Louis and Walter Arnesberg with friend Marcel Duchamp
writers involved with the magazine OthersFront row, L-R: Alison Hartpence, Afred Kreymborg, WCW, Skip Cannell; Back row, L-R: Jean Crotti, Marcel Duchamp, Walter Arensberg, Man Ray, R.A. Sanborn, Maxwell Bodenheim)
Walter Conrad Arensberg (USA)
1878-1954
Born in Pittsburgh in 1878, Walter Conrad Arensberg is known today primarily for his important collections of art and the salons and gatherings he held at his homes for such noted poets and artists as Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Marsden Hartley, and Mina Loy, among others.
Beginning in 1916 and beyond Arensberg turned, in his own poetry, to experimental explorations of language and structure, with poems in magazines such as Rogue, his own Blind Man, Alfred Kreymborg’s Others (which Arensberg also helped to found), Man Ray’s TNT, and Picabia’s 391.
He also produced several studies of art and literary criticism, including a study of Bacon/Shakespeare, Dante, and others. His books of poetry, and particularly his uncollected experimental works, influenced later generations of poets.
Arensberg died in Los Angeles in 1954.
BOOKS OF POETRY
Poems (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914); Idols (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916); selection in Alfred Kreymborg, ed. Others: An Anthology of New Verse (1917) (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1917)