Bynner, Witter

Bynner, Witter (bĭn`ər), 1881–1968, American poet, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., grad. Harvard, 1902. As a poet Bynner had a remarkable facility for catching the cadences of other writers and cultures. Under the pseudonym Emanuel Morgan he collaborated with Arthur Davidson Ficke in writing Spectra (1917), a book parodying contemporary poetic vogues such as imagism; Spectra was for a time considered a serious work (see literary frauds). With Dr. Kaing Kung-Ho, Bynner translated 300 Chinese poems published in The Jade Mountain (1929). His other works include several plays and essays; a reminiscence of D. H. Lawrence, Journey with Genius (1951); and such volumes of poetry as Grenstone Poems (1917), Indian Earth (1929), Selected Poems (1943), Take Away the Darkness (1947), and New Poems (1960).