RARE! “Renowned Vagabond Poet" Edward English Hand Signed 2.5X5 Card

Description: Up for auction "Poet" Edward English Hand Signed 2.5X5 Card. ES-7317E Edward H. English, a vaga bond poet, jewelry maker, wel fare recipient and optimist, was found dead last Friday in his home at 320 Jefferson Avenue, in Brooklyn's Bedford‐Stuyve sant section. His death was at tributed to natural causes. He was about 58 years old. Mr. English started writing poetry in 1957, and since then he had read his works to stu dents in hundreds of American colleges and to audiences in Canada, Scandinavia, Western’ Europe, North and West Africa and Central America. He put together a manuscript he titled “Nature's Creation, This is Edward H. English Life Story. Vagabond Poet.’ And he began by saying: “I was sitting in Brooklyn, N. Y., thinking about my life. I started writing poetry; I never called what I write poetry, the people call it poetry. I just write.” And he was a writer, not a reader. He mispronounced words, then spelled them the way he pronounced them and took little cognizance of the structures of grammar. But he did this consciously. “I don't read other authors,” he once said. “The only poetry I read is students’ poetry. These other poets are good and I don't want them to rub off on me and get into my work. I just want to be me.” Mr. English as he was, was a rumpled, bearded black man who wore a tam o'shanter and who believed that God was in everyone and everything. He said that he once owned a painting company in Chicago. It grossed about $50,000 a year. But he was uneasy with afflu ence and he moved to the West ;Coast for years of pot smoking and alcohol until, he said, “the fog lifted.” Mr. English returned to his birthplace, Selma, Ala., as the civil rights movement was heat ing up in the South. He be came a familiar figure around the offices of the Student Non violent Coordinating Commit tee. He moved out of Selma with $1 in his pocket to raise funds in behalf of S.N.C.C., for black families moved off the land they lived on because they registered to vote. He would accept enough money to live on and ask that large donations be sent back to Alabama. Editors’ Picks S.N.C.C. members also re member that in Alabama he had a soft and endearing way of raising funds for himself—10 cents, a cigarette or a cup of coffee at a time. Later, sometimes he was in vited to colleges, other times he would “appear.” Often the hat was passed, he said later, and he would move with a col lection of clippings from the local newspapers to the next campus. In this fashion he also went to Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Algeria, across the Sahara and on to Mali, Ghana, the Ivory Coast and other places. Everywhere he was optimistic. He wrote in “This Is Madrid,” “... Madrid/Will give you love/Spain/Will give you charity/Franco/Will give you hope/Peace my brother.” He was, at the same time, no stranger to life's hardships. “Life is nothing but a struggle/ Fore something you want/That is worthwhile/Now here is my struggle./I just want a little Gloria out of life.” Some people like weakness because they are weak he said, others who “meet people that are strong get stronger day by day.” Mr. English's poetry was neither racial nor protesting. Anticipation and Need Lately, while savoring the an ticipation of another travel stint or the sale of a manuscript, he found it necessary to receive public assistance. “I have to go down and do my little work next week,” he would tell a friend. “You'll know now they makes you do a work number for the little money they gives you.”

Price: 99.99 USD

Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida

End Time: 2024-12-26T10:27:19.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 USD