Isidor Schneider was an Amerian Jewish poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 and critic.
He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1934. He was an Imagist poet who became more radical during the depression.

Literary career

Schneider contributed to many literary journals and magazines in his career. The included the left-leaning Menorah Journal (1920s) and New Masses (1930s and 1940s). He also published more literary works in The Nation (where he is still listed as an "author") and in Poetry magazine.

Communist career

Like many literary Americans of the 1920s and 1930s, Schneider became very pro-Communist. Other like-minded literati with whom he interacted closely over the years include: Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood Anderson was an American novelist and short story writer. His most enduring work is the short story sequence Winesburg, Ohio. Writers he has influenced include Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, J. D. Salinger, and Amos Oz.-Early life:Anderson was born in Clyde, Ohio,...

, Malcolm Cowley

Malcolm Cowley

Malcolm Cowley was an American novelist, poet, literary critic, and journalist.-Early life:...

, Theodore Dreiser

Theodore Dreiser

Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of...

, Lillian Hellman

Lillian Hellman

Lillian Florence "Lily" Hellman was an American playwright, linked throughout her life with many left-wing causes...

, Lewis Mumford

Lewis Mumford

Lewis Mumford was an American historian, philosopher of technology, and influential literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer...

.

Diana Trilling

Diana Trilling

Diana Trilling was an American literary critic and author, one of the New York Intellectuals. Born Diana Rubin, she married the literary and cultural critic Lionel Trilling in 1929....

 summarized Schneider's Communist career in highly personal terms:

Over these long years, I still think of the Schneiders as pre-eminent among the forgotten dead of the hoped-for Communist revolution in this country. They have their unmarked place in history as people whose lives were destroyed in the pointless and degrading service of Stalin. Or it may be that only Isidor's life was destroyed; Helen's was perhaps fulfilled as it would not have been if she had remained the discontented housewife she was when Lionel and I knew her... Still young when we knew him, Isidor had already achieved something of a reputation as a poet. He had also won critical attention with a novel in the experimental mode, Dr. Transit; somewhere it no doubt survives as a reminder of the territory which his imagination claimed for itself before it was enslaved by the Communist orthodoxy... The Communist movement rescued Helen Schneider from the dis-contents of her marriage. Within the Party she perhaps found men who were better suited to her needs than Isidor; report had it that she became the lover of one of the black Communist leaders. Determined to hold on to his wife, Isidor followed Helen into the Communist movement and became a writer for the Party's literary journal, the New Masses. The gender-myopic poet became one of the Party's most dependable hatchet men, a well-practiced and efficient literary executioner... Amid the crush and bustle of Macy's then-famous bookstore, he confessed to Lionel that he had never meant to be a Communist. He had intended only to be a poet and a private man. He had lost control of his life; it had moved in a direction he had not chosen for it. There was nothing unusual in intellectuals who were close to the Party, or even Party members, criticizing the Party to non-members: the novelist Joseph Freeman

Joseph Freeman

Joseph Freeman, Jr. was the first man of black African descent to receive the Melchizedek priesthood and be ordained an elder in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after the announcement of the 1978 Revelation on Priesthood, which allowed “all worthy male members of the Church” to...

 made a habit of cornering one with his complaints. But Isidor was admitting to more than dissent from this or that aspect of the official line. He was confessing to having surrendered his life for his marriage. He was still a craven servant of the Party when we last heard of him.

Personal life

Schneider had married Helen Scheider by the 1930s. The couple resided in Sunnyside

Sunnyside

- Australia :*Sunnyside , house of Ellen G. White, co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church- Canada :* Sunnyside, a suburban area of South Surrey, in turn a town centre of Surrey, British Columbia...

 in Queens, New York with a daughter. (Lewis Mumford

Lewis Mumford

Lewis Mumford was an American historian, philosopher of technology, and influential literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer...

 had planned and designed Sunnyside.

Books

• Doctor Transit, Boni & Liveright
  Boni & Liveright
  Boni & Liveright was a publishing house established in 1916 in New York City by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright which made a name by publishing work considered avant-garde and in so doing published work by many modernist authors. They attracted attention from the Society for Suppression of Vice...
  
  , 1925
• The Temptation of Anthony: A Novel in Verse, and Other Poems, Boni and Liveright, 1928
• Comrade: mister, Equinox cooperative press, 1934
• The Judas Time, The Dial Press
  Dial Press
  The Dial Press was a publishing house founded in 1923 by Lincoln MacVeagh.Dial Press shared a building with The Dial and Scofield Thayer worked with both. The first imprint was issued in 1924. Authors included Elizabeth Bowen, W.R...
  
  , 1947
• The World of Love, Volume 1, G. Braziller, 1964

Translations

• Autobiography of Maxim Gorky: My Childhood, In the World, My Universities, The Citadel Press, 1949; Fredonia Books, 2001, ISBN 9781589635050

Edited

• Proletarian Literature in the United States: an Anthology, edited by Granville Hicks
  Granville Hicks
  Granville Hicks was an American Marxist as well as an anti-Marxist novelist, literary critic, educator, and editor.-Life:...
  
  , Joseph North, Paul Peters, Isidor Schneider and Alan Calmer; with a critical introduction by Joseph Freeman
  Joseph Freeman
  Joseph Freeman, Jr. was the first man of black African descent to receive the Melchizedek priesthood and be ordained an elder in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after the announcement of the 1978 Revelation on Priesthood, which allowed “all worthy male members of the Church” to...
  
  . International Publishers
  International Publishers
  International Publishers is a book publishing company based in New York City specializing in Marxist works of economics, political science, and history. The company was established in 1924 by A.A. Heller and Alexander Trachtenberg, using funds earned through a lucrative trade concession granted...
  
  , New York 1935

External links