Glen Coffield Explained

Birth Date:June 5, 1917
Birth Place:Prescott, Arizona, United States
Death Date:June 16, 1981
Death Place:Mt. Vernon, Missouri, US
Resting Place:Park Cemetery, Carthage, Missouri, US
Occupation:Poet
Education:B.S. Education
Alma Mater:Central Missouri State Teachers College

Glenn Stemmons Coffield (June 5, 1917 – June 16, 1981) was an American poet and conscientious objector. He was born in Prescott, Arizona, and received a B.S. degree in education from Central Missouri State Teachers College in 1940. During World War II, he served in Civilian Public Service (CPS) Camp #7 in Magnolia, Arkansas, and then was transferred to the Camp Angel CPS camp near Waldport, Oregon in 1942.[1] Coffield is sometimes called Oregon's first hippie.[2]

The artist Kemper Nomland was at Camp Angel, and attempted to capture Coffield's creativity in a painting donated to the Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon.[3] Coffield's first collection of poems Ultimatum (1943) was a one-man operation since he was author, typist, designer and illustrator, as with most of his subsequent works.[2] His anthology Horned Moon was published by Everson's Untide Press in 1944. In the poem Indivisible he describes the world as more loosely strung than a nation, feeling pain more slowly "as when wild horses stampede on broken hooves".Some of his poems were also published in the Untide Press magazine Illiterati.[4]

After the war Coffield did some acting in San Francisco with a repertory called The Interplayers led by Kermit Sheets. From 1947–1954 he ran the Grundtvig Folk School at Eagle Creek in the Mount Hood wilderness in Oregon, where he published numerous small poetry journals and newsletters. In the 1960s Coffield moved back to San Francisco, where he was severely injured in a hit and run accident. Coffield spent the rest of his life in Missouri, and died in Mt. Vernon.[3] [5]

Selected bibliography

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Subject guide to Conscientious Objectors, including material on C.P.S. Camp No. 56, Camp Waldport, Waldport, Oregon, in Manuscript collections . University of Oregon . February 24, 2010.
  2. Web site: Imprint: Oregon . Fall / Spring 1978 – 1979 . February 24, 2010.
  3. Web site: NWDA Images: Painting of Glenn Stemmons Coffield, Oregon poet and WWII conscientious objector by Kemper Nomland . NWDA . February 24, 2010 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20091219200355/http://nwda.wsulibs.wsu.edu/images1.html . December 19, 2009.
  4. Book: 78 . Behind the lines: war resistance poetry on the American homefront since 1941 . registration . Philip Metres . University of Iowa Press . 2007 . 978-0-87745-998-9.
  5. Web site: Glenn Stemmons Coffield . Lewis and Clark College . February 24, 2010 . https://web.archive.org/web/20081122122545/http://library.lclark.edu/specialcollections/coffield.html . November 22, 2008 . dead .

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