A poem on the theme of love, and an advert of a Louise Brooks film on the theme of love

Late last year, I ran a short series of blogs highlighting some of the new and unusual material I have come across while researching Louise Brooks' life and career. This was research conducted over the internet during the stay-at-home doldrums of the 2020 pandemic lock-down. My research has continued into 2021, as have the stay-at-home orders. Thanks to longtime Louise Brooks Society supporter Tim Moore, I have recently come across a handful of new and unusual items which I wish to share. This post kicks off another short series of blogs highlighting that material.

Here is a little something I recently came across which caught my eye, an advertisement for the Louise Brooks film, Love Em and Leave Em (1926), which appeared in the Jewish Chronicle, a newspaper published in Newark, New Jersey. Next to the ad is a poem on the theme of love by Louis Ginsberg, the father of the famed poet Allen Ginsberg. Together, the poem and the film ad make for an interesting juxtaposition.

Unlike his son, Louis Ginsberg is not considered a major poet. Rather, he was an accomplished versifier whose poems appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Masses, the New York Evening Post, Argosy, and other periodicals and newspapers, as well as in Modern American Poetry: A Critical Anthology, Third Revised Edition (1925) and Modern British Poetry, both edited by Louis Untermeyer.

Though not shown, the poem printed above is titled "Reasons" and it was dedicated "(For Naomi)" -- Louis Ginsberg's first wife and Allen Ginsberg's mother. As indicated, it appeared in Anthology of Magazine Verse For 1926 And Yearbook of American Poetry, edited by William Stanley Braithwaite.

Let me end with another curious Louise Brooks-Beat Generation overlap.... On Dec. 15, 1948, Lowell, Massachusetts journalist (and future Jack Kerouac in-law) Charles Sampas mused about the silent film star in his newspaper column, writing “I can remember Way Back When and actress named Louise Brooks was the Number One favorite of the Square Beaux….”