User:Jnhemley/sandbox

Early Life and Education Cecil Hemley, poet, novelist, and editor was born in New York City to Fred and Sarah Hemley who were both Jewish. Fred was a prominent lawyer Cecil studied English at Amherst College from 1929 to 1933. He sat -out World War II in Provincetown, Massachusetts as a lieutenant in the Army where his father had him stationed after pulling some strings. When Cecil found out about this, he got himself to be re-stationed in Pearl Harbor where he wrote a history of military censorship in the Pacific theater of war. Cecil did graduate work at Yale and University of Chicago Forum 49 After the war, Hemley lived in Provincetown, MA. a prominent artists colony on Cape Cod. Hemley helped to found Forum 49 with his cousin, painter Adolph Gottlieb, Weldon Kees, poet and painter, and painter Fritz Bultman. Forum 49 met on Thursday evenings in Summer, 1949 at Gallery 200 for an evening of poetry, art, jazz, and psychology discussions. The forum was very successful. Abstract Expressionism grew out of this and helped to move the world art center from Paris to New York. Hemley married Kathryn Witherstine. They divorced after having two children, Frederick and Sarah. Noonday/Farrar/Straus Hemley moved to New York where he founded and edited Noonday Press. He published many major quality writers including Isaac Singer who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He married Elaine Gottlieb (not related to Adolph Gottlieb) who was a short story writer and novelist, Elaine helped Hemley with Noonday Press. Noonday was bought out by Farrar Straus where Hemley became the editor. Hemley was a chain smoker with very high blood pressure. He had two children by Elaine, Jonathan and Robin. He adopted Elaine’s daughter by her first marriage, Nola. Ohio University Hemley was offered a job as Founder and Editor of the Ohio University Press in the small college town of Athens, Ohio. His doctor suggested that the rural environment might be good for his health so he moved with his family to Athens in 1963. However, he still had health issues and died in 1966 at 51 from a heart attack He was buried in Athens, Ohio.

Writing Hemley wrote a number of books of poetry with major existential themes. He became the President of the Poetry Society of America. He wrote two novels that were well received, The Experience and Young Crankshaw. The Experience was about an ordinary Advertising executive who had a religious experience that no one could understand. Young Crankshaw was about a young dilettante who was exploited by a smooth user named Rafferty.

Forum 49
Provincetown, Massachusetts began to become an art colony in 1899 when Charles Webster Hawthorne opened the Cape Cod School of Art. Various schools art shows and associations were founded after that. Forum 49 was founded after World War II in 1949 by the poet Cecil Hemley and  his cousin, painter Adolph Gottlieb, Weldon Kees, poet and painter, and painter Fritz Bultman. Forum 49 met on Thursday evenings in Summer, 1949 at Gallery 200 for an evening of poetry, art, jazz, and psychology discussions. The forum was very successful. Abstract Expressionism grew out of this and helped to move the world art center from Paris to New York.