Witter Bynner 1881 - 1968

Bynner's mother's family extended to an early president of Harvard, Charles Chauncy. When Bynner was born in Brooklyn, his father was a civil engineer; his father died in 1891. Then living in Brookline, Massachusetts, he graduated from Harvard in 1902. Called "Hal" by his friends, he was invited by editor Wallace Stevens to become a member of the Harvard Advocate. Among his teachers were Royce (philosophy), Kittredge (Shakespeare), and Baker (drama), as well as his friend and professor poet George Santayana.

Upon graduating Bynner was for four years an editor of McClure's in New York, where he paraded for women's rights on Fifth Avenue with John Dewey. His poems, An Ode to Harvard, came out in 1907, and he was invited to be a Harvard Phi Beta Kappa poet. Edna St. Vincent Millay accepted his proposal for marriage, but after they reflected, they declined. Witter's lover was a Swiss painter, Paul Theanaz.

In 1916 Hal coauthored Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments, parodies spoofing Imagism written under an assumed name. This act led embarrassed critics who had been fooled to ignore his later work. It helped that Alfred A. Knopf published his many books, starting with Beloved Stranger (1918). In 1917 came his first trip to Japan and China. He was president of the Poetry Society of America from 1921 to 1923.

Upon moving to the tiny town of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1922, he developed a friendship with D. H. and Frieda Lawrence. A later result was Journey with Genius: Reflections and Reminiscences Concerning the D. H. Lawrences.

In 1929 Witter collaborated with Kiang Kang-hu in translating Chinese poems: Jade Mountain: A Chinese Anthology. His most popular book was his translation of the 2,500 year-old The Way of Life According to Laotse (1944), an abstruse interpretation which somehow sold more than fifty thousand copies.

Witter Bynner was a monogamous homosexual who was openly gay. His partner for thirty-four years in Santa Fe was Robert Hunt, twenty-five years younger.

His personal acquaintances were many: Mark Twain, Henry James, Georgia O'Keefe, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Igor Stravinsky, Isadora Duncan, Diego Rivera.

The poet died in Santa Fe after suffering a stroke following previous ills, near blindness (glaucoma), and prolonged painful shingles on the shoulders. James Kraft wrote a biography: Who is Witter Bynner? His remodeled home and gardens are now a bed and breakfast-the Inn of the Turquoise Bear.