The first large-scale contact between Australians and Americans occurred with the American entry into World War 2, and the use of Australia as a base for Pacific operations. Prior to this, the editors of several Australian literary journals had begun to build associations with their American literary counterparts. The arrival of American forces on Australian soil, and a more heightened awareness that resulted from the military alliance, accelerated a cultural shift of attention from the UK towards the US that paralled the current political re-orientation. Max Harris, one of the editors involved, later described the 1940s as :
The pioneer interpreter of Australian literature/society to America, Hartley Grattan, had visited Australia in 1936-38 and again briefly in 1940, gathering material for his Introducing Australia (1942), the first `serious' modern book on Australia by an American. But the little magazines of the 1940s were a phenomenon that developed in the wake of his visits, and his literary references mainly concern book publication. Grattan noted that `pro-American' in those early days was regarded as disloyal and `anti-British', and that `an "organic" relationship, which is a matter of culture and economics' was yet to be achieved3. Australian editors were engaged in equally pioneering work to that of Grattan, and Meanjin in particular recognised his contribution by frequently quoting him on Australian cultural life.
The sudden influx of troops to the South West Pacific in 1942 changed the way the nations perceived each other; when Grattan's Introducing Australia was published it was greeted by an American war correspondent as `a war-weapon of the mind'4. While all of the first moves toward increased contact came from Australia, the war engendered in Americans an interest in learning more about their new ally; many university courses in Commonwealth literature and history, and library collections of Australiana reflect this interest, stemming from the seminal dates 1942/1943. A new awareness also made Americans more responsive to Australian cultural overtures, so that they were willing to comply with requests for journal exchanges, for publication outlets for Australian writers in American journals, and for contributions from American writers for Australian publication.
The decade began with a new start in the publication of Australian little magazines. As the experimental (mostly political) magazines of the 1930s fell silent, in 15 heady months (September 1939 to December 1940), 7 new magazines started up, and others were to follow. Of the 5 that outlasted the war, Southerly and Meanjin have recently celebrated their 50th anniversaries, another (Angry Penguins ) has left an indelible mark on Australian culture. The other two have to date remained largely unexamined. Meanjin was founded in Brisbane, 1940, by Clem Christesen, and Southerly in Sydney, 1939 (Guy Howarth/A.G. Mitchell, editors); other journals of the 1940s were Angry Penguins (Adelaide, 1940-1946, Max Harris), Comment (Melbourne 1940-1947, Cecily Crozier) and Poetry: A Quarterly of Australian and New Zealand Verse (Adelaide, 1941-1947, Flexmore Hudson)5
While contacts with America were slow to develop, by 1945/46 they had reached a peak, and thereafter tailed off. During that period several networks were set up to encourage US publication in Australian little magazines, which published contributions from writers as diverse as Kenneth Rexroth, William Carlos Williams, Henry Miller and Langston Hughes. In fact, Australian magazines in the 1940s were more widely known in America than they were to be until the 1960s, when Australian nationalism was to coincide with a very different Australian-American wartime alliance.
Editorially, most of these new magazines were outspokenly nationalist in their outlook. Clem Christesen (Meanjin ) and Max Harris (Angry Penguins ) were the most internationalist of the newly emerging editors. Max jeered at the bush nationalism of the Jindyworobak school with which Clem had more sympathy - and Meanjin printed Max's `Dance, Little Wombat' on the subject - but they were alike in shunning narrowness and insularity. As each magazine developed its own voice, we can characterise them briefly: Angry Penguins, modernist, avant-garde, surrealist, apolitical; Meanjin, liberal, left-wing but not Stalinist, nor stylistically confined to social realism; Southerly, more traditional and academic, restricting its contributions to those of Australians or writers resident in Australia; Comment, like Angry Penguins, interested in art, less modernist in its approach; Poetry, inheriting much of the Jindyworoback nationalism, but developing its internationalism later in the decade. One feature of the early years of the 1940s was a constant monitoring in each magazine's review pages of the others' performance. This regular assessment helped to refine their policy, and establish their differences, not least in the minds of their readers.
