On the Death of E Simms Dark


We were saddened to be recently notified of the death of the preeminent poet of the Twentieth Century, E Simms Dark.

Dark, who preferred to be called, simply, “E,” was born in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan, to Noble and Susan Dark. No record of the year of his birth survives. A call to his fifteen year old niece, Delilah Crumple, proved unfruitful. “Look, he was fucking old, ok?” she told us.

Dark was always proud of his first name, telling friends and acquaintances that it stood for Enigmatic, Energetic, Elephantine and, inexplicably, Roberto. In reality, his parents named him E in accordance with their religious beliefs. In a 1927 interview with The Speakeasy Gazette, Susan Dark stated that long names are “the handiwork of the devil.”

Life for the young Dark was difficult. His father was a logger and his mother was a seamstress. Money was tight and, owing to the long Upper Peninsula winters, Dark was the sixth of twelve children. He, his siblings and his parents lived in a three room cabin on the shore of Lake Superior. Dark describes his childhood in his poem “Bologna Sandwich:”

The water off Whitefish Point
fifty-nine degrees on a summer day
gray as my thoughts
waves rippling between here and Canada

Iron ore boats steam past
freshwater sailors leer from the rail
at my sister, red hair and
seventeen years old
sunning in her mermaid costume

Home, four letter word meaning
“sleep five to a bed”
beans for breakfast
beans for lunch
three of my brothers
wrestling on the floor

What I wouldn’t give
for a bologna sandwich
with lettuce and cheese
on a covered platter
and for my father
to learn how to use
a condom

At age sixteen, Dark followed his father into the logging industry. He went to work for Wolverine Hardwoods, Inc., but was fired after only nine days of work for calling his foreman “jovial,” which was apparently taken as an insult.

Dark hopped a southbound train and ended up in Indianapolis where he scratched out a meager living as a janitor in an auto plant. He began writing, believing at first that he could make a name for himself by getting published in quotation books. “It didn’t occur to me at the time that most quotations were taken from larger works” Dark recalled in a 1962 interview with the New England Journal of Trout Fishing and the Written Word, “I submitted dozens of witty quotes to publishers and only received one reply.”

Dark’s one reply came from Jameson Fripper, renowned editor for the New York publishing giant, Happy House. “What in the hell is this, and who are you?” Wrote Fripper.

Upon receiving Fripper’s letter, Dark decided that he needed to move to New York to be near the great publishing houses. In may of 1917, spending what little he had saved in Indianapolis, Dark bought a train ticket and a notebook. Upon arriving in the great city, Dark encountered a Navy recruiter. Unaware that a war was going on, and thinking that the recruiter was offering him an apartment, Dark enlisted. He spent the next four years onboard a cruiser, serving as a yeoman.

Dark made the best of his sailing experience. He took time to write everyday. Dark’s experience as a yeoman, consisting mainly of composing and editing officer evaluations and communications, gave him an experience with words and ideas that he lacked growing up in Michigan. Additionally, he was a very popular attraction on the ship’s entertainment nights. A fellow crew member, Charles “Mac” McLaughlin, remembered at a dinner honoring Dark in 1974:

Once a week the crew would put on a show for ourselves. What else could we do? We were out floating around in the frigging water for weeks at a time. Lots of guys would sing and dance, [Jeff] Axtell would even juggle–but E would dress up like a woman and wiggle his rear end at us. You should have seen it! After thirty days at sea he was a welcome sight. After sixty days guys would ask him out. Captain Artebus even invited E to dine alone with him in his quarters.

It was rumored, though always denied by Dark, that he continued his one-man cabaret act for many years to come, often appearing at small men’s clubs as Tiffany Shuff or Melody D’Argent. At any rate, owing to his delicate bone structure and ample posterior, it is easy to see how he could have been a hit.

When he finally returned to New York after the war, Dark carried with him a notebook full of poems. He didn’t like writing prose. “Too many words, I get lost.” But, despite his burgeoning talent and the obvious merit of his work, Dark continued to struggle.

For one, owing to four years at sea, he became afraid that he would drown if he left his loft. Dark overcame his phobia by wearing a life jacket and bellbottom trousers. “In a pinch, bell bottoms can be used as flotation devices” Dark later said. Completing his odd ensemble, Dark often wore an admiral’s hat given to him by a friend who had appeared in the musical H.M.S. Hoppenscotch.

Strange appearance aside, Dark’s main difficulty was that his poems did not rhyme. Owing to a tragic accident as a child where small crock fell on his head, Dark was unable to recognize rhyming patterns. Unfortunately for him, the early 1920s was a rigid time period in the poetry business, in part as a reaction to the increasingly experimental work coming out of postwar Europe. Elysian House, then the largest poetry publisher in the United States and the forerunner to the greeting card company Emotional Press, had its corporate motto engraved above its entrance. “If it doesn’t rhyme and it’s not in iambic pentameter, then it’s not worth a shit.”

