscences by His Closest Associates; also Articles from Newspapers and Magazines, and a List of His Poems. 1921. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1971: 467-510. His writing presented Kentucky scenes in a language echoing Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats.Perkins, David. A History of Modern Poetry: From the 1890s to the High Modernist Mode. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976: 384. He soon earned the nickname the "Keats of Kentucky".Ellis, William E. The Kentucky River. The University Press of Kentucky, 2000: 153. He was popular enough that, by 1900, he told the Louisville Courier-Journal that his income from publishing poetry in magazines amounted to about $100 a month.Perkins, David. A History of Modern Poetry: From the 1890s to the High Modernist Mode. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976: 98.
In 1912 Cawein was forced to sell his Old Louisville home, St. James Court (a -story brick house built in 1901, which he had purchased in 1907), as well as some of his library, after losing money in the 1912 stock market crash. In 1914, the Authors Club of New York City placed him on their relief list. He died on December 8, 1914, and was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery.Rothert, Otto A. The Story of a Poet: Madison Cawein. Louisville, KY: John P. Morton & Company, 1921: 57.
In 1913, a year before his death, Cawein published a poem called "Waste Land" in a Chicago magazine which included Ezra Pound as an editor. Scholars have identified this poem as an inspiration to T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land, published in 1922 and considered the birth of modernism in poetry.Hitchens, Christopher. Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere. New York: Verso, 2001: 297.
The link between his work and Eliot's was pointed out by Canadian academic Robert Ian Scott in The Times Literary Supplement in 1995. The following year Bevis Hillier drew more comparisons in The Spectator (London) with other poems by Cawein; he compared Cawein's lines "...come and go/Around its ancient portico" with Eliot's "...come and go/talking of Michelangelo."
Cawein's "Waste Land" appeared in the January 1913 issue of Chicago magazine Poetry (which also contained an article by Ezra Pound on London poets).
Cawein's poetry allied his love of nature with a devotion to earlier English and European literature, mythology, and classical allusion. This certainly encompassed much of T. S. Eliot's own interest, but whereas Eliot was also seeking a modern language and form, Cawein strove to maintain a traditional approach. Although he gained an international reputation, he has been eclipsed as the genre of poetry in which he worked became increasingly outmoded.
Influence
Cawein is acknowledged as the first Kentucky poet to earn a national reputation. In April 1913, the Louisville Literature Club unveiled a bronze bust of the poet by J. L. Roop to the Louisville Free Public Library. The public ceremony included letters of praise from Wilbur D. Nesbit, William Morton Payne, James Whitcomb Riley, and others.Rothert, Otto A. The Story of a Poet: Madison Cawein. Louisville, KY: John P. Morton & Company, 1921: 116−117. After his death at a young age, however, he was mostly forgotten until a more recent revival recognized the farsightedness of his writing.Ellis, William E. The Kentucky River. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2000: 153.
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Volumes of poetry
Brochures
Anthology contributions
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