At Home With Russell Atkins

Released last month, In the Company of Russell Atkins pays homage to one of Cleveland's literary giants. "During high school, Atkins was turned on to poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Milton and William Wordsworth" writes Philip Metres in Cleveland Magazine. "After a librarian invited Langston Hughes to do a reading at the school, Atkins began corresponding with the Harlem Renaissance poet. " We'll pick up there:

"Before he was 20, thanks to the encouragement of Hughes, Atkins was published in View — “a literary magazine, not the women’s television program,” he quips.

In 1950, he co-founded Free Lance magazine, a literary journal, and over the years he published little abstract poetry collections, including Here in The (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1976). His poems were reprinted in 20 anthologies.

Influenced by music and compared to John Coltrane, Atkins’ poems are as much about the music of language as they are about the everyday world: waiting at the bus stop, watching a once-beautiful bartender or standing by Lake Erie.

Although he also wrote at least two operas and spirituals for piano and always thought of himself as a musician as much as a poet, he’d seen friends struggle to get music produced."

Continue reading at Cleveland Magazine.