Fortunately for Dark, he happened upon Fripper one day in 1922 while walking in Central Park. Dark introduced himself. When Fripper stared blankly, Dark recited the quotation that he had sent Fripper years earlier. “The only thing wrong with children today is that they are so loud and ugly.” Instantly recognizing the quote, Fripper replied “so, you’re that nutjob.”

Dark persuaded Fripper to look at some of his poems, reportedly by offering to clean Fripper’s office. Fripper was a notorious slob. Three years earlier he had been successfully sued by a minor poet from Kansas City who was severely injured when a stack of old magazines fell on him in Fripper’s office.

As a result of his chance meeting with Fripper, Dark’s first published work appeared in the Herringbone Monthly.

Prohibition Mourning

Slipping in and out
of my room before dawn
dewdrops hanging from blades of grass
tiny messiahs waiting
waiting
waiting
to drop to the sinful earth
dry below them
tiny dirt craters form
when salvation finally comes

I stand at the corner
half of last night’s sandwich
pickle loaf with mustard
in the pocket of my robe
dry am I
waiting for the messiah
waiting
for my salvation
to fall from the rooftops

As God is my witness
I really need a drink

After receiving hundreds of phone calls and letters regarding Dark’s poem, Fripper agreed to publish Dark’s first collection, A Purse Full of Tulips, in 1923. The book was listed on the best seller list for 74 straight weeks.

Fame and fortune brought many changes to Dark’s life. He received psychological assistance in dealing with his drowning phobia, traveled extensively in the U.S. and Europe, had an audience with the Pope and dined with Fatty Arbuckle. He continued to write daily.

Dark’s next collection of poems, entitled Man am I ever Rich, published in 1924, was generally well received by critics but universally hated by the reading public.

Woman on the Sidewalk

The woman that I pass
on the way to the gala reception
filthy in her rag dress
thin coat of many colors
hand outstretched
“Please, sir, I am hungry”
a dime tossed her way
I nudge my beautiful date
tell her to avert her eyes
“let’s not let this spoil our evening,
but put your diamonds in my pocket
to keep them safe from the riff-raff”

The book only sold 2500 copies, mostly to churches as fuel for book burnings. Oddly, according to contemporary reports, it was not the arrogant tone of the book that caused such a fervor but the gratuitous use of the word “boobies,” which appears no less than twenty-five times. As a result of the massive failure, Dark lost his publisher and Fripper lost his job.

Having spent all of the money that he earned on A Purse Full of Tulips on bootleg gin, fast cars and premium luncheon meats, Dark was, once again, destitute. He spent much of 1925 living and writing behind a dumpster in SOHO. In late 1925 he took a job as a doorman at the Chelmsley Hotel in Manhattan. It was there that he once again happened upon Fripper who had, by that time, taken a position as an editor for the Gerbil Group, a minor publisher of how-to books and soft pornography. In his autobiography, Fripper recalls the meeting:

I had just gotten out of my taxi when I noticed that E was working the door. I tried to return to the taxi–he’d ruined my career, after all–but it was too late. The Spanish Ambassador had already taken my cab and E had noticed me. “Have I got some poems for you” he said. “Fuck off” I said. Fortunately for both of us, he persisted and I read the poems he produced from his coat while a line of rich socialites lined up in front of the hotel’s doors, unable or unwilling to open them by their own efforts.

The poems that Fripper read that evening eventually became The Frenchman’s Handkerchief, which sold over 200,000 copies and was widely praised for its gritty portrayal of street life in New York during the Jazz Age. Dark was, once again, on top. This time to stay.

We are all familiar with E Simms Dark’s career following the publication of The Frenchman’s Handkerchief. He won the Nobel Prize, was our nation’s poet laureate under two (two!) Presidents, held a brief infatuation with the Nazi party (he loved the brownshirts–“They look so snappy”), and spent his elderly years as a poet/philosopher turned to by newspapers and television in times of national tragedy. Who can forget how we sat affixed when he appeared on all three networks and calmed the nation after the resignation of former Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz? “Corn and beans and milk and sorghum/commodities all/farewell my farmer and captain/fare thee well.”

Who can follow E Simms Dark? Who can we turn to now, especially considering the country’s dire economic situation? Perhaps we can take some solace in Dark’s words from his collection Get me a Job, written during the last depression, so long ago. “Give me that damned bread/I am hungry for peace and hope/but mostly I want that damned bread/and maybe some soup.”

We will miss you, E Simms Dark.