Alfred Starr Hamilton 3: Some biography and Correspondence

From a photo by Simpson Kalisher, 1967.

Many years ago I did a small 3-page website dedicated to poet Alfred Starr Hamilton.  When that site went down, I turned some of it into two blog posts:

ASH 1 is mostly biographical reflections.

ASH 2 is a bibliography of his books, anthology appearances, magazine appearances, and articles about him.  I have recently discovered some more things I will need to add.

In addition to these two pages, the original site included some correspondence that I'd added for the biographical details therein.  I never put it up on this blog and have decided to do so now.

I edited the letters for formatting and corrected a couple of typos but they are otherwise untouched.

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Also, here's a little tidbit I got in an email some years back.  ASH may have described himself as a "tramp," but it could not always have been thus....dad went to MIT, Harvard Law and that prep school, well, it's old money NY:  Corning, Olcott, van Rennselaer, Roosevelt....

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Since putting the ASH page on the web, an email has arrived every few years from out of the blue. The first pair came from Mr. Hamilton's niece.

Unfortunately, when I wrote back, she never responded. I sent a few more emails but never got a response. I've posted her intial letters--hesitantly--without permission because the details are so rich and touching. Jane, if you're out there, get back in touch!

Sunday, December 22, 2002 12:20 PM

Dear Steve,

At one time, I considered writing a biography about my Uncle Alfred. His sister, Judith, is my mother.

My older sister and I lived with her parents and our Uncle Alfred for years. He taught me how to drive on an old Model T when I was 12 ( that was 1942). When mother remarried, had two more children, we again lived with her parents and Uncle Alfred. We all remember the gumball machines, going around to service them. They became marble machines later on due to shortages of sugar during WWII.

 
I persuaded my mother to reminisce about her brother and their childhood. She is still alive and will be 95 years old Jan 1, 2003. Uncle Alfred now lives in a nursing home on medicaid. Katharine, their sister, died in 1986 at the age of 75.
Therefore we in the family have a lot of memories of Alfred, and somewhere there are photos. If you are interested in more about Uncle Alfred, please let me know. Incidentally, we all have read and reread the poems to try and get some connections to events we know of. Not much success there.

 
The New York Times article [an appeal for financial support by Jonathan Williams on behalf of ASH.] took us completely by surprise. He wrote a letter to my mother declaring himself "immune", indicated he had listed himself in the city of Montclair, N.J. as that.

Sincerely, Jane H.

Sunday, December 22, 2002 1:24 PM

Dear Steve,

Rereading my earlier message, I realized I never mentioned that Uncle Alfred is Alfred Starr Hamilton. I did write a letter to Jonathan Williams in 1987 asking about a biography. He wrote that he couldn't do it, suggested a couple of magazines. Uncle Alfred had stacks of those black and white notebooks, more handwritten poems. He showed me a children's book called THE LITTLE RED WHEELBARROW with a poem of his and some of William Carlos Williams. I haven't had any luck finding that book, and alas when Uncle Alfred was moved to the nursing home, I don't know what happened to all his books, typewriter, poems, letters etc. We heard he had been invited to speak at Montclair State College but didn't go.

 
Please let me know what you think and might do with information about Uncle Alfred. Thank you, Jane H.

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Silliman seems like a good fellow and has made a few blog entries about Hamilton.

"Hamilton is the author of spare, wry, slightly surreal poems that have, so far as I can see, no real equivalent elsewhere in American English."

"[Shotgun] is an almost perfect machine, its various sleights-of-hand so gentle & deft...."

"I became aware of his poetry, as did many others of my generation, thanks largely to Jonathan Williams,who published a sizeable (but long out-of-print) collection of Hamilton’s work in 1970."

Ron Silliman [December 11, 2003] Read the blog entry

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John Latta's blog, Hotel Point, has a good summary (dated Jan 2, 2004) of Hamilton's published work and includes the text of a few poems, including "Crabapples," which appears to be his first poem in print, in Cornell University's Epoch (Fall 1962 issue aka Vol. XII, No. 3) and not in Sphinx as I wrote above. For more details I suggest reading the blog iself, which though brief, includes some interesting context and observations. Seems this extended entry refers back to his note on Dec 12, 2003: "Poking around in old bound volumes of Epoch yesterday after Ron Silliman’s mention of Alfred Starr Hamilton, a name, unforgettable enough, that’d got bruit’d around Cornell in the early ’seventies..."

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This letter from Joel Lewis was a response to an inquiry about his NJ poets anthology (Bluestones and Salt Hay)

January 18, 2004

Steve--

Hamilton had a bit of a reputation around the time of the Jargon Society book -- which was then one of the most prestigious presses you could publish with.

Older poets I was friendly with talked about him -- some like Larry Agin & Joe Ceravolo made contact.

When I did my NJ poets anthology, I knew I wanted him in the book. He sent me all new material but we really had no correspondence outside of that. He did no readings, and didn't really try to publicize himself or "professionalize" -- I see him akin to Joseph Cornell in this sort of home-grown surrealism or perhaps part of the outsider art movement -- let me know if you hear further from the family.

Joel Lewis

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On May 7, 2004 I received a brief email from Parkway Manor Health Center--the nursing home Mr. Hamilton's niece mentioned in her first email--which stated he was in fragile health but that he might want to communicate with the website. I wrote an email back and Parkway Manor replied a few days later.

May 10, 2004

Dear Mr. Adkins:

Your note was well appreciated by Mr. Hamilton. I think it made his day.

We made several attempts to get him to write since he began his stay with
us. (he had been living in a boarding home near by just before he became a
resident here.) We had no success though.

After reading him your Email, he decided he would like to write again. He
likes to write a poem a day. He asked for some pads and pencils which I
quickly supplied and some pin money for stamps and the like, we will take
care of that as he needs them. I also gave him an assistant to help him from
our activities department. The women I assigned also had a book published,
though not poetry. I am sure she will be very helpful. It will be physically
difficult for him to accomplish his goal of a poem a day.

He sends his regards. "I am pleased that my work is still appreciated". By
the way he is not aware of the internet. I will show him on my computer.
Sometime this week.

He is not quite ready for a visitor. I asked if he wanted to send a note to
you. I think he and his new assistant will do that. The address below is
your mailing address.

His mailing address is

Alfred Hamilton
C/O Parkway Manor Health Center
480 Parkway Dr.
East Orange, NJ 07017

Good to hear from you. You made a man's day today.

Sincerely
Bill Z.

Assistant Administrator
Parkway Manor Health Center

I sent Mr. Hamilton a "real" letter in early June. I didn't contact Parkway Manor again until 17 October and the next day got the following reply.

Dear Mr. Adkins,

Mr. Hamilton is in good spirits today, he actually looks pretty good. I had
given him a copy of the pic from the web page. By the way he does not know
what the internet is. So this stuff remains new to him. He has not as of
this date written anything I am aware of. I checked his composition books.

I had asked him if he had received a letter from you. He said he had but
does not know what happened to it. He is stable medically right now. But he
is 90 years old and has some minor dementia; he is quite bright so he can talk a good game even though he may not remember getting your letter. He is still committed to writing and is to this day a poet who does nothing but write.  [I think he means "everything but write"--adkins].

He sends his regards and says that he is well.

Sincerely
Bill Z.

I sent a few more emails from time to time just to say hello, but October was the last I heard from Parkway Manor.

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Matt Miller first contacted me back in May 2005, having discovered my site in an effort to find out all he could about Mr. Hamilton. I passed along all the bibiliographical and biographical data I had and he has been doing a lot of research and making plans to publish Hamilton's work and generally make people aware of him. It was he who informed me a few days ago (today is

Dec 10) that Mr. Hamilton died in 2005.

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I was first contacted by Lisa Borinsky in July 2009 and we had extensive email correspondence and several lengthy phone conversations which concluded in July 2010 when she sent me a PDF of her edition of ASH's letters to the police.

My interest in ASH has never waned, but I think I can't really do any more to add to the conversation.  I would like to thank Geof Hewitt who graciously sent me a copy of Sphinx, the first published collection of ASH's work.  It's a really lovely book and completes my collection.  

ASH was lucky to have such nice editions of his work published: Sphinx, the Jargon collection, A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind....all are very nicely made.  The Big Parade is a good collection but the presentation isn't particularly noteworthy.  

Borinsky's book is fascinating, but suffers from the format.  It's printed as a magazine, under the imprint of "Weird New Jersey." As Douglas Penick writes:

It is well written and researched but is published in a series called Weird NJ Presents, so both the poet and his work are given a dismissive context. 

Which is a shame, because I accompanied Lisa in the year before it was published, helping with research.  Her love of Hamilton, her enthusiasm, her research....I can't fault it at all.  But I think in her rush to publish first, she made an unwise choice going with this format.  She produced a legitimate work of scholarship, but the format in which it is published undermines her intentions.

Anyway, this blog remains the only bibliography of ASH, online or off.  That and the biographical data are wildly incomplete, but it's a start.  

And hey, I've managed to help a few people over the years, and that's always a "win" in my book.