Jacket 17 — June 2002   |   # 17  Contents   |   Homepage   |  Catalog   |

Catherine Daly

Marjorie Allen Seiffert and the Spectra Hoax

This piece is 2,500 words or about five printed pages long

When Witter Bynner decided to write hoax poetry in 1916, he thought he would found an entire hoax school called Spectra. The Spectrists would join the imagists, vorticists, and other groups, but satirize them. He first invited Arthur Davison Ficke, a friend of Bynner’s from Harvard undergraduate days. Ficke was a lawyer based in Davenport, Iowa, who spent an extensive amount of time in Chicago with the Poetry crowd. Ficke had published collaborative work before: a long piece Ficke wrote with Mary Aldis called ‘Chloroform’ was published in The Little Review in 1914, and then republished in Aldis’s book Flashlights in 1916. Together, Bynner and Ficke published a small pamphlet called ‘Spectra,’ but realized that with only two poets, the movement was too small. They quickly invited a third poet, Marjorie Allen Seiffert, a wealthy matron in Moline, Illinois, who had experience publishing hoax poems at The New Yorker under the name ‘Angela Cypher,’ to join them.
      The Spectrists located the hoax in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a spot they deemed unlikely to spawn a poetry ‘school.’ Ironically, the hoax was actually centered in ‘the Quad cities’ (Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa, Moline and Rock Island, Illinois), a far grimmer locale known for frequent flooding, coal shipping by rail (‘the Rock Island Line is a mighty fine line’), farm equipment manufacture, and a maximum security prison.

A.D.Ficke, 1940, photograph by Carl Van Vechten

Source: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten collection

As Emanuel Morgan, Anne Knish, and Elijah Hay, Bynner, Ficke, and Seiffert wrote and circulated a manifesto, submitted and published poems in the leading journals of the day, including Others, Poetry, and The Little Review, and engaged in correspondence with literary luminaries of the time. William Carlos Williams ‘wrote to Marjorie Seiffert (as Elijah Hay) complaining that he preferred the work of Morgan and Hay to that of Knish [Ficke] because “she” took the Spectrist affair too seriously.’[1] Actually, Williams wrote, ‘The woman as usual gets all the theory and — as usual — takes it seriously whereas the male knows it’s only a joke — serious as it is. A.K.’s things suffer from too much theory.’[2]

      When Marjorie Allen Seiffert published her first volume of poems, A Woman of Thirty (title based on a Balzac novel), she reported to Margaret Anderson that it was financed by her father, after an argument over its content,[3]but in fact the volume was published by reputable publisher Alfred Knopf in 1919, long after Seiffert’s marriage. This father-financing story is important to note. Although an independently wealthy person with a coterie of very well-published poets as friends, Seiffert’s relationships to family and community were undermined by publication. Her wealth reinforced non-publication and pseudonymous publication which had been a more common experience of women of the previous generations, since her family sought to preserve the status quo by limiting female accomplishment to the family circle. She included a section of Elijah Hay poems in her first volume, republished here.

Marjorie Allen Seiffert

Marjorie Allen Seiffert’s contribution to the hoax has until now been reduced. William Jay Smith first published the book The Spectra Hoax in 1961, seven years before he became Special Consultant to the Librarian of Congress (before the holder of that post was referred to as ‘Poet Laureate’ of the United States). In 2000, the book was re-issued by Story Line Press. Smith mentions — and pictures — Marjorie Allen Sieffert / Elijah Hay in his book, but only republishes two of Seiffert’s Hay poems, one an unpublished one from a letter to Bynner in 1917. By contrast, he includes the ‘Spectra’ pamphlet of Ficke’s and Bynner’s poems in its entirety as well as a further sample of sixteen Bynner poems. He also includes two poems by George Sterling which were not deemed ‘spectrist’ enough to include in the hoax.

Witter Bynner posing before a shrine in Japan. Hakone, 1917.

Source: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

The reduction of Seiffert’s role is not surprising. ‘Spectra’ only featured work by Bynner as Morgan and Ficke as Knish. The letter-writing campaign and periodical publication included all three; Seiffert was the only participant to publish the poems in a volume with poems she wrote as herself. After the hoax was revealed, Bynner continued to write and publish free verse — whole volumes of it, and for decades — under the name ‘Emanuel Morgan,’ although readers knew Morgan was Bynner. Smith’s main informant was Witter Bynner, who also sought to keep the hoax alive by having his assistant compile a complete Spectra ‘sourcebook,’ and, apparently, talking about the hoax at dinner parties.[4]
      Unlike Seiffert, the others involved in the Spectra hoax, those involved in the Ern Malley hoax, Yasusada hoax, and other literary hoaxes use a hoax topos, i.e., they posit the poems written as hoaxes are better than the ‘real’ work by the poets concerned. Smith reports her writing in a letter, ‘It was basically a joke, but sub-basically it loosened up our styles....’[5] Seiffert claimed the hoax work as her own poetry, and applied what she learned in her own work. She was criticized for this. Arthur Kreymborg, writing in Our Singing Strength after the hoax was revealed, notes, ‘Mrs. Seiffert’s free verse is not as good as her debonair balladry, nor are the poems of Elijah Hay equal to those of Emanuel Morgan or Anne Knish.’[6] She was the first participant to reveal the hoax (to Arthur Kreymborg), and she quit writing hoax poems. Seiffert not only participated in a long history of pseudonymous publication by women but also her own history of pseudonymous publication. She addresses the problems of spoofed work by establishing ownership and continuity.
      Smith seeks to identify a twentieth century hoax poetry — including the Ern Malley poetry and hoax verse by Malcolm Cowley — which balances the plodding establishment verse such as that of Ficke solo, or Bynner as Bynner, and which also parodies avant guard poetry. For example, Smith casts Amy Lowell’s ‘A Critical Fable’ as an unsuccessful hoax,[7] while that poem was initially circulated anonymously, not signed with a pseudonym, nor composed as a parody of another poetical style.
      The hoax poetry did lead Seiffert to balance her more plodding establishment poetry, although she continued to write especially series poems both in form and in free verse, always influenced by her education in musical composition. Seiffert published a second volume called Ballads of a Singing Bowl. After a long hiatus explained by Knopf’s ‘fewer and better’ depression-era publishing policy as well as Seiffert’s analysis by an early psychiatrist who convinced her that women should not devote time to writing and publication, she published a third volume, The Name of Life. Like Ficke, she did not participate in Bynner’s later attempts to revive the Spectrist hoax.

Jacket 17 — June 2002  Contents page
Select other issues of the magazine from the | Jacket catalog | read about Jacket |
Other links: | top | homepage | bookstores | literary links | internet design |
Copyright Notice: Please respect the fact that this material is copyright. It is made available here without charge for personal use only. It may not be stored, displayed, published, reproduced, or used for any other purpose

This material is copyright © Catherine Daly and Jacket magazine 2002
The URL address of this page is
http://jacketmagazine.com/17/daly-spec.html