Product Description

If poets are "liars by profession," Sharmel Iris was truly professional. Poet, plagiarist, imposter, and forger, Iris engaged in a lifelong campaign of self-promotion that linked him to a constellation of leading writers and public figures--among them T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Joyce Kilmer, Ezra Pound, Dame Edith Sitwell, Diego Rivera, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, William Wrigley, and Woodrow Wilson. "Of poets writing today, there is no greater,"states a preface, signed by W.B. Yeats, to one of Iris's volumes of poetry--although at the time of publication Yeats had been dead for several years.

As a child, Iris had emigrated from Italy with his mother, who arrived in Chicago in pursuit of the American dream. Driven by ambition and narcissism, he began publishing poetry in 1905, participated in the Chicago Renaissance, and continued publishing until two years before his death in 1967.

With energy and persistance, the minor Chicago poet insinuated himself among the great and famous and simulated a life of literary stardom. Iris's self-projection as a neglected poetic genius often was designed to translate into monetary value, while confirming his role behind the scenes of 20th-century literary history.

Examining Iris's grandiose fantasy, Abbott exposes his forgery, plagiarism, and imposture. Granting Iris the attention he haplessly courted all his life, Abbott discovers a forger of fame whose story provides a commentary, often parodic, on the place of poetry in his time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2541902 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 204 pages

Review
"Abbott's scholarship is sound and grounded in exemplary research into sources both obscure and better-known." -- Bill Savage, Northwestern University

"The research is painstakingly thorough and utterly original. A valuable and distinctive piece of work." -- C. D. Blanton, University of California, Berkeley

About the Author
Craig Abbott, a professor emeritus of Northern Illinois University, is author of several studies on modern American poetry.

Customer Reviews

The biography of a con man that once picked up, cannot easily be put down.
Craig Abott (Professor Emeritus of Northern Illinois University) presents Forging Fame: The Strange Career of Scharmel Iris, the intriguing biography of poet, plagiarist, imposter, and forger Scharmel Iris, whose unusual self-aggrandizing life linked him to wide variety of writers and public figures ranging from T.S. Eliot to Salvador Dali to Eleanor Roosevelt. Forging Fame examines both the mundane details of Iris' life and the grandiose lies that Iris recklessly embraced to bolster his fame and his image of a neglected poetic genius. The result is the biography of a con man that once picked up, cannot easily be put down.

A strange and engaging story
Strange is perhaps an understatement when speaking of the career of poet Scharmel Iris, and Dr. Abbott does a wonderful job of taking us through Iris's bizarre world.

Determined to be viewed as a major poet during his lifetime, no matter the actual quality of his poems, Iris uses charm, forgery, and confidence games to try and break into the upper crust society and literary circles of his day. Abbott draws from published works, letters, documentary evidence, and interviews to tell the story of a man who, though clearly disturbed, is also compelling in his desperate search for the fame he is so sure he deserves.