Donald Evans
Donald Evans was an American journalist and poet born in Philadelphia in 1884, whose life and work remain somewhat enigmatic due to his eccentricities. After attending Haverford College, he began his journalism career in Philadelphia around 1905 and later moved to New York in 1912, where he became involved with the avant-garde literary scene of Greenwich Village. He married Esther Porter in 1918 and continued writing after his military service during World War I. Evans is noted for his poetry that challenged conventional norms, particularly through his first volume, "Discords" (1912), which introduced what became known as "Patagonian" poetry—characterized by its shockingly candid sexual themes. He founded the Claire Marie Press in 1914, which published his works as well as significant pieces by Gertrude Stein. Throughout his literary career, he associated with notable contemporaries such as Amy Lowell and Wallace Stevens, although he often expressed a more flamboyant persona than literary output. Evans's legacy includes satirical sonnets that critiqued societal norms, and he died in 1921, with circumstances surrounding his death suggesting it may have been a suicide.
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Donald Evans
Poet
- Born: July 24, 1884
- Birthplace: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Died: May 26, 1921
- Place of death: New York, New York
Biography
Donald Evans was born in Philadelphia in 1884. His eccentricities have left biographers uncertain about many details of his life, but he attended Haverford College, and by 1905 he had begun a career in journalism in Philadelphia. In 1912, he moved to New York, where he continued to write for newspapers until he entered the army. He married Esther Porter in 1918. After his discharge from the military, he continued his work as a journalist in New York, but he had already begun to associate with the Greenwich Village writers, who defined the avant-garde in American literature of the time. Although much of his presence in New York literary circles was marked more by flamboyant gestures reminiscent of the Aesthetes of the 1890’s than by literary production, he had already begun to publish poetry. His first volume, Discords (1912), was a conscious attempt to establish a new sort of “outsider” poetry (one that came to be called “Patagonian”), a poetry that consciously avoided the genteel magazine verse of the period and made sexual references that readers found shocking. By 1914, Evans had founded a press, Claire Marie, which printed Evans’s own Sonnets from the Patagonian and, more notably, Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, in 1914. In addition to his relationship with Stein, Evans was associated with a number of significant writers of the period, including Amy Lowell, Carl Van Vechten, Wallace Stevens, and Edwin Arlington Robinson (who had a low opinion of Evans’s press). Although in later years he wrote some free verse, Evans’s most successful efforts lay in his earlier satiric sonnets which ridiculed social mores of the time. He died, possibly by suicide, in 1921.