Ford, Charles Henri

Epithet: editor of 'View' New York

American artist, poet, editor, and filmmaker.

Charles Henri Ford, artist, poet, editor, and filmmaker, was born on February 13, 1913, in Brookhaven, Mississippi. In his teens, Ford had two poems, Interlude and In the Park (For a Gold Digger), published in the New Yorker, after which he continued to publish poetry in various little magazines, such as Free Verse and Contemporary Verse . Ford dropped out of high school in 1929 in order to publish, with Parker Tyler and Kathleen Tankersley, the little magazine Blues: A Magazine of New Rhythms . Envisioned as a vehicle for experimental writing, Blues boasted such contributors as Kay Boyle, Witter Bynner, Erskine Caldwell, Harry Crosby, E. E. Cummings, James T. Farrell, H. D., Oliver Jenkins, Eugene Jolas, Ezra Pound, Kenneth Rexroth, Laura Riding, Herman Spector, Gertrude Stein, Laurence Vail, William Carlos Williams, and Louis Zukofsky. During this period, Ford continued to publish his poems in Blues and other little magazines, including Transition, New Review, and Tambour .

After a brief stint in Greenwich Village beginning in 1930, Ford sailed for Paris in 1931, where he quickly ensconced himself in the expatriate literary community. Ford cultivated friendships with Natalie Barney, Paul Bowles, Paul Claudel, René Crevel, Mina Loy, Carmen Mariño, Edouard Roditi, and Gertrude Stein, among many others. His friendship with Djuna Barnes resulted in their sharing an apartment and in Ford's typing part of the manuscript of Barnes's novel Nightwood . In 1932, Barnes introduced Ford to the Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew. Despite Tchelitchew's relationship with Allan Tanner and the disapproval of friends of both Ford and Tchelitchew, they began to live together in 1934, an arrangement that continued until Tchelitchew's death in 1957. Throughout this period, Ford continued to write, publishing Letter from the Provinces in Readies for Bob Brown's Machine (1931) and four poems in the anthology Americans Abroad (1932). His first collection of poetry, Pamphlet of Sonnets, appeared in 1936, which was followed by The Garden of Disorder and Other Poems in 1938. In 1933, The Young and Evil, a novel written with Parker Tyler about the homosexual world of Greenwich Village in the early thirties, was published in Paris by the Obelisk Press.

From 1940 to 1947, Ford, again with Tyler, published another little magazine, View . The magazine provided a medium for the dissemination of surrealist writing and painting. Individual issues were devoted to the artists Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, and Pavel Tchelitchew, and contributors and illustrators included Ford, Tyler, Lionel Abel, Kenneth Burke, Joseph Cornell, E. E. Cummings, Randall Jarrell, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams. During the forties, Ford also published four books of poetry: The Overturned Lake (1941); Poems for Painters (1945); The Half-Thoughts, the Distances of Pain (1947); and Sleep in a Nest of Flames (1949). After this flurry of activity, there followed a long fallow period, in which Ford dabbled in various activities, including drawing and painting, while dividing his time among Weston, Connecticut; New York City; Paris; and the suburbs of Rome.

Despite one-man exhibitions of his gouaches and oils in both Paris and Rome, Ford did not resume his creative endeavors in earnest until after the death of Tchelitchew. Moving between Rome, Paris, New York City, and Greece, Ford devoted himself to photography, until he returned to poetry with a series of "poster poems," published as Spare Parts (1966) and Silver Flower Coo (1968). In 1972, Ford published the collection Flag of Ecstasy: Selected Poems, which was followed by 7 Poems in 1974. Ford's increasing interest in Eastern philosophies inspired the series Om Krishna (Vol. 1: Special Effects, 1979; v. 2: From the Sickroom of Walking Eagles, 1981; v. 3: Secret Haiku, 1982). Perhaps prompted by his acquaintance with the denizens of Andy Warhol's Factory, Ford also made two movies: Poem Posters (1966) and Johnny Minotaur (1972).

Charles Henri Ford still lives in New York City, when not travelling.