Background

Eunice Strong Hammond was born on July 29, 1884, in Chicago, Illinois, United States. She was the daughter of William A. and Idea (Strong) Hammond.

Among her siblings was her brother Laurens Hammond, who would become known for inventing the Hammond electronic organ.

Education

Tietjens received an international education, studying in France, Germany, and Switzerland, taking coursework at the Universite de Geneve and the College de France. However, she never received a college degree.

Career

Eunice's various studies in several countries provided her with a broad intellectual and cultural knowledge that bolstered her interest in literature. She continued her travels around the world for the rest of her life, working as a journalist and collecting material for her poetry.

At the age of twenty-seven, Tietjens met Harriet Monroe, the founder of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. She later wrote in her autobiography that it was at this meeting that she was reborn. She joined the staff of the magazine in 1913, and took on various editorial positions, including editor and assistant to Monroe, who published Tietjens’s work in the magazine. Poetry spearheaded the development of the Chicago Renaissance, a highly active and Bohemian group concerned with literature and theater.

When she was offered the position of associate editor of the magazine in 1916, Tietjens was in China, collecting material for her first and probably best-known book, Profiles from China (1917), a collection of short narratives written in free verse. In China, she was a keen observer of the people, their manner, and their elaborate rituals and ceremonies. The collision of beauty and tragedy that she saw there evoked both fascination and sympathy, Chinese poetry became the dominant model for her poetic work.

In 1919, she published her first collection of poems, entitled Body and Raiment, which features some poems previously published in Poetry, and the dedicatory poems “To Sara Teasdale” and “To Amy Lowell.” Two years later, Tietjens published her first and only novel, entitled Jake, which was based on her experiences as a World War I correspondent for the Chicago Daily News. It was not well-received. By this time, she had married Cloyd Head, and in 1925, they co-wrote an undistinguished play, Arabesque. In the same year, she published Profiles from Home: Sketches in Free Verse of People and Things Seen in the United States, a collection of poems that are essentially human portraits set against the backdrop of America.

Tietjens’s travels throughout North Africa contributed to two children’s books: Boy of the Desert (1928), which is set in Tunisia, and The Romance of Antar (1929), a retelling of a legendary Arabian epic romance. In 1928, Tietjens also published another collection of poetry, entitled Leaves in Windy Weather. She collaborated with her daughter, Janice Tietjens, on The Jawbreaker’s Alphabet of Prehistoric Animals (1930), a children’s book that a New York Times critic found “an original and entertaining alphabet book.” She collaborated with her sister Louise Hammond, a well-known missionary in China, on the book China (1930), and in the following year, she published Boy of the South Seas, a children’s book inspired by her ten-month stay on the island of Moorea. In 1932, she published The Gingerbread Boy.

In 1933 – 1935 Tietjens and her second husband, Head, taught at the University of Miami. Her last book is her autobiography, entitled The World at My Shoulder (1938).

Achievements

• Eunice Strong Tietjens is known as an early twentieth-century American poet, novelist, and editor active in a literary and theatrical group associated with the Chicago Renaissance. A cosmopolitan figure who spoke several languages, Tietjens’s extensive travels contributed greatly to her writing. She authored thirteen books, co-wrote one play and anthologized poetry from the Far E. She did receive some critical praise as the editor for an anthology entitled Poetry of the Orient. Her important role in one of America’s foremost literary magazines has garnered her a respected position.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Profiles from China Sketches in Free Verse of People and Things Seen in the Interior 1917
  • Body and Raiment 1919
  • Jake 1921
  • Japan Korea And Formosa: Burton Homes Travel Stories 1924
  • Profiles from home: Sketches in Free Verse of People and Things Seen in the United States 1925
  • Boy of the Desert 1928
  • Leaves in Windy Weather 1929
  • The Romance of Antar 1929
  • The Jaw - Breaker's Alphabet 1930
  • Profiles from China 1930
  • Boy of the South seas 1931
  • The Gingerbread Boy 1932
  • The World at My Shoulder 1938

Views

The direction of Tietjens' poetry was steered by a trip to China in 1916, when she and her mother spent six months visiting her sister Louise Hammond, an Episcopalian missionary. Tietjens would later call the experience “one of the great influences of my life.” Introduced to Asian thought by Edgar Lee Masters, who gave her a copy of the Bhagavad-Gita, she was affected by what she would term a mix of “sordidness, tragedy, beauty, and humor” which she found in China.