Australian editors approached a diversity of American sources. Max had his 2 books reviewed in Poetry Chicago (No. 62, 1943), and at least as early as 1942 was corresponding with its editor Peter de Vries, and with Robert Penn Warren, then co-editor (with Cleanth Brooks) of Southern Review. Harris and Christesen were both in early contact with New Directions ' editor, James Laughlin of Norfolk, CT. Several hands reached back at them. An eagerness to learn more of Australia expressed itself in Pearl Strachan's letter to Meanjin, asking for Australian books to review for the Christian Science Monitor (No. 10 Spring 1942) (they reviewed Bernard O'Dowd and T. Inglis Moore.) Clem took the opportunity to solicit from her in return an essay on American poetry. Mary Owings Miller of Baltimore wrote to Comment, asking for Australian poets to submit their work to her Contemporary Poetry (No 13. October 1942) (Frank Kellaway is apparently the only one who responded). Meanjin (Autumn 1943, Vol. 2.1) published a list indicative of Clem Christesen's success on the American scene:
Whether through receiving material from the US, or welcoming the American soldier writers closer to hand, by 1943 Meanjin and Angry Penguins were taking on an increasingly international air, emphasised by the national identifications included against writers' names on their table of contents pages Both Meanjin and Comment issued subscription slips printed to take Australian pounds or American/Canadian dollars.
Karl Shapiro was the most accomplished of the soldier-poets, his distinction acknowledged by an impressive series of awards.6 He arrived in Melbourne in 1942, and began his Australian publication with Crozier's Comment, the July issue of that year including his poems and an announcment of the publication of his (second) book by Comment Press (The Place of Love, 1942), reviewed in Comment by Max Harris.7 He appeared in Angry Penguins in 1943, which announced that he would co-edit with Max Harris a special Australian anthology for New Directions (unfortunately, this was never compiled.) There are 2 letters on Angry Penguins stationery in the Poetry (Chicago) archive, signed by Mary Martin (undated, but presumably 1942) one telling them that Shapiro wished to help find an American publisher for a book of Harris's poetry, and that he recommended that Poetry should publish some; the other suggesting Penguins as Poetry (Chicago)'s Australian agent.8 Unfortunately, the files include no replies.
Southerly praised Shapiro's poetry in Penguins, and thereafter were to publish him (he was the only American serviceman whose work they published during the war.) Shapiro meanwhile was sent to Sydney, and from there, to Brisbane, where he met Clem Christesen, and subsequently began to appear in Meanjin. After service in New Guinea he returned to the US, where he was first of all poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, and then editor of Poetry (Chicago). He did not return to Australia, and allowed many of his Australian connections to lapse, though he continued to correspond with friends Eleanor and Eric Dark.9 His final publication in an Australian journal was the long poem, `News to Australia', dedicated to the Darks (Meanjin, Vol. 5, No 3, 1946), which from a postwar America movingly and eloquently sees the effect of distance to protect Australia from `the tourist, the salesman,/The screaming comedian, the book of the week' and counsels Australia to `Befriend your insularity, be far,/Hug the antipodes, survive.'
The other soldier poet closely involved in local publishing during his service was Harry Roskolenko. He arrived in Sydney in 1943, and was stationed there until late 1944, when he too departed for New Guinea. Harry's career also seemed to be in the ascendent - a self-educated product of New York's Lower East Side, he had published in journals in America and England, and knew just about anybody who was anybody in New York, and some of the somebodies in London and Paris. His career followed a different course to that of Karl Shapiro. He worked mostly as a free lance journalist and travel writer, but he retained his contact with Australia, visiting altogether 8 times, publishing most of his poetry in Australia; he edited an American edition of Quadrant in 1972 10 Roskolenko first contacted Max Harris, frequently appeared in Angry Penguins, and he, too, published a book of poetry in Australia (Second Summary, Reed & Harris, 1944); he also was published by Meanjin. A temperamental affinity with Max Harris, probably fuelled by their very difference backgrounds, led to a close and lasting association. When Roskolenko returned to New York in 1945 he acted as US agent for Reed & Harris and Angry Penguins, and he after his return to Australia in 1946 he worked at their editorial offices in Melbourne until the date of their closure. His final Australian visit was made in 1972, when he came on a Commonwealth Literary Fellowship to write a memoir of his Australian connections, 1943-1972. 11
