Poet, Editor, Anarchist

Irish-born poet, Lola Ridge (1873–1941), was a dynamic figure in New York literary and anarchist circles of the early twentieth century. A talented poet, she invested time and energy in her creative work, from poems depicting life in the Lower East Side, published as The Ghetto and Other Poems (1918) to the late, ambitious Dance of Fire (1935). Ridge was for a time involved in the New York Ferrer Center and associated Modern School and, from this experience, developed a reputation as a committed, if sometimes controversial, arts organiser and magazine editor. The networks she established when working at the Ferrer Center and during her time with the magazines Others (1918–19) and Broom (1922–23) were indicative of the experimental energies of the New York literary scene and of Ridge's place within it. This article explores these connections and their role in Ridge's evolving artistic life.KEYWORDS: Twentieth-century poetrywomen poetsNew Yorkmodernismanarchismliterary magazines Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Virginia Woolf, quoted in Battershill and Peat, “Introduction,” 4.2 Delsandro, “Introduction,” 1–18.3 Lola Ridge’s papers are held in the Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History at Smith College, Massachusetts. Poem drafts and correspondence in the collection relate chiefly to the last decade of the poet’s life. Daniel Tobin addresses the problematic handling of Ridge’s literary estate in his introduction to Ridge, To the Many, Collected Early Works, 30–1.4 Marek, “Magazines, Presses, and Salons in Women’s Modernism,” 63.5 See Stansell, “Writer Friends,” 178–222.6 Ridge, The Ghetto and Other Poems. Further references to this text will use Daniel Tobin’s edition of Ridge’s early work, To the Many: Collected Early Work.7 Ridge’s early publishing history is discussed in Leggott’s “The First Life” and Svoboda, Anything That Burns You, 17–61 passim.8 Svoboda, Anything That Burns You, 9.9 Lola Ridge, Diary. Lola Ridge Papers, Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History at Smith College, Massachusetts.10 Svoboda, Anything That Burns You, 10–13.11 Svoboda argues that the seeds of Ridge’s left-wing politics were sown when she was still in New Zealand, through her experience of the mining communities there, and of the legislation brought forward by premier Richard Seddon. Svoboda, Anything That Burns You, 17–18.12 See “Chronology,” in Lola Ridge, To the Many, 35–7.13 Michelle Leggott questions the elision of this aspect of Ridge’s life both from her own public persona in modernist New York and from subsequent critical discussion of her oeuvre. Leggott, “The First Life,” n.pag. See also Leggott, “Lola Ridge Journal Publications 1892–1920,” 119–28. Ridge published in the Overland Monthly and in Gunther’s Magazine when in San Francisco.14 The first reprint that Leggott notes is “The Te Katipo Extended” which Ridge contributed to Overland Monthly in San Francisco in 1908, the year following her arrival there. Other reprints include: “The Dream Man” (Ainslee’s) and “Driving the Cattle Home” (New Magazine). Leggott, n.pag. Daniel Tobin notes the appearance of “Voices of the Bush,” under the new title of “Under Song,” in The Ghetto. Tobin, “An Unfinished Tower,” 71. Tobin also includes the text of Verses (1905) in an appendix to To the Many, 303–79.15 Avrich, Anarchist Voices. See also Svoboda, Anything that Burns You, 63–9.16 Goldman, Living My Life, loc.6078–6576.17 Ibid., loc.8277.18 Avrich, The Modern School Movement, 36.19 Ridge, Sun-Up and Other Poems. Further references to this text will use Daniel Tobin’s edition of Ridge’s early work, To the Many.20 Svoboda, Anything That Burns You, 71; Leggott, “Lola Ridge’s Journal Publications,” 124.21 Avrich, The Modern School Movement, 83. Goldman, Living My Life22 Peter Quatermain, quoted in Tobin, “Modernism, Leftism, and the Spirit,” 66.23 Avrich, The Modern School Movement, 92.24 Since it was closely linked to the activities of the Modern School movement, the magazine was an inherently collaborative endeavor, in contrast to literary journals that were primarily shaped by individual editorial vision. Later editors included Leonard Abbott, Harry Kelly and Carl Zigrosser. See Avich, The Modern School Movement, 161.25 Most was a key figure in the German anarchist movement in New York in the final decades of the nineteenth century. See Goyens, “Johann Most and the German Anarchists,” loc.516.26 Wolosky, “Public Women, Private Men,” 682.27 Goyens, ed., Radical Gotham:, 53.28 Sallitto was a Sicilian anarchist living in Brooklyn. Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 166. See also Bencivenni, “Fired by the Ideal,” 49–66.29 Hackett, “Lola Ridge’s Poetry,” n.pag.30 Kay Boyle in McAlmon and Boyle, Being Geniuses Together, 1920–1930, 17.31 Ridge, To the Many, 44–5.32 Ibid., 52.33 Ibid., 65.34 Ibid., 49.35 Ibid., 70.36 Ibid., 65.37 Kreymborg, Troubador, 484.38 Scott, “Introduction,” 3.39 Goldman, quoted in Hollis, “Emma Goldman among the Avant-Garde,” 132.40 Bradshaw, “Fantasies of Belonging, Fears of Precarity,” 161.41 Russell McDonald notes the evolution of Romantic and Victorian instances of artistic collaboration between the sexes towards a more radical modernist vision, in which such joint work becomes necessary for the re-vivification of art. McDonald, Modernist Literary Collaborations between Women and Men.42 Berke, Women Poets on the Left, 32.43 Hackett, “Lola Ridge’s Poetry,” n.pag.44 Tobin points out the increasing hostility to the political Left in the US in the decades following the end of the Second World War, as well as the movement away from poetry as polemic. Tobin, “Introduction,” Lola Ridge, To the Many, 29–30.45 As Svoboda notes, this was written ten years before Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own”. Svoboda, Anything That Burns You, 5.46 Stansell, American Moderns, 46.47 Ibid., 76.48 Carol Pateman, quoted in Wolosky, “Public Women, Private Men,” 665.49 Ibid., 666.50 Stansell, American Moderns, 147–8.51 Miller, “Gender, Sexuality and the Modernist Poem,” 69.52 Reynolds, “Modernist Periodicals,” 126–7.53 Kenneth Rexroth, quoted in Churchill, “An Introduction to Others”.54 Miller, “Tongues ‘Loosened in the Melting Pot’,” 458.55 “Increasingly, critics are looking to the rapidly changing social and cultural milieux of the early twentieth century to situate gender issues within large-scale historical developments”. Burke, “Getting Spliced,” 117.56 Miller, “Tongues ‘Loosened in the Melting Pot’,” 460.57 Svoboda, Anything That Burns You, 128.58 Ibid., 130.59 Mabel Dodge, quoted in Strausbaugh, The Village, 86.60 Lyon, “Sociability in the Metropole,” 691.61 Ibid., 691.62 McLoughlin, ed., The Modernist Party, loc.288.63 Miller, “Tongues ‘Loosened in the Melting Pot’,” 466.64 Maun, Mosaic of Fire, loc.1352.65 Ibid., loc.1586.66 Ibid., loc.1267.67 Wheeler, “Lola Ridge’s Pivotal Editorial Role at Broom,” 288.68 Ibid., 284.69 Loeb, The Way It Was, 143.70 Leggott, “The First Life,” n.pag.71 Ridge, To the Many, 161.72 See Maun, Mosaic of Fire, loc.502.73 Ridge, “In Harness,” 224.74 Ibid., 224.75 Ibid., 225.76 Ridge, “Reveille,” 228.77 Bratton,“Strange Symbols to the New Dawn,” 387.78 Stansell, American Moderns, 149.79 Ridge, To the Many, 40.80 Berke, Women Poets on the Left, 40.81 Ridge, To the Many, 90.82 Ibid., 90.83 Ibid., 91.84 Ibid., 92.85 Ridge, “The Tidings,” 134.86 Ridge doesn’t engage with the complex relationship between constitutional nationalism and the physical force movement in Ireland. Her misspelling of Kevin Barry’s name as “Kelvin Barry” suggests that she was more interested in his symbolic potential than the detailed facts of his case. Frederick M. Binder and David M. Reimers note Irish-American support for the Easter Rising: “Shortly after the Easter uprising, a gathering of 3,000 New York Irish hailed the rebellion and thanked Germany for supporting the cause of Irish freedom”. Binder and Reimers, All the Nations Under Heaven, 151.87 Arendt, Between Past and Future, 245.88 Ridge, “To Larkin,” 233.89 Ridge, quoted in Berke, Women Poets on the Left, 53.90 Ridge, Light in Hand, 95.91 His name was later cleared when another man confessed to the murder, but he was not officially pardoned until 1986. Berke, Women Poets on the Left, 50.92 Anderson, My Thirty Years’ War, 149.93 Cary Nelson, quoted in Berke, 22–3

Art · Art history · Cartography · Geography · Media studies · Ridge · Sociology · American and British Literature Analysis · Anarchism and Radical Politics · Poetry Analysis and Criticism · History

• The Modern School Movement

  Paul Avrich•Modern School Movement•1980

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• Anarchist Voices

  Open Access•Paul Avrich, Paul H Avrich•Anarchist Voices•1996

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• Public Women, Private Men

  Shira Wolosky•Signs: Journal of Women in…•2003

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• Getting Spliced

  Open Access•Carolyn Burke•American Quarterly•1987

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