Though little known in Columbus today, in 1929 21-year-old Gilmer Hotel cafe cashier Charles Henri Ford was publishing Blues Magazine at the Gilmer. It was a small magazine which only lasted a year but it set the stage for Ford to become a leader in international Avant-garde art and literary circles. When he died in 2002 he was described in a lengthy New York Times obituary as; ” a poet, editor, novelist, artist and legendary cultural catalyst whose career spanned much of 20th-century modernism.”
Ford was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi in 1908. His father, C. Lloyd Ford moved the family to Columbus between 1926 and 1927. He had taken the position as manager of the Gilmer Hotel Cafe. Charles had dropped out of school as a teenager and was writing poetry. One of his poems written as a teenager was even published by the New Yorker.
While working in the hotel cafe in 1929 he, with two friends, Parker Tyler and Kathleen Tankersley, published Blues, A Magazine of New Rhythms. The publication of the magazine made news in literary circles across the county. The Charlotte Observer on December 30, 1928 commented; “…we find Mississippi stirring. Comes an announcement of ‘Blues: a Review of Modern Literature’ to be edited by Charles Henri Ford and staff from Columbus, Mississippi, a magazine of ‘a more complete revolt against the cliche, the banal, the common place.'”
Blues Magazine only lasted eight issues but its publishing of experimental writings broke the ground for Ford’s future plans. The little magazine featured articles and poetry by Gertrude Stein, Erskine Caldwell, E.E. Cummings and Ezra Pound. Although the magazine was not about blues music, Ford named it that because of the inspiration he had gotten from blues and jazz music and he would sometimes use lyrics from blues songs in his own poetry.
Ford was said to have moved from Columbus in 1930, but the 1931 Columbus City Directory shows him still living at the Gilmer Hotel as a cashier in the hotel’s cafe which his father ran. He moved briefly to New York but by 1932 he was living in Paris. There he became part of the 1930s literary expatriate circle and the weekly gathering of Gertrude Stein’s Paris Salon which at various times included Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Henri Matisse, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and a host of art and literary giants.
In Paris he and Parker Tyler co-authored The Young and Evil, which was published in 1933. It was a novel about gay lifestyles in Greenwich Village and its publication was banned in the U.S. until the 1960s. In Paris, Ford met Russian artist Pavel Tchelitchew, who became his life-long companion. Ford returned to the U.S. in 1939 as war was erupting in Europe.
In New York, Ford and writer/film critic Parker Tyler again published a magazine. The View was published from 1940 to 1947 and is credited for introducing the surrealism movement to America. The magazine combined art with prose and poetry. Among its contributors were Henry Miller, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Alexander Calder, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Joan Miro and Wallace Stevens.
Ford continued to write and publish poetry, became an artist and produced two movies. He corresponded with many literary figures including Eudora Welty and William Faulkner and was friends with Orson Wells and Andy Warhol. His sister Ruth Ford was a Broadway Actress. He died at age 94 and over his lifetime published many books of poetry, was a photographer, artist, poet, novelist and editor. He is often credited with introducing America to surrealism in the arts, is known as America’s first surrealist poet and was cashier at the Gilmer Hotel Cafe/Coffee Shop in Columbus.
I have never seen a copy of Blues magazine and if anyone has a copy a donation of it to the Billups-Garth Archives at the Columbus Lowndes Public Library would be greatly appreciated. It is a forgotten but important piece of Columbus’ literary history.
Rufus Ward is a local historian. Email your questions about local history to him at [email protected].
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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