In 1943 Meanjin published poetry by Oscar Williams, Clifford Gessler, Robert Peel, Mary Owings Miller - sometimes original contributions, sometimes reprinted material from American journals. Angry Penguins successfully followed the same course; No. 4, 1943, included Dylan Thomas's `Hunchback in the Park', sent by James Laughlin, New Direction.s 㺌 (Penguins announced themselves agents for New Directions in December 1944). Harris was also publishing Americans, including Robert Penn Warren and Vince Ferrini. The issue that contained Ferrini also contained the poems of Ern Malley, the hoax of McAuley and Stewart. Some of the Ern Malley poems were simultaneously to have their first American publication in an Australian edition of Voices (ed. Harold Vinal). This Australian issue was compiled by Roskolenko and poet/journalist Lis Lambert (Sydney agent for Penguins ), with some editorial advice from both Meanjin and Angry Penguins. Their choice of representative poets was wilful, for it was undeniably skewed in the direction of Melbourne and Adelaide (or anywhere other than Sydney). Despite the fact that the two compilers were working from Sydney, they did not include any work by Slessor, Fitzgerald, Stewart (either Douglas or Harold), McAuley (unless one counts the Malley poems, of course), McCrae or Howarth; perhaps it was as well that in the flurry of revelation of the Ern Malley hoax, Voices passed almost unnoticed, except for a review in Meanjin by Dorothy Auchterlonie (included in Voices as Dorothy Green.)13
By war's end strong Australian/US bonds were in place. The American soldier-poets had returned home, but original material and reprints from American journals continued to appear in greater numbers. Australian editors were actively seeking to raise American awareness of Australian writing through the medium of exchange copies, and by acting as agents for the sale of US magazines.14 Clem Christesen of Meanjin was corresponding from 1944 with William (Bill) Van O'Connor, (later the founding editor of American Quarterly ) and O'Connor wrote articles for him on Thomas Mann, and on Gide. Christesen's letters detail his contacts with American writers - including Spencer, Williams, Davidson, Gessler, Smith - and his desire establish others. Meanwhile, the activities of Harry Roskolenko in New York as agent/publicist for Angry Penguins proved that there was no substitute for an agent in place.
For a guaranteed minimum of 4 pounds (AU) a week, and a 10% commission on his sales, and for work that John Reed quite reasonably expected occupy him for 2 days a week at most, Roskolenko took over the agency from the Gotham Book Mart and Wittenborn and Co. He was selling Reed & Harris books, arranging contributions to Penguins, and promoting journal exchanges. He was remarkably successful, as a list of his exchange arrangements shows: Arizona Quarterly, Chimera: A Rough Beast (NYC), Circle (Berkeley), Interim (Seattle), New Directions , Rocky Mountain Review (Brewster Ghiselin, Utah) were to advertise in Angry Penguins. The editor of Arizona Quarterly (Harry Behn) welcomed an exchange of advertisements, `I think it would be fine to gather a few readers in Australia', and requested an article about `the literary renaissance in Australia' and `some contributions from down under.'15 During the same period Meanjin was advertising Poetry Chap-Book (NYC), Quarterly Review of Literature and Briarcliff Quarterly.
Roskolenko was also doing well with the writers : James Farrell, Kenneth Rexroth, Harold Rosenberg, George Leite - and through him, Henry Miller - appeared in Penguins. So did Dilys Laing, who, though she had never seen a copy, thought that `ANGRY PENGUINS is the most appealing title in the world.'16 The Canadian market proved more difficult than the American: Irving Taylor wrote from Montreal that Customs had refused to release the package sent to him (`I caught a glimpse of an issue and it fairly made my mouth water. ... Quite frankly, I had no idea my Australian cousins were up to anything like that.')17 But without proper licencing permission, and the Customs official whisked them away. A similar problem with Australian Customs led to a rather lurid statement on the cover of Briarcliff Quarterly in January 1946 - `Australia Burns Magazines!'
George Leite's Circle proved the link to the most notorious of the Angry Penguins Americans, Henry Miller. This was not an excerpt from his erotic trilogy, The Rosy Crucifixion, but an essay, `Murder the Murderer', a passionately anti-war tract. (Its style may be gauged by the Library of Congress subject classifications: World War, 1939-1945 : Sermons). This was published in book form by Reed & Harris, 194418. George Leite, described by Miller biographers as a taxi-driver who was one of Henry Miller's `acolytes', also wrote a `California commentary' for the Angry Penguins Broadsheet, No 4 (April 1946.) Early in 1946 Leite ordered copies of Harris's novel, The Vegetative Eye, and Angry Penguins, for sale in California.19
Roskolenko's influence also showed in Briarcliff Quarterly, publishing an article, `Notes on Australian Literature' (July 1945 (Vol. 2, 6) ). This was mostly a simplistic overview, highly critical of both the `bush nationalism' of the Jindyworobaks and the cautious academic tone of Southerly. Flexmore Hudson and Guy Howarth wrote rebuttals - Hudson's a 3 page `Australian Letter' that ranged across the effect of the A-bomb, licencing restrictions and the Commonwealth Literary Fund, before lighting into Roskolenko on the subject of his comments; it ended with a lusty swipe at the ill-fated issue of Voices. Hudson's Poetry, for the last year of its life it carried the subtitle `The Australian International Quarterly of Verse.' During the war years its policy had been to publish Australian and New Zealand contributions; its year of internationalism very creditably drew American writers of such standing as William Carlos Williams and Langston Hughes.
