Spectra

This book of poems was a literary hoax perpetrated by Witter Bynner and Arthur Davison Ficke. They wrote these silly poems with opus numbers instead of titles, with Bynner using the pen name “Emanuel Morgan” and Ficke signing his poems as “Anne Knish.” The intent was to spoof the Imagistic poetry movement, but the hoax was so good that it fooled their publisher, gained actual followers, and received more exposure than Bynner and Ficke’s serious poems.