The output of Pelley’s pen in an average day was more than many writers will publish in a lifetime. The sheer volume of his corpus makes it difficult to navigate.
Among the most overlooked of his compositions is his poetry. I don’t know much about poetry, but I think his is rather good. It has often moved me emotionally. Of course, I’m a cultist, so perhaps my opinion is not to be trusted.
I have owned at least two copies of his poetry collection “Twilight Clear,” printed in the mid-50s if I recall. The autograph page suggests that it was a limited edition of 1,000 copies and it doesn’t turn up all too often.
The first time I remember seeing it was at his daughter Adelaide’s home in the summer of 1995. During our coffee table visit, mentioned in previous installments, one of the items brought out was a copy of “Twilight Clear.”
“Have you ever read his poems?” Adelaide asked.
“The ones signed Winchester MacDowell in pages of ‘Valor’?” my reply.
She shook her head and grinned, slid the open book across the table to me and asked me to read a selection.
Brevet
Call me, O Lord, and hear my answer firm;
Give me the bleakest trail, the darkest post;
Send me upon the roughest way, up highest steep,
Name me to do the thing I dread the most!
Take up the cry I uttered in my youth
When blood and heart were hot and courage rash;
Send me where Death smiles like a mother kind,
Where I walk safely through the claws that gash.
Hear Thou my prayer, Lord, prayed in faith,
That Thou shalt make my life-path sparse of gold,
That I may pay my way with winter’s wage,
Strong-joyed to know that I can best the cold.
So pray I now the prayer that few men pray,
Not for Thy largess but for steel of soul,
Thine is the brevet put upon mine heart:
That I shall never reach receding goal!
…
I paused and looked around the table with a remark something to the effect of, “He sure had a way with words,” or similar understatement.
I believe we passed the dark blue covered book between us, Herma, Adelaide and a friend from a bit south of Indianapolis who had driven me up, and read another short piece or two. I recall certain phrases of these poems, read aloud in the house where the Chief had lived out his days in the company of the family who loved him best.
Years later I mail-ordered a copy sent to me by an antiquarian bookseller while I lived in Iceland. I suppose that one may have remained with an Icelandic friend when I moved back to the States. The mood of those words was even more impactful while living in that remote, rugged landscape and working close by an unforgiving sea. I grew strong, physically and spiritually, in those days.
Today the sentiment feels perhaps more resigned than determined. As if the course had been set and is now in the hands of Kismet. A great spin of life’s wheel of fate was made at that time and I am confident that it will land well.
In this era of the soundbite and poetry as degenerate as all other phases of our former culture, I’m thinking of doing some readings and publishing them here and on YouTube. Again, this is a lazy way of getting out content between the more tedious writing I hope to gradually bear down on.
In the next little while I hope to get out a short treatment of Fred Haberman, the pyramidologist who ran ads in early issues of Liberation and who was, unlike Pelley, a proponent of the British-Israel sect.
I’ve got at least half-a-dozen chapter headings in mind and countless footnotes that deserve varying attention, which we can do here at unhindered length.
If there is any phase or aspect of Pelley’s career or influence that you feel moved to address, comment or email a reply here. Even after decades of immersive study, I occasionally encounter some consideration and wonder, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
A point of interest for me lately has been Pelley's influence from the Heiss Corporation of New York City. I've long heard the tale that WDP was influenced by Friedrich Heiss, who supposedly was affiliated with the Nazi Party, and it further cemented Pelley's anti-Semitism and shifted him closer to entering politics but finding much info on these interactions and the Heiss Corporation proper has been nigh impossible. I've never actually found record of how Pelley and the Heiss family would have interacted and the only things I have from their business is one copy of their Immortality magazine hosted on IAPSOP, some works from William Danmar, two small books by a fellow named Henry Mildeberger and some German language things that catered to the German American market.
In a lot of ways this sent me down another rabbit hole much like the one you mentioned in the Adelbert Cornell article. Simply knowing of WDP and researching him can lead you to finding all sorts of people and groups that are otherwise totally forgotten, because I can't imagine many other people in 2022 are trying to learn about a small German-American literary business from the early to mid 1900's.