Editing Lola Ridge

{{Short description|Irish-American poet (1873–1941)}}
{{EngvarB|date=August 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2025}}
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'''Lola Ridge''' (born '''Rose Emily Ridge'''; 12 December 1873 – 19 May 1941) was an Irish-born New Zealand-American [[anarchism|anarchist]] and [[Modernist poetry|modernist]] poet, and an influential editor of [[avant-garde]], [[feminism|feminist]], and [[Marxism|Marxist]] publications. She is best known for her long poems and poetic sequences, published in numerous magazines and collected in five books of poetry.<ref name="allego">[http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/ridge/ridge.htm Donna Allego, "Biography: Lola Ridge"], Modern American Poetry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, accessed 29 March 2014</ref>

Along with other political poets of the early Modernist period, Ridge has received renewed critical attention since the late 20th century and has been lauded by contemporary poets for her choice and ability to write about urban spaces in her poems.<ref name="pinsky">[http://www.slate.com/id/2288897/ Robert Pinsky, "Street Poet/ How the often-overlooked Lola Ridge became one of America's first great urban Modernists"], ''Slate'', 22 March 2011</ref> A selection of her poetry was published in 2007, and a biography, ''Anything That Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet'' (by [[Terese Svoboda]]) was published in 2016.<ref name="svoboda">Terese Svoboda, ''Anything That Burns You: Lola Ridge, Radical Poet,'' Schaffner Press, 2016 [http://teresesvoboda.com/book/lolaridge.php, '' '' ]</ref><ref name=":0" />

==Early life==

Rose Emily Ridge was born in 1873 in [[Dublin]], Ireland, to Emma Ridge (née Reilly) and Joseph Henry. She was her parents' only surviving child. John Henry died when Ridge was three-years-old, and Ridge and her mother subsequently emigrated to [[Hokitika]], New Zealand, when she was six-years-old.<ref name=":0" /> In 1895, she married Peter Webster, the manager of a Hokitika gold mine. In 1903 she left Webster and moved to Sydney, Australia with their three-year-old son Keith to attend Trinity College and study painting at the [[Julian Ashton Art School|Sydney Art School]] with [[Julian Ashton]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Byrne|first=Angela|date=27 February 2020|title=Herstory: Lola Ridge – 1873–1941: Modernist poet, anarchist, labour activist|url=https://www.rte.ie/culture/herstory/2019/0904/1073877-herstory-lola-ridge/|access-date=17 February 2021|publisher=RTÉ}}</ref><ref name="ridge"/>

After her mother died, Ridge emigrated to the United States in 1907 and reinvented herself as Lola Ridge, a poet and painter. She settled in San Francisco and published in ''[[Overland Monthly]]''.<ref name="ridge" /> Ridge placed her son in a Californian orphanage<ref name=":0" /> and moved to New York City's [[Greenwich Village]].<ref name="ridge" /> Working as a model for artists, in a factory and as a poet and illustrator, she became involved in working class politics and protests, and worked with [[Emma Goldman]] and [[Margaret Sanger]].<ref name="ridge">[http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lola-ridge "Lola Ridge"], Poetry Foundation</ref> Her first book of poetry was published in 1918. On 22 October 1919, Ridge married David Lawson, a fellow radical.<ref name="ridge"/>

==Literary career==
Ridge sent a collection of her poems entitled ''Verses'' (1905) inspired by her childhood in Hokitika to [[Alfred Stephens|A.G. Stephens]] at the ''Sydney Bulletin,'' but he declined to publish the collection.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last=Tobin|first=Daniel|date=Winter 2018|title=An Unfinished Tower: On the Early Poems of Lola Ridge|url=https://doi.org/10.1353/thr.2018.0013|journal=[[The Hopkins Review]]|volume=11|pages=69–85|doi=10.1353/thr.2018.0013|s2cid=165188959 |via=Project MUSE}}</ref><ref name="ridge" /> In 1918, Ridge gained considerable notice with her long poem, ''The Ghetto'', first published in ''[[The New Republic]]''. It was included in her first book, ''The Ghetto and Other Poems,'' published that year. The title poem portrays the [[Jew]]ish immigrant community of [[Hester Street (Manhattan)|Hester Street]] in the [[Lower East Side]] of New York, where Ridge lived for a time.<ref name="ridge" /> It explores the effects of capitalism, gender, and generational conflict in ways that bear comparison to the works of [[Charles Reznikoff]]. In addition, Ridge gave an empathetic portrayal of America's urban masses and immigrant communities.<ref name=":0" /> The book was a critical success.

