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Rakosi was born in Berlin and lived there and in Hungary until 1910 when he moved to the United States to live with his father and stepmother. His father was a jeweler and watchmaker in Chicago and later in Gary, Indiana. The family lived in semi-poverty but contrived to send him to the University of Chicago and then to the University of Wisconsin. At university, he started writing poetry. On graduating, he worked for a time as a social worker, then returned to college to study psychology. At this time, he changed his name to Callman Rawley because he felt he stood a better chance of being employed if he had a more American-sounding name. After a spell as a psychologist and teacher, he returned to social work for the rest of his working life.
At the University of Wisconsin, Rakosi edited the Wisconsin Literary Magazine. His own poetry at this stage was influenced by W. B. Yeats, Wallace StevensWallace Stevens ( October 2, 1879 August 2, 1955) was an American Modernist poet. Life Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Stevens went to college at Harvard, after which he moved to New York City and briefly worked as a journalist. He then attended New York L, and e. e. cummings. He also started reading William Carlos WilliamsBiography William Carlos Williams ( September 17, 1883 March 4, 1963), often abbreviated with the initials "WCW", was an American poet during the Modernist movement. He attended public school in Rutherford, New Jersey until 1897, then was sent to study at and T. S. EliotThomas Stearns Eliot ( September 26, 1888 January 4, 1965), was a major Modernist Anglo-American poet, dramatist, and literary critic. Life and work Eliot was born into a prominent Unitarian Saint Louis, Missouri family; his fifth cousin, Tom Eliot, was C. By 1925Centuries: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s Years: 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 See also 1925 in aviation 1925 in film 1925 in literature 1925 in mu, he was publishing poems in The Little Review and Nation.
By the late 1920s, Rakosi was in correspondence with Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound ( October 30 1885 November 1 1972) was a poet, musician and critic who, along with T. Eliot, was one of the major figures of the modernist movement in early 20th century poetry. He was the driving force behind several modernist mo, who prompted Louis ZukofskyLouis Zukofsky ( January 23, 1904 May 12, 1978) was one of the most important second-generation American modernist poets. He was co-founder of the Objectivist group of poets and was to be an important influence on subsequent generations of poets in Americ to contact him. This lead to Rakosi's inclusion in the Objectivist issue of PoetryPoetry (Chicago is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. The magazine was founded in 1912 by Harriet Monroe, who was working as an art critic of the Chicago Tribune''. Contributors include T. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Marianne and in the Objectivist Anthology. Rakosi himself had reservations about the Objectivist tag, feeling that the poets involved were too different from each other to form a group in any meaningful sense of the word. He did, however, especially admire the work of Charles Reznikoff.