I first heard the name of this poet in 1992 in a conversation with Edith Shiffert in Kyoto. “Do you know the work of Lindley Williams Hubbell?” she asked me, “He’s really quite a fine writer.” She told me how he was once a professor at Doshisha University and at the time of our conversation, to the best of her knowledge, he was sitting sad and alone in a hospital waiting to die. She indicated that he was very unhappy to be there, though he was visited often by his devoted students. She went on to tell me that he had won the Yale Series of Younger poets award back in 1927, had come to live full time in Japan in 1953, and following the lead of Lafcadio Hearn, had given up his American citizenship and had taken the name of Hayashi Shuseki. I was impressed, but surrounded as I was by all the new things that Japan offered, I’m sad to confess that I forgot about Hubbell and it wasn’t until recently that I began to run into his name again. On the internet I noted that Weldon Kees, one of my all-time favorite poets, was a fan of Hubbell’s work. And more recently, in conversations with Burton Watson I grew more and more interested in Hubbell’s writing. To encourage this, Burton kindly leant me his signed collection of Hubbel’s books–all published by Ikuta Press, which still exists under the guidance of the wonderful Yoko Danno.

From some writings by Hiroki Sato which Burton clipped from the Japan Times, I learned a bit more about Hubbell–He was born in Hartford Connecticut in 1901 and he died at the age of 93. The article, and indeed the poems indicate that he was prodigiously learned, and given to disquisitions on Greek and Roman minor poets and cataloguing the written lightning of the flora and fauna of prehistoric times. He appears to have been able to read Egyptian Hieroglyphics–or at least he had a smattering of Budge under his belt, and all of these items, along with a good cathartic dose of black humor, found their way into his various productions.

Finding Hubbell’s work is a bit like finding a frozen mastadon, complete with the still-to-be-digested last meal–for here was someone who found his not inconsiderable voice during the second great wave of American Modernism. He was a contemporary of Hart Crane and a still fertile William Carlos Williams. Pound–who’s mentioned more than anyone in the poems–was an intellectual force. And, incredibly Hubbell predicts the resurrection of the reputations of Mina Loy and the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven! One name is curiously missing from his works, though, and that is Wallace Stevens–also a Hartford resident. You would think that they must have crossed paths at some time. (Maybe that explains the silence!) Hubbell was also quite well versed in Modernism in the arts. He liked Mondrian and Brancusi and could not stand what were actually the beginnings of what is now called performance and conceptual art. More on Hubbell in future notes.