Background
Fearing, Kenneth Flexner was born on July 28, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Son of Harry L. and Olive (Flexner) Fearing.
Fearing, Kenneth Flexner was born on July 28, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Son of Harry L. and Olive (Flexner) Fearing.
Bachelor of Arts, University of Wisconsin 1924.
Literary critic Macha Rosenthal called him "the chief poet of the American Depression." He went to school at Oak Park and River Forest High School, and was editor of the student paper, as was his predecessor Ernest Hemingway. After studying at the University of Illinois in Urbana and the University of Wisconsin, Fearing moved to New York City where he began a career as a poet and was active in leftist politics. In the 1920s and 1930s, he published regularly in The New Yorker and helped found The Partisan Review, while also working as an editor, journalist, and speechwriter and turning out a good deal of pulp fiction.
Some of Fearing"s pulp fiction was soft-core pornography, often published under the pseudonym Kirk Wolff.
A selection of Fearing"s poems has been published as part of the Library of America"s American Poets Project. His complete poetic works, edited by Ryley, were published by the National Foundation in 1994.
Fearing published several collections of poetry including Angel Arms (1929), Dead Reckoning (1938), Afternoon of a Pawnbroker and other poems (1943), Stranger at Coney Island and other poems (1948), and seven novels including The Big Clock (1946). Fearing died in 1961, of malignant melanoma, at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan.
In 1950, he was subpoenaed by the United States. Attorney in Washington, District of Columbia When asked if he was a member of the Communist Party, he is supposed to have replied, "Not yet.".
Married Rachel Meltzer, 1933. Married second, Nan Lurie, 1945 (divorced 1958).