Clark Mills McBurney

   Graduate of Washington University and classmate of Tennessee Williams during the 1930’s.

Publications at the Washington University Library (St. Louis, MO):  The Fiction of Jules  Romains, Masters Thesis, 1937. bound [carbon] copy, 127 pp. 1 item. Scrapbook, ca. 1942. Clippings related to modern American poetry, publication dates and interviews. 1 item.

Excerpt from Tennessee Williams: A Biography By Don'dria Moore:

"Williams (Tennessee) met Willand Holland, who was the  director of  Mummers, an experimental theater.   Holland introduced Clark Mills McBurney to Tennessee, who introduced Williams to other poets. . Williams and McBurney started a friendship which led them to the "Literary Factor" in McBurney's basement, where Williams was first really introduced to long plays. "

From William Jay Smith Biography (1918-) - Autobiography:

"In one of the advanced courses in which I enrolled I made the acquaintance of Clark Mills McBurney, a graduate student in French who had published poems in national magazines. At the same time I met Thomas Lanier Williams, who, after some years at the University of Missouri and a job at the International Shoe Company in St. Louis where his father was a sales manager, had come to Washington University as a special student. Tom Williams, who later became the playwright Tennessee Williams, was writing poetry as well as plays and had won several local prizes. He and Clark and I organized a chapter of the College Poetry Society and began to publish poems in College Verse, the the national magazine published by the Society. The three of us met regularly at Tom's house near the university to discuss our poems and we learned a great deal from these discussions, during which we were extremely severe with one another. Tom was the shyest, quietest person I had ever met. His stony-faced silence often put people off: he appeared disdainful of what was going on around him, never joining in the quick give-and-take of a conversation but rather listening carefully and taking it all in. He would sit quietly in a gathering for long periods of time until suddenly, like a volcano erupting, he would burst out with a high cackle and then with resounding and uncontrollable laughter. Those who knew him well found this trait delightful but to others it seemed rude and disconcerting. He was certainly quick and ready with words when we discussed our poetry.

For both Tom and me, Clark, who had already published widely as Clark Mills and was familiar with the work of Eliot, Auden, Spender and other modern poets, was an inspiring mentor. When I was away on a job in Michigan the following summer, Clark and Tom organized what they called the Literary Factory in Clark's basement and they both worked regularly there on poetry and plays. The Mummers, a St. Louis theatrical group, produced one of Tom's plays, Candles to the Sun, in 1937, but he continued to write poetry. The following year when Clark was in Paris on a fellowship, he and I formed what we called the St. Louis Poets Workshop, and continued to send our poems out to national magazines, undisturbed by the frequent rejection slips that we received." (Read more: William Jay Smith Biography (1918-) - Autobiography Feature http://biography.jrank.org/pages/966/Smith-William-Jay-1918-Autobio...)

From Tom Williams, Proletarian Playwright by Alleati Hale: "The Old Courthouse was also a weekly meeting place for a group of unconventional students from Washington University who had joined the St. Louis Union of Artists and Writers. Among them, Clark Mills was revered as a published poet, active in the university's chapter of the national College Poetry Society. Williams had belonged to the chapter at Missouri University and, hungry for contacts outside the factory, sought out the poets at Washington. Although shy, he went to a literary meeting where Clark Mills was pointed out as that student who writes "crazy modern verse nobody understands but God and himself!" Tom, who had just had his own verse published in four literary magazines, was instantly attracted. Mills would become a prime influence for his next few years, introducing him to the poetry of Rilke, Rimbaud, and Hart Crane, who became Williams' idol. Until then, his model had been the St. Louis poet, Sara Teasdale, or the sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Clark Mills, surnamed McBurney, French scholar, poet and intellectual, had another side. His father was a freight agent for the Union Pacific Railroad and one sister, Adeline, was a social welfare worker.Through them he was aware of the youths, hoboes, and homeless now riding the rails through America, of the strikes going on in St. Louis and of such events as the parade of two thousand local unemployed that ended in a riot. Clark may have been one of those students who heard Jack Conroy speak at the University and was inspired by his revolutionary fervor to help form the local Artists and Writers Union. Although not an actual labor union, it was loosely affiliated with the national John Reed Clubs organized by Conroy, which professed allegiance to the Communist party. Conroy's was a midwestern version of Communism, more pink than red. Although he subscribed to the Moscow News, declared allegiance to Marx, and was an activist in the struggle of labor against capital, his true love was literature. Clark Mills was less attracted by the Party than by the fact that Conroy published a literary journal,The Anvil, which accepted poetry. Two of his verses were printed in the August 1934 and April 1935 issues. It was through Clark that Tom Williams got acquainted with The Anvil, its editor, Jack Conroy, and his satellites.