This recognition led to opportunities for Ridge; she became involved with and edited new ''avant-garde'' magazines such as ''[[Others: A Magazine of the New Verse|Others]]'' in 1919, and ''Broom,'' founded in 1921 by [[Harold Loeb]], for which she was the American editor from 1922 to 1923, while he published in Rome. While working with Loeb, she had an apartment next to the basement office of ''Broom'' in the townhouse of his estranged wife [[Marjorie Content]].<ref name="ridge"/> As part of her work at ''Others'', Ridge gave a lecture tour in 1919 on "Women and the Creative Will," arguing that traditional gender roles were a form of patriarchal control used to suppress female creativity.<ref name="ridge" /><ref name=":0" />

Ridge published 61 poems from 1908 to 1937 in such leading magazines as ''Poetry,'' ''[[The New Republic|New Republic]],'' ''[[The Saturday Review of Literature]]'' and ''[[Mother Earth (magazine)|Mother Earth]]''.<ref name="allego"/> She was a contributing editor to ''[[The New Masses]].''<ref name="ridge"/>

She wrote and published four more books of poetry through 1935, and single poems into 1937. Her collections include ''The Ghetto, and Other Poems'' (1918), ''Sun-up, and Other Poems'' (1920), ''Red Flag'' (1927), ''Firehead'' (1930), and ''Dance of Fire'' (1935).<ref name="ridge" /> Her work was also collected in anthologies. Her third book, ''Red Flag'' (1927) collected much of her political poetry.<ref name="allego"/>

In 1929, Ridge was accepted for a residency at the writers colony of [[Yaddo]]. That year she published ''Firehead'', a long poem that was a radical retelling of Jesus' crucifixion. It and her last book, published in 1935 were more philosophical compared to her earlier work.<ref name="allego"/>

She was awarded a [[Guggenheim Fellow]]ship in 1935. She received the [[Shelley Memorial Award]] from the Poetry Society of America in 1934 and 1935. Publishing until 1937, she died in Brooklyn in 1941 of pulmonary [[tuberculosis]].<ref name="ridge"/>

==Political activities==
Ridge did not join any political party, but was active in radical causes. She protested against the executions of [[Sacco and Vanzetti]] in 1927, and was among those arrested that day. In the 1930s, she supported the defence of [[Thomas Mooney|Tom Mooney]] and [[Warren Billings]], who had been framed for a 1916 bombing at the [[Preparedness Day Bombing|Preparedness Day Parade]] in San Francisco.

Her actions during the demonstration in front of the prison on the day Sacco and Vanzetti were executed were described by [[Katherine Anne Porter]] in her long essay, "The Never Ending Wrong." She wrote, "One tall, thin figure of a woman stepped out alone, a good distance into the empty square, and when the police came down at her and the horse's hoofs beat over her head, she did not move, but stood with her shoulders slightly bowed, entirely still. The charge was repeated again and again, but she was not to be driven away. A man near me said in horror, suddenly recognizing her, 'That's Lola Ridge!' and dashed into the empty space toward her. Without any words or a moment's pause, he simply seized her by the shoulders and walked her in front of him back to the edge of the crowd, where she stood as if she were half-conscious. I came near her and said, 'Oh no, don't let them hurt you! They've done enough damage already.' And she said, 'This is the beginning of the end – we have lost something we shan't find again.' I remember her bitter hot breath and her deathlike face."<ref>Porter, KA (1977). The Never-Ending Wrong. Little, Brown, & Co.: 1977.</ref>

Peter Quartermain described her in the ''[[Dictionary of Literary Biography]]'' as "the nearest prototype in her time of the [[proletarian poetry|proletarian poet]] of class conflict, voicing social protest or revolutionary idealism."<ref name="ridge"/>

==Works==
*[https://archive.org/details/ghetto00ridggoog <!-- quote=Lola Ridge. --> ''The Ghetto, and Other Poems''], Huebsch, 1918.
*[https://archive.org/details/sunupandotherpo00ridggoog ''Sun-Up, and Other Poems''], Huebsch, 1920
*''Red Flag'', Viking, 1927.
*''Firehead'', Payson & Clarke, 1929.
*''Dance of Fire'', Smith & Haas, 1935.
*{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kvfRNBMptnAC&q=Lola+Ridge| title=Light in Hand: Selected Early Poems | editor= Daniel Tobin | publisher= Quale Press| year=2007| isbn= 978-0-9792999-1-9 }}
*''Collected Early Works of Lola Ridge'' (ed. Daniel Tobin) Little Island Press, 2018.

==Legacy and honours==
*1935 [[Guggenheim Fellowship]] in poetry
*1934 and 1935, Ridge won the [[Shelley Memorial Award]], given by the Poetry Society of America
*Her papers are held at [[Smith College]].<ref>[http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/sophiasmith/mnsss286_main.html Lola Ridge Papers], Sophia Smith Collection, Five College Archives and Library</ref>

