Byron Vazakas (September 24, 1905, New York City - September 30, 1987, Reading, Pennsylvania) was an American poet, whose career extended from the modernist era well into the postmodernist period; nominee for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1947.
Life
Byron A. Vazakas was the son of Alfred Vazakas, a Greek-born linguist who emigrated sometime before 1900 and established a language school in Herald Square, and Margaret Keffer, a young woman who grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a former Pennsylvania state legislator, Rep. Aaron T. C. Keffer, a descendant of Henry Clay. There were two younger Vazakas children, Alexander (1906) and Donald (1912). Byron had strong memories of New York City during the years he called his happy “Edwardian childhood.” Both Byron and Alexander (Alex) attended a progressive Montessori School. Tragedy struck during Christmas week 1912 when Alfred Vazakas died suddenly of pneumonia and the family was left destitute.
Alfred Vazakas’ brother Alexander, a professor at the University of Chicago, moved the family to an apartment in Chicago, but within a few weeks another disaster occurred. A fire completely destroyed the building and all their possessions. Margaret Vazakas then brought her family to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to be near members of her family. Donald went to live with relatives while Margaret Vazakas earned a living clerking in local department stores. Byron and Alex attended St. Mary’s Parochial School. Although he served as an altar boy, Byron rebelled against the school’s strict discipline and dropped out after the eighth grade. He never returned to a formal school. From an early age, however, Byron read avidly and showed an interest in writing.
In 1922 Byron and his family moved to Reading, Pennsylvania, to live with his widowed grandmother. Byron continued to live with his mother at various locations near City Park until her death in December 1940. At first Byron worked in a clothing store and later collected rents for the Reading Company. After he left that job, out of boredom and frustration, his family never pressured him to seek employment, even during the Great Depression.
From this time on, Vazakas concentrated on “the 3 R’s” that dominated his life—“reading, 'riting, and roaming.” He read widely and became well acquainted with classical music. A close friendship developed with William Baziotes, another young Reading man of Greek parentage who later achieved fame as an abstract expressionist painter. Vazakas introduced Baziotes to Baudelaire and the Symbolists; Baziotes cultivated Vazakas’ tastes in art. The friendship endured for 15 years until the two drifted into different worlds. In later years, Vazakas credited Baziotes with being a formative influence on his artistic development.
Vazakas established himself as a writer in Reading, but only a small number of people knew that he wrote poetry. These were the members of the Galleon Writers’ Guild, a group that produced 6 issues of a local literary magazine called "The Galleon: A Journal of Literary Achievement." Vazakas’ first published poem, a 5-line piece entitled “Grief,” appeared in the first issue in November 1934, and five other poems, including one published anonymously and two under the pseudonym "Mernos," and one short story appeared in other issues. In 1935 two other poems were published in a small literary magazine called "The Bard." By this time Vazakas had written 1,500 poems. All but 22 of them were destroyed at his request when Vazakas said that he had found his true poetic voice. When discussing his career in later years, Vazakas never mentioned either "The Galleon" or "The Bard" or the large body of early work.
From 1936 to 1942, Vazakas’ prose writing appeared in the "Reading Times" and the "Historical Review of Berks County." Although he never publicly claimed authorship, evidence is clear from a newspaper report that Vazakas wrote a 16-page pamphlet, "The Reading Public Museum and Art Gallery, Reading, Pennsylvania: Its History and Purpose," ca. 1941. Statements in its text also establish Vazakas as the author of a more ambitious work, "The History of Reading Hospital," published in 1942. As with his early poetry, Vazakas later omitted any reference to these extensively researched pieces of writing. More satisfying, apparently, was the acceptance of individual poems he submitted to periodicals such as "American Poetry Journal."