Way back in April 2010, we created an extensive author page for left-wing poet, Aaron Kramer. This project was initiated by PennSound co-director, Al Filreis, who provided some useful historical contexts for Kramer and his work in a blog post accompanying the new materials.
Kramer was (for a time, and perhaps for a long time) a member of the Communist Party of the U.S. He was involved in just about every radical issue, cultural and straight-out political, of this time: the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. Perhaps his first big break as a poet was his inclusion in the anthology, Six Poets in Search of An Answer (1944), which at a (brief) hopeful moment in the liberal-left alliance brought Aaron in with Max Bodenheim, Joy Davidman, Langston Hughes, Alfred Kreymborg (by then a vintage modernist who'd joined the radical left), Martha Millet, and Norman Rosten. His "Garcia Lorca" memorialized that poet murdered by Spanish fascists. "Berlin Air Raid" begins: "For ten years they were listening to different / sounds." "Natchez" is about southern racist violence, a place where "a hundred tabloid writers ran to the flame." I have been in touch with Aaron's daughter Laura for years. Recently she went through the attic and gathered together three shoeboxes of cassettes and VHS tapes and delivered them to us at PennSound. We are slowly going through them, digitizing them, and make them available — as always — for free download through our archive.
In total, there are fifty-two discrete recordings made between the mid-50s and the mid-90s, including one complete Smithsonian Folkways album (1959's Serenade: Poets of New York) and numerous programs made for public radio for series including "University of the Air" and "Poets of the Sweatshops," along with individual tributes to many poets. Aside from offering a broad selection of Kramer's own work, he also reads from and provides commentary on a stunning array of poets, including Walt Whitman (he reads the first thirty-two sections of "Song of Myself," talks about "Drum Taps," and gives a talk at the poet's birthplace), William Blake, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Herman Melville, Langston Hughes, John Greenleaf Whittier, Charles Lamb, Walter Savage Landor, Emily Dickinson, and Robert Frost, among others.
In a time when we need poetry to do vital work for justice and equality, it's never a bad idea to remember those who helped fight the good fight in previous generations. If you're not already aware of Aaron Kramer and his work, there's sure to be something to hold your interest on his PennSound author page.