Personality

Tietjens celebrated the world and all of its cultures and peoples, was a lifelong devotee of literature, and found a solid measure of respect and admiration from her peers.

Eunice Tietjens was a friend of several members of the Chicago Renaissance, including Edgar Lee Masters, Carl Sandburg, and Sara Teasdale.

Quotes from others about the person

• “Mrs. Tietjens has something to say - which is more than most contemporary minor poets have - she has emotions and thoughts to express, but she has not yet discovered a wholly satisfactory way of expressing them, and the words in which she says her ‘something’ are not always adequate.”

Connections

In 1904, Eunice married Paul Tietjens, a composer. They lived in Michigan and New York, had two daughters and were divorced ten years later. One of her daughters died at the age of four. After the divorce, Tietjens and her surviving child moved to Evanston. In 1920, she married Cloyd Head, a playwright, theatrical director, and founder of a community theater in Miami. They had one son and a daughter who died at birth.

Father:

William Andrew Hammond

15 November 1851 - 3 January 1897

Mother:

Idea Louise (Strong) Hammond

1 September 1859 - 29 July 1938

Ex-husband:

Paul Tietjens

May 22, 1877 – November 25, 1943

Paul Tietjens was an American composer of the early twentieth century. He is best known for composing music for The Wizard of Oz, the 1902 stage adaptation of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, one of the great popular hits of the era.

husband:

Cloyd Head

Daughter:

Idea Louise Strong Hammond

1 September 1859 - 29 July 1938

Son:

Marshall Head

Brother:

Laurens Hammond

January 11, 1895 – July 1, 1973

Laurens Hammond was an American engineer and inventor. His inventions include, most famously, the Hammond organ, the Hammond clock, and the world's first polyphonic musical synthesizer, the Novachord.

Friend:

Edgar Lee Masters

August 23, 1868 – March 5, 1950

Edgar Lee Masters was an American attorney, poet, biographer, and dramatist. He is the author of Spoon River Anthology, The New Star Chamber and Other Essays, Songs and Satires, The Great Valley, The Serpent in the Wilderness, An Obscure Tale, The Spleen, Mark Twain: A Portrait, Lincoln: The Man, and Illinois Poems.

Friend:

Carl Sandburg

January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967

Carl August Sandburg was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor.

Friend:

Sara Teasdale

August 8, 1884 – January 29, 1933

Sara Teasdale was an American lyric poet.

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, TV, & Other Fields, Vol. 193 In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series brings researchers the most recent data on the worlds most-popular authors.
  2010
• The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Woman Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present Describes the lives and work of female literary figures.
  1990
• DLB 54: American Poets, 1880 to 1945, Third Series The story of modern American poetry to World War II is the story of successive generations of writers increasingly gaining familiarity in and security with the American idiom, states the forward to this third and final series on American poets writing during a period of unprecedented national growth and development.
  1987
• The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Poetry in English The Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry in English charts the development of poetry from 1900 to the present, across the whole of the English-speaking world, from the United States, Great Britain, and Ireland to New Zealand, Pakistan, Singapore, Trinidad and Zimbabwe--anywhere where poets write in English.
  1994
• The Oxford Companion to American Literature The Oxford Companion to American Literature has been an unparalleled guide to America's literary culture, providing one of the finest resources to this country's rich history of great writers.
  1995
• Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature
  1991