Loon Lake

4

Herewith bio the poet Warren Penfield.

Born Indianapolis Indiana August 2 1899.

Moved at an early age with parents to southern Colorado.

First place Ludlow Consolidated Grade School Spelling Bee 1908.

Ludlow Colorado Boy of the Year 1913.

Colorado State Mental Asylum 1914, 1915.

Enlisted US Army Signal Corps 1916.

Valedictorian US Army Semaphore School Augusta Georgia.

Assigned First Carrier Pigeon Company Seventh Signal Battalion

First Division, AEF. Saw action Somme Offensive

pigeons having the shit shot out of them feathers falling over

trenches blasted in bits like snowflakes drifting through the

concussions of air or balancing on the thin fountain of a scream.

Citation accompanying Silver Star awarded Warren

Penfield 1918: that his company of pigeons having been

rendered inoperable and all other signal apparatus including

field telephone no longer available to him Corporal Penfield

did stand in an exposed position lit by flare under enemy

heavy fire and transmit in extended arm semaphore the urgent

communication of his battalion commander until accurate and

redemptive fire from his own artillery indicated the message

had been received. This was not true. What he transmitted

via full arm semaphore under enemy heavy fire was the first

verse of English poet William Wordsworth’s Ode Intimations

of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood as follows

quote: There was a time when meadow grove and stream the

earth and every common sight to me did seem apparelled in

celestial light the glory and the freshness of a dream. It

is not now as it hath been of yore — turn wheresoe’er I may by

night or day the things which I have seen I now can see

no more endquote.

So informed Secretary of Army in letter July 4 1918, medal

enclosed. Incarceration US Army Veterans Psychological

Facility Nutley New Jersey 1918. First volume of verse

The Flowers of the Sangre de Cristo unpaged published by

the author 1918. No reviews. Crosscountry journey to

Seattle Washington 1919. Trans-Pacific voyage 1919.

Resident of Japan 1919–1927. Second volume of verse Child

Bride in a Zen Garden unpaged published in English

by Nosaka Publishing Company, Tokyo, 1926. No reviews.

Deported Japan undesirable alien 1927. Poet in residence

private mountain retreat Loon Lake NY 1929–1937.

Disappeared presumed lost at sea on around-

the-world airplane voyage 1937. No survivors.

Third volume of verse Loon Lake unpaged published

posthumously by the Grebe Press, Loon Lake NY 1939.

No reviews.