mbu^ University of California Berkeley Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California Flora J. Arnstein ONGOING: POETRY, TEACHING, FAMILY IN SAN FRANCISCO, 1885-1985 With an Introduction by Shirley Kaufman An Interview Conducted by Suzanne B. Riess 1984-1985 Copyright (c) 1985 by The Regents of the University of California All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between the University of California and Flora J. Arnstein dated March 6, 1985. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library, and should include identification of -the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal agreement with Flora J. Arnstein requires that she be notified of the request and allowed thirty days in which to respond. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Flora J. Arnstein, "Ongoing: Poetry, Teaching, Family in San Francisco, 1885-1985," an oral history conducted 1984-1985 by Suzanne B. Riess, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, 1985. Copy No. I FLORA JACOBI ARNSTEIN Portrait of Flora Jacob! Arnstein painted by Olga Ackerman Photograph by Suzanne B. Riess, May 1985 COMMUNION JUT of the sum of hours, days and years, Out of the past of joy and pain and fears, Out of the jumble of our fruitless lives, Some consecrated moments do arise; Some instant when the gulf that yawns between The lonely souls that people our demesne, Is magically bridged, and from the eyes A current of supreme awareness flies; And for the span of one short moment's life, Is born a something, living, vivid rife With beauty and with love, all wonder-given, That makes our earth more glorified than heaven. from A Legacy of Hours, Grabhorn Press TABLE OF CONTENTS Flora J. Amstein INTRODUCTION by Shirley Kaufman i INTERVIEW HISTORY iii CHILDHOOD 1 Musical Education; Cousin Fred Jacobi 1 An Introduction to the Family, San Francisco and New York 4 Father's Family, the Jacobis, and the Seligmans 6 Family Visits, Vacations, Holidays 7 Mismatched Parents, Impossible Standards 11 Brother Leonard, Sister Janet, and Living Up to Expectations 13 The Arnstein Girls 16 Earthquake, and Courtship, and Europe 17 A Letter, April 1906, to "The Girls" 20 Mothers, Daughters, and Self-images 23 Thoughts on Grieving and Repressipn 28 GROWING UP, AND LOOKING BACK 31 Father's Criticism, and Writing 31 No End to Morning, and Some Recent Insights 35 MARRIAGE 41 Lawrence Arnstein, the Right Values 41 Honeymoon Tales, 1910 43 Married Woman 46 Children 48 Social and Musical Life 51 PRESIDIO OPEN AIR SCHOOL 53 Maria Montessori at the Panama Pacific International Exposition 53 Presidio Open Air School, Beginnings 55 Miss Marion Turner 57 TEACHING CREATIVELY 60 "Merry Town" and Other Great Ideas 60 Helping the Children; Erik Erikson 62 Flora Arnstein 's Creative Teaching 67 Hughes Mearns 79 Learning to be a Teacher Teaching Disturbed Boys, and Children of Other Backgrounds 83 Dance: Lenore Peters Job, Isadora Duncan 86 SEARCHING 89 Gertrude Stein, Harriet Levy 89 In Search of Poetic Criteria; Grace Hazard Conkling 91 Annette Rosenshine 93 Further Search for Poetic Criteria; the Audience 97 "Did You Know?" 100 WRITER AND STUDENT 102 Writer's Conference, Utah, 1948 102 Some of Mrs. Arnstein's Writings 105 The San Francisco Poetry World 106 Mrs. Arnstein's Writing Habits 109 PUBLICATION 112 "I Met Death One Clumsy Day" 112 Other Teaching Situations 114 Publishing 115 Writing Classes 118 REACHING OUT, OBLIQUELY 122 Poetry Group, 1974 122 Commentary on Correspondence 123 Leo Eloesser 126 Correspondence, Continued 128 130 Neighborhood Mother's Group . Poetry Group, 1956 132 ASPECTS OF POEM-MAKING 134 Further Poetic Criteria Search, Again 134 The Aural Side 136 Poetry Society of America 137 Edith Jenkins; Poetic Genes 139 Poets in the Schools Project 142 Avoiding the Sentimental 144 HINDSIGHTS 147 Reassessments 147 Commentary on Students 150 Creative Development 152 The Elderly Group 154 The Extended Family of Mrs. Arnstein 159 Free Love 160 Dame Myra Hess 161 Dr. Settlage and the Latest Book 161 Analysis, of