Evening star., 1933-12-17
Job Sought by Poet
Who Says He's Nations Best
Young RayfOrd You'd
Commemorate u. S.
Folk Lore.
Has Considered Self Most
COnceited Man in
This Country.
the company. In
A. F. Diegelmann

Julian Lee Rayford 25, who admits
he is the greatest poet in America, the
greatest recitirg poet, and is well on the
way toward becoming the nations fore
most sculptor, has come to town to
get a Job carving reliefs for the Civil
Works Administration.
He wants to create a series OF bas-
reliefs for Government building COM
memorating the folk lore of the Ameri-
can people.
For this work, he thinks is eminently
fitted by way of experience, for since
he left Mobile. Ala. because he didn't
want > graduate from high school in
"ice cream pants" he has trav-
eled the length and breadth Of the
country "blinding" passenger trains and
"thumbing" his way. In the course OF
his peregrinations, as he calls his trav-
els, he spent nine months in the studio
of Gutzon Borglum, he says, and last
Winter in Chicago with Raoul Josef,
French sculptor.
Rayford thinks highly of himself in
ether fields than the arts. claiming su-
periority in the matter Of conceit and
telling fish stories. Last June, he made
the first page of the newspapers by
calling himself the most conceited man
in America.
The late Vachel Lindsay and Carl
Sandburg are no great shakes as poets
in comparison to himself, Rayford tells
YOU as soon as you Sit down to talk
with him. .,,
He claims his method Of reading his
poetry is unique.
Il below, boom. bang, shout. scream:
yelp and raise hell in general so that
some people say I insult their intelh-
gence," Rayford described his recita-
tions.
About his sculpture he is deadly seri-
Gus. and intends to make it his life
work. He is determined to make sue
cess of it because most people don't
want you to succeed anyway and I'm
going to amount to something just to
make them sore
He expresses his artistic philosophy
thus.
Most sculptors and painters today
are an emasculated lot. They haven't
much courage. They learn to use their
hands and never learn to use their
minds. They learn to do beautiful
technical things that haven't one ounce
of brains behind them. They make
beautiful nudes and sap-headed senti-
mental things that fairly drip with
sirup. They also do historical portraits
but never come out among the living
into the present day
"Sculptors were put into the world
to commemorate the progress of man
kind. This they do best by depicting
events and developments of the age in
which they live. Today is the most
amazing age mankind has ever seen
and the only men who can draw an
automobile or an airplane that looks
like one are cartooniStS. Beggars are
on the streets by thousands and men
and women are starving and still sculp-
tors and painters are showing naked
men and women and Bacchus picking
grapes.
Therefore. in this project for a Fed
eral building L have chosen living
American Subjects-the folk lore of the
American people, the soul of expression
Ol The Nation such as Paul BVnVan'
John Henry, Casey Jones, Steamboat
Bill, the legend of the cotton-nouth
moccasin blossoming into lily. outlaws
and athletes, Walt Whitman and Abe
Lincoln-all things which are irtrinsi-
cally American"
He wants the Government to estab-
liSh a national art school where stu
dents could work at Government eX-
pense Only in this way, he said, will
America ever develop a great national
art.