From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Franklin Rosemont
Franklin Rosemont speaking at Loyola University, Chicago, 2007.

Franklin Rosemont (2 October 1943 – 12 April 2009) was a celebrated poet, artist, historian, street speaker, and co-founder of the Chicago Surrealist Group.^[1] Over four decades, Franklin produced a body of work, of declarations, manifestos, poetry, collage, hidden histories, and other interventions intended to inspire a new generation of revolution, and became perhaps "the most productive scholar of labor and the left in the United States."^[2]

Early life

He was born in Chicago, Illinois, to father Henry, a labor activist, and mother Sally, a jazz musician.^[3]

Career

He edited and wrote an introduction for What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings of Andre Breton, and edited Rebel Worker, Arsenal/Surrealist Subversion, The Rise & Fall of the DIL Pickle: Jazz-Age Chicago's Wildest & Most Outrageously Creative Hobohemian Nightspot and Juice Is Stranger Than Friction: Selected Writings of T-Bone Slim. With Penelope Rosemont and Paul Garon he edited The Forecast is Hot!. His work has been deeply concerned with both the history of surrealism (writing a forward for Max Ernst and Alchemy: A Magician in Search of Myth) and of the radical labor movement in America, for instance, writing a biography of Joe Hill.

Publications

Rosemont is the author of the poetry collections The Morning of a Machine Gun|The Morning of a Machine Gun: Twenty Poems & Documents. Profusely Illustrated By the Author., The Apple of the Automatic Zebra's Eye, and Penelope: A Poem, as well as An Open Entrance to the Shut Palace of Wrong Numbers, a book that explores the phenomenon of "wrong numbers" from a surrealist perspective, which was published by Black Swan Press in 2003. He also edited and introduced Hobohemia: Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, Ben Reitman & other agitators & outsiders in 1920s/30s Chicago, by Frank O. Beck.^[4]

Rosemont, Franklin (2002) (in English). Joe Hill. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company. ISBN 088206-265-0. 

External links

• Franklin Rosemont 1943–2009 This "cyber-tombeau" at Silliman's Blog by poet Ron Silliman includes comments, tributes, and links
• Remembering a Wobbly Surrealist an extensive tribute to Rosemont
• Franklin Rosemont, fellow worker, surrealist poet, great American comprehensive set of links to obituaries on Rosemont found around the web as of April 2009

References

1. ^ The Surreal Life of Franklin Rosemont by Paul Garon, David Roediger and Kate Khatib, April 16 2009
2. ^ The Surreal Life of Franklin Rosemont by Paul Garon, David Roediger and Kate Khatib, April 16 2009
3. ^ Bio
4. ^ Beck, Frank O. (2000) (in English). Hobohemia: Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, Ben Reitman & other agitators & outsiders in 1920s/30s Chicago. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr.