"It is Cold and I am Old" poetry by Yavana Kello, 1928, Krompton & Poe Printing, Murdo, South Dakota, Hardcover, 102 pages, foreword by Joe Bellnow.
According to the very friendly foreword to the book, this is the second volume of poetry Kello published. It turns out that Kello is twenty-three, of Scandinavian heritage, an heir to a scented soap and tooth-powder fortune and lives in a comfortable house in West-Fargo, Cass County, North Dakota. Kello is very unlikely to suffer of cold, hunger, thirst or old age ... so his poetry, although technically refined, neat and polished comes from a fake place. It appears that the author frequently stays out late into the night with friends drinking and having a great time and upon returning home, after a shower and a great breakfast of steak and eggs, takes his beautiful, young fiancee out for a drive in the hills and to have lunch at the country club. Mr. Kello's literary workday does not start until about four when he produces a couple of broken-heart and broken-dreams creations and then goes to the billiard room to relax.
All poems are written in very disciplined quatrains with an ABAB rhyme schema that makes them roll easily off the tongue and are very pleasant to the ear. After a while though, even the most enthusiastic reader finds they sound hollow and "hears vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme". I never found (not that I looked too hard) the first volume of Kello's poems and would not recommend his books to anybody anyway.
According to the very friendly foreword to the book, this is the second volume of poetry Kello published. It turns out that Kello is twenty-three, of Scandinavian heritage, an heir to a scented soap and tooth-powder fortune and lives in a comfortable house in West-Fargo, Cass County, North Dakota. Kello is very unlikely to suffer of cold, hunger, thirst or old age ... so his poetry, although technically refined, neat and polished comes from a fake place. It appears that the author frequently stays out late into the night with friends drinking and having a great time and upon returning home, after a shower and a great breakfast of steak and eggs, takes his beautiful, young fiancee out for a drive in the hills and to have lunch at the country club. Mr. Kello's literary workday does not start until about four when he produces a couple of broken-heart and broken-dreams creations and then goes to the billiard room to relax.
All poems are written in very disciplined quatrains with an ABAB rhyme schema that makes them roll easily off the tongue and are very pleasant to the ear. After a while though, even the most enthusiastic reader finds they sound hollow and "hears vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme". I never found (not that I looked too hard) the first volume of Kello's poems and would not recommend his books to anybody anyway.
I read and reviewed this volume as part me cataloguing and creating an inventory of the books found as part of the "The Evart-Gunn Publishing Company Book Salvage Operation" (see first entry of this blog).
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