Selden Rodman
| Selden Rodman | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Cary Selden Rodman February 19, 1909 New York City |
| Died | November 2, 2002 (aged 93) Ridgewood, New Jersey |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Loomis Academy, Yale University |
| Spouse(s) | Eunice Clark (1), Hilda Clausen (2), Maia Wojciechowska (3), Carole Cleaver (4) |
| Children | Oriana, Carla, Van Nostrand |
Cary Selden Rodman (February 19, 1909 – November 2, 2002) was a prolific U.S. writer of poetry, plays and prose, political commentary, art criticism, Latin American and Caribbean history, biography and travel writing—publishing a book almost every year of his adult life.
Born on February 19, 1909 to architect Cary Selden Rodman and Nannie Van Nostrand (Marvin). He had one sibling, Nancy Gardiner MacDonald, who married Dwight MacDonald in 1934. He attended Loomis Academy and Yale University. With William Harlan Hale, he was founder and editor of the campus magazine The Harkness Hoot (1930–31). Following university, he edited, with Alfred Mitchell Bingham, the political monthly Common Sense (1932–43). He served as Master Sgt. O.S.S. in the U.S. Army (1943–45).
Rodman was first published as a poet in 1932. Mortal Triumph and Other Poems was followed by narrative poems and the verse play The Revolutionists in 1942. His last book of poetry, Death of a Hero,published in 1964, imagines the scene of the plane crash and death of Sir Frederick Banting, discoverer of insulin, and was illustrated by the artist, Seymour Leichman.
Editor of seminal anthologies, A New Anthology of Modern Poetry,was 'the first anthology of its kind to include Negro folk-songs, light verse and satire, choruses from the experimental theater and a sound-track from a pioneer movie'.100 American Poems included lyric, epic and ballad works from colonial times through 1948.
Rodman married his first wife, Eunice Clark, in 1933, and his second wife, Hilda Clausen, in 1938. In 1950 he married Maia Wojciechowska and their daughter Oriana, was born in 1951. He married Carole Cleaver in 1962 and with her had two children, Carla and Van Nostrand.
He died on November 2, 2002 in Ridgewood, New Jersey.
Regarding self-taught, naïve, and primitive artists he admired, Rodman said, '...by their intuitive grasp of the principles of composition, color, and accommodation to the flatness of the picture-plane, (they) achieve the same quality of timelessness as the Masters. There is the same sense of arrested mobility; the same transformation of the humble into the noble, the here-and-now into forever.'
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