Biographies of Poets, Whitman and Smith

Mickle Street 

One of my favourite biographies of Whitman is Walt Whitman in Mickle Street (1921) by Elizabeth Leavitt Keller describing the last years Whitman's life. Whitman was not the saint that some people have tried to make him out to be, his housekeeper Mary Oakes Davis was the real saint as she cared for Walt and this is Mrs. Davis's story as much as Whitman's. Today we would call Mrs. Davis a care-giver and sympathize with her as she looked after Whitman who is described as thoughtless, self-centered, and having a bad temper.





                                      




Chesterfield Avenue

Canadian poets like Louis Dudek and A.J.M. Smith weren't interested in autobiography or having their biographies written. Considering how often we hear that the public doesn't read poetry people are still interested in the lives of poets. Some people think Smith is a difficult poet, a good biography would have made him more human and possibly have made his work more available to students and other readers. As it is now good luck to anyone trying to find information on Smith's life. Leon Edel, the famous Henry James biographer and old friend of Smith's, wrote a short essay on Smith after he died in 1980. Here is an excerpt from that essay: "I can sketch a few (memories), allowing myself anecdote and biography now that Smith is gone: the touch of cockney in Smith's mother's voice and way of speech, when Smith invited me to take tea in the trim little suburban house in Westmount: the mother openly aggressive about her son's desire to write poetry — "there's no money in it" — "be quiet mother," — "I think it good he's taken up science." "Please mother." She talked to me as if I were a familiar in the house I had entered for the first time, and as if I knew all about her continuing colloquy with her son." Smith's home, where Edel visited in the mid-1920s, is located at 79 Chesterfield Avenue in Westmount.