Arthur Wheelock Upson (January 10, 1877 – August 14, 1908) was an American poet.

Early life

He was born in

Camden, New York Camden is a Administrative divisions of New York#Town, town in Oneida County, New York, United States. The population was 4,934 at the 2010 census. The town of Camden contains a Administrative divisions of New York#Village, village also called ...

, on January 10, 1877, to Spencer Johnson Upson and Julia Claflin. His family moved from New York to

Saint Paul, Minnesota Saint Paul (often abbreviated St. Paul) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County, Minnesota, Ramsey County. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, ...

, in 1894, with Upson entering the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

with the class of 1898. There, he served as editor of the campus newspaper, ''the Minnesota Daily''. While a student at University of Minnesota, he was a member of the Beta Pi chapter of

Beta Theta Pi Beta Theta Pi (), commonly known as Beta, is a North American social Fraternities and sororities in North America, fraternity that was founded in 1839 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. One of North America's oldest fraternities, , it consist ...

. Unable to complete the requirements for a degree due to his ill health, he was later awarded a degree in 1906 due to his literary success, becoming an instructor there the same year. Upson reworked the song "

Hail! Minnesota "Hail! Minnesota" (also simply called "Minnesota" in early years) is the regional anthem (or "state song") of the U.S. state of Minnesota. A variation is used as a school song of the University of Minnesota. It originated at the university in the ...

", at the request of the school's president

Cyrus Northrop Cyrus Northrop (September 30, 1834 – April 3, 1922) was an American university president. Early life Cyrus Northrop, Sr. was born in Ridgefield, Connecticut. He graduated from Yale University in 1857 where he was a member of both Alpha Sigma ...

, the song later becoming the state song of Minnesota and the ''alma mater'' of the University of Minnesota.

Career

The Bellman (literary magazine) ''The Bellman'' was a 20th-century literary magazine based in Minneapolis Minnesota. The magazine was published from 1906 to 1919 and it was considered to be one of the best literary periodicals. Background ''The Bellman Company'' began publis ...

'' was almost the first magazine to publish the work of American writer Arthur Upson.

Death

Upson died at age 31, drowning after falling from his boat in

Lake Bemidji Lake Bemidji is a small glacier, glacially-formed lake, approximately in area, in northern Minnesota in the United States. Located less than downstream from the source of the Mississippi River, it both receives and is drained by the Mississippi, ...

Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

, on August 14, 1908. His body was found after he had been missing for two days. The boat which he fell from had capsized and had lacked one of its oars. It was suspected that Upson's death was a suicide, as he already attempted suicide only three years before. Upson was mourned as having been a highly promising artist, with the young

Sinclair Lewis Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature, 1930, he became the first author from the United States (and the first from the America ...

writing an editorial obituary that exalted Upson, comparing him to a

Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tub ...

or a

Chatterton Thomas Chatterton (20 November 1752 – 24 August 1770) was an English poet whose precocious talents ended in suicide at age 17. He was an influence on Romantic artists of the period such as Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth and Coleridge. Altho ...

.Schorer, Mark. Sinclair Lewis: An American Life. McGraw-Hill, 1961. Page 142. His collected poems, edited with an introduction by fellow poet Richard Burton, were published in 1908. Burton also published "an elegy on the death" of Upson in 1910 entitled ''a Midsummer Memory''.

Notes

Bibliography

*''Westwind Songs'' (1902

*''Octaves in an Oxford Garden'' (1902

*''The City: a Poem Drama'' (1905

*''The Tides of Spring and Other Poems'' (1907

*''Collected Poems'' (1909

https://archive.org/details/collectedpoemsed02upsouoft]

External links

*
The Arthur Upson Room
{{DEFAULTSORT:Upson, Arthur 1877 births 1908 deaths 20th-century American poets University of Minnesota alumni 19th-century American poets American male poets 19th-century American male writers 20th-century American male writers Deaths by drowning in the United States