Walter Lowenfels Papers

Walter Lowenfels (1897-1976), born in New York City, was an American poet, writer and longtime member of the Communist Party. He began writing poetry following World War I and published his first collection, Episodes & Epistles, in 1925. In 1926 Lowenfels fled to Paris to write and to escape a career in the family business. In 1930 he and Michael Fraenkel founded the Carrefour Press and published the pamphlet Anonymous: The Need for Anonymity, a manifesto in which they declared that anonymous publication was the only way to avoid artistic competition and alienation. A play by Lowenfels, USA with Music, was published anonymously by Carrefour, but a plagiarism suit brought by Lowenfels against George Gershwin in 1932 forced Carrefour and Lowenfels to reveal the author's identity. Carrefour Press continued to publish, but identified the authors of its books.

Lowenfels wrote more than a dozen books of poetry and edited almost as many, most of which expressed his political beliefs in one way or another. Lowenfels was a member of the Communist Party for most of his life and his editorial work for the Daily Workerkept him from his own writing from the late 1930's until 1953, when he was arrested and convicted for conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government. The charges were based solely on his membership in the Communist Party and the conviction was overturned in a matter of weeks. Although Lowenfels was recognized as a poet in his own right throughout his life, from the late 1950's until his death in 1976, he was best known as the pre-eminent American anthologist of the avant-garde. Many of his collections of poetry reflect his commitment to Marxism and opposition to political repression. Among his political anthologies are Where is Vietnam?(1967), In The Time of Revolution(1969), From the Belly of the Shark(1973), and For Neruda, for Chile(1975). Lowenfels died in Tarrytown, New York in 1976.

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Derived from the guide to a collection of Walter Lowenfels' papers at Washington University, St. Louis. http://library.wustl.edu/units/spec/manuscripts/mlc/lowenfels