Postwar publishing in Australia was bedevilled by a variety of problems: currency restrictions, heavy import duties, tariff restrictions, and a printing industry affected by strikes and paper and power shortages. Contacts were increasingly reduced to a narrowing one-way street. By the end of 1947 Comment, Poetry (Australia) and Angry Penguins had gone out of publication; Southerly persevered with its policy of domestic publication, leaving Meanjin as the only internationalist-minded journal. But Meanjin's American content was to fall away to almost nil by 1950, to be replaced by an increasing European orientation.
As these Australian approaches fell off, American little magazines were largely without Australian content; the exceptions were writers like John Manifold, whose connections were individually forged and maintained. Texas Quarterly, Summer 1962 (vol.5, no.2) (edited by Harry Ransom and Joseph Jones) and Literary Review, Fairleigh Dickinson University (Winter, 1963/1964) (edited by S.S. Brown, of the Australian News and Information Bureau) published Australian issues, but the energy of the wartime contacts had, rather sadly, been permitted to lapse. All of the Australian poets in Joan Kirkby's The American Model their individual discovery in the 1960s of the work of contemporary American poets;20 Australian writers of an earlier generation had been part of a movement that, by the efforts of editors with a pioneering vision, had brought contemporary American poets into Australian journals in significant numbers for the very first time.
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NOTES:
1 This paper is in the nature of a report on work in progress; the final paper will be considerably longer and more detailed in its treatment of `literary alliances.' P.
2. Introduction, Harry Roskolenko, American Civilisation. Melbourne: National Press, 1970.
3 C. Hartley Grattan, Introducing Australia, NY : John Day, 1942, 276.
4 Ben Robertson, review, N.Y. Herald Tribune Books, quoted on dust jacket of first edition.
5 John Tregenza, Australian Little Magazines 1923-1954: Their role in forming and reflecting literary trends. Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia, 1964, 54. The `wartime fertility' of little magazines is attributed by Tregenza to stringent import restrictions of books and magazines, and the effect of the tension produced by the war.
6 In 1942 he received 2 Poetry (Chicago) awards, in 1943 the Contemporary Poetry prize, in 1944 an American Academy of Arts and Letters grant, and in 1945 the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his V-Letter and Other Poems (written while on service in New Guinea).
7 A letter to his fiancee, Evelyn Katz, expresses Shapiro's appreciation of Max Harris's criticism. Special Collections, University of Maryland, College Park, Shapiro mss.
8 Special Collections, University of Chicago, Poetry (Chicago) files, Series 2 (Box 4:15)
9 Shapiro's letters to them were placed in the National Library of Australia's manuscript collection by Eleanor Dark in 1975.
10 In 1956 he returned to Australia on a motor scooter which he had ridden from Italy - the resulting Poet on a Scooter was one of his most entertaining and successful books.
11 The unpublished manuscript, `When the Bottle's Bloody Empty, Pet', is held by the National Library of Australia. For a detailed examination of the Rosekolenko/Harris connection, see my `Ern Malley: A Postscript', Australian Literary Studies (forthcoming).
12 In the autobiographical When I was last on Cherry Street, Roskolenko tells how in the 1930s Henry Treece, the British apocalyptic poet, sent him Thomas's poems, and he then introduced them to Edmund Wilson, of Partisan Review (for whom he reviewed.)
13 Meanjin, Vol. 4, no. 2 (1945), 146-147
14 Special Collections, Syracuse University, W.V. O'Connor papers,
15 Letter to Harry Roskolenko, 8.i.1946 . Special Collections, Boston University, Roskolenko papers,
16 Letter to Harry Roskolenko, 26.v.1945 . Special Collections, Boston University, Roskolenko papers,
17 Letter to Harry Roskolenko, 6.vi.1945 . Special Collections, Boston University, Roskolenko papers,
18 It was simultaneously published in the US: Philadelpha: Walton press, 1944; Berkeley: Bern Porter, 1944
19 Letter from John Reed says he has sent 30 copies (19.i.1945),and earlier letters ( 30.ix.1944, 19.i.1945) refer to sending 200 copies of the Malley book (AP, Winter, 1944), and sending 300-400 copies of the new (December) Angry Penguins Harry Roskolenko papers, Syracuse University. also letters from George Leite , Harry Roskolenko papers, Boston University
20 Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1982