==Renewed scholarly interest==
With renewed scholarly interest in Ridge's work since the late 20th century, selections from her first three books of poetry were published posthumously as, ''Light in Hand: Selected Early Poems'' (2007), edited and with an introduction by Daniel Tobin. Tobin notes that Ridge was, "part of the confluence of politics, culture and the burgeoning of women's voices at the advent of modernism to the start of World War II."<ref>Daniel Tobin, "Introduction," to Lola Ridge, ''Light in Hand: Selected Early Poems,'' Quale Press, 2007.</ref> Furthermore, Tobin highlights the importance of Ridge's depiction of urban settings in contrast to other modernist writers like [[Ezra Pound]] or [[T. S. Eliot|T.S. Eliot]]. For Ridge, the modern city becomes a "community shaped by ritual and mutual need rather than an exposé of modern angst and alienation and dissipation."<ref name=":0" />

[[Robert Pinsky]], former [[Poet Laureate of the United States]], wrote that contemporary readers need, "to appreciate the magnitude and freshness of her enterprise: to make poetry out of the actual city."<ref name="pinsky"/> Pinsky likens Ridge to 18th-century British poet [[William Blake]] in her ability to express the perspective of children, evoking, "innocence and experience in a way that blurs the ambiguous boundary between them."<ref name="pinsky"/> Pinsky also notes that Ridge preceded American [[Hart Crane]], known for his long poem ''[[The Bridge (long poem)|The Bridge]]'' about the [[Brooklyn Bridge]], in her assigning "ecstatic, high language of the past, especially of the Elizabethans, to the squalid and the sublime realities of the actual, 20th-century American city."<ref name="pinsky"/>

==Quotation==
:My doll Janie has no waist
:and her body is like a tub with feet on it.
:Sometimes I beat her
:but I always kiss her afterwards.
:When I have kissed all the paint off her body
:I shall tie a ribbon about it
:so she shan't look shabby.
:But it must be blue –
:it mustn't be pink –
:pink shows the dirt on her face
:that won't wash off.

:I beat Janie
:and beat her...
:but still she smiled...
:so I scratched her between the eyes with a pin.
:Now she doesn't love me any more...
:she scowls... and scowls...
:though I've begged her to forgive me
:and poured sugar in the hole at the back of her head.

:::-- from ''Sun-Up and Other Poems''

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
* Donna M. Allego, ''The Construction and Role of Community in Political Long Poems by Twentieth-Century American Women Poets'', Ann Arbor: UMI, 1997.
* Nancy Berke, ''Women Poets on the Left: Lola Ridge, Genevieve Taggard, Margaret Walker,'' University of Florida Press (Gainesville, FL), 2001.
* {{Cite journal |last1=Bratton |first1=Francesca |title='Strange symbols to the new dawn': Lola Ridge, Anarchist Networks, and the Carceral Elegy: Irish University Review |journal=Irish University Review |volume=53 |issue=2 |pages=385–403 |date=November 2023 |doi=10.3366/iur.2023.0621 |issn=0021-1427 |via=[[EBSCOhost]] }}
* {{Cite journal |last1=Collins |first1=Lucy |title=Poet, Editor, Anarchist: Lola Ridge's New York Networks: English Studies |journal=English Studies |volume=104 |issue=6 |pages=1118–1138 |date=October 2023 |doi=10.1080/0013838X.2023.2257532 |issn=0013-838X |via=[[EBSCOhost]] }}
* Alfred Kreymborg, ''Our Singing Strength: A History of American Poetry,'' Coward-McCann, 1929.

==External links==
{{commons category-inline}}
* [http://bostonreview.net/poetry/terese-svoboda-lola-ridge "Lola Ridge: The Radical Modernist We Won't Forget Twice"], [[Terese Svoboda]], ''Boston Review,'' 18 Feb 2016 
* [http://www.slate.com/id/2288897/ "Street Poet/ How the often-overlooked Lola Ridge became one of America's first great urban Modernists"], [[Robert Pinsky]], ''Slate,'' 22 March 2011, includes links to audio recordings of her poems
* [http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/ridge/ridge.htm Donna Allego, "Biography: Lola Ridge"], Modern American Poetry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
* [https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25679290.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Add853c5336757b7da35be4118d1feef8 Nancy Berke, "Ethnicity, Class, and Gender in Lola Ridge's 'The Ghetto.'"] ''Legacy'', vol.16, no.1, 1999, pp.&nbsp;70–81. 
* {{Gutenberg author |id=1449| name=Lola Ridge}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Lola Ridge}}
* {{Librivox author |id=3562}}
* [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=4332 ''The Ghetto, and Other Poems'' (1918)], online at University of Pennsylvania Library
* [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=4331 ''Sun-Up, and Other Poems'' (1920)]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ridge, Lola}}
[[Category:1873 births]]
[[Category:1941 deaths]]
[[Category:American anarchists]]
[[Category:New Zealand anarchists]]
[[Category:American women poets]]
[[Category:Irish emigrants to the United States]]
[[Category:New Zealand women poets]]
[[Category:Irish emigrants to New Zealand]]
[[Category:Julian Ashton Art School alumni]]
[[Category:New Zealand emigrants to the United States]]
[[Category:20th-century American poets]]
[[Category:20th-century American women writers]]