Poetry and People 165 "Old Stories" 169 TAPE GUIDE 173 APPENDICES 174 INDEX 250 DONORS TO THE ARNSTEIN ORAL HISTORY PROJECT Susan Abbott Peter and Caryl Mezey Leslie Roth Appleton and Robert 0. Alice Morini Appleton David and Anne Perlman Dr. and Mrs. Robert L. Arnstein Eric S. Perlman Janet Berry Katy Perlman Alice B. and George S. Block Dorothy J. Petitt Edward Brans ten Bettyjane Reiss Sue V. and William H. Bransten Susan T. Roff Lester Breslow, M.D. and Devra Miriam Rosenblum Miller Breslow John F. Rothmann Katherine Field Caldwell in memory of Frances Bransten Elizabeth B. Callan Rothmann Ruth C. Chance Pierre Salinger Clarence B. and Joan Coleman Andrew J. and Namie Tanaka Salz Clara B. Dinkelspiel James H. Schwabacher, Jr. Helga Dudman Mrs. Jerry Seton Mrs. Alfred Ehrman Barton W. and Charlaine M. Elizabeth Elkus Shackleford Richard H. Epstein Mr. and Mrs. Frank H. Sloss Pauline and Myron S. Fa Ik, Jr. Sylvia V. Storey John D. Ferris and Rachel Jenkins Caroline K. Voorsanger Ferris Catherine and Bart Voorsanger Carol H. and John L. Field Eric J. Voorsanger Sadie Gittelsohn Amelia and Neil Voorsanger William A. and Shirley G. Gittelsohn Albert J. Wax and Margaret Jenkins Richard and Rhoda Goldman Wax Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Goldman Judge and Mrs. Stanley A. Weigel Miriam and Peter Haas Harry Weinstein, M.D. James D. Hart Leona Wolff Arthur W. Hoppe J.R. Wollenberg Frederick A. Jacobi R.P. Wollenberg David and Edith A. Jenkins Bradford W. Young, M.D. David L. Jenkins The Group for Enriched Living Rebecca Jenkins John Curtis Patricia and John Koskinen Ruth Witt Diamont Norman and Margaret Lezin Herman Eichorn Frances Jaffer and Mark Herbert Freed Linenthal, Jr. Mary C. Jones Lisa Wood Livingston Marge Lozoff Marjorie M. Lozoff Norma Metzner Ruth B. McDougall Fred Ranstedt Jerrie M. Meadows Bettyjane Reiss Mrs. Thomas J. Mellon Miriam Rosenblum Ethel G. Meyer George Silberschatz INTRODUCTION Twenty years seems like a good stretch of time to have known someone as a friend, but it's only a fifth of Flora Arnstein's life. I met Forgie when she was 79 and I was 40, both of us students in the English Department at San Francisco State, and we immediately liked each other. Perhaps she saw in me something of herself at my age a late-blooming poet, a mother who raised her daughters as she had before embarking on her own creative life. I saw in her a lively, quick, curious, and sensitive woman, a perennial student, as young in spirit and in ideas as any of my contemporaries. But her wisdom and life experience, and especially her empathy, set her apart. We studied together, attended graduate writing workshops, shared our alternating delight and outrage, as we shared our poems, and discovered we had even struggled through the same writing workshop at U.C. Extension earlier in our careers, though at separate times, grinding out the same exercises in imagery and "sensory reporting." Throughout the first year of our friendship I never thought of Forgie as twice my age. But she forced me to think of this at the end of the term in a literature class where we were required to take a two-hour final bluebook exam. "Do you think Dr. Wiseman might let me do a take-home exam this time since it's almost my eightieth birthday?" she asked me. With her usual. wit and good humor, she wondered whether her memory might be indulged a bit since it was not quite as reliable as it had been up to then. But even her reminding me and Dr. Richard Wiseman that she was 80 didn't help me to believe all those years had accumulated in Forgie. It was impossible in 1965. And it's impossible now as she celebrates her 100th birthday twenty years later. I have lived in Israel since 1973, and been privileged to correspond with Forgie for twelve years now. (Though not at all privileged to be deprived of our regular face-to-face meetings, except on my brief visits to San Francisco to visit my daughters once or twice a year.) We have sent each other poems all this time, and I have cherished this exchange though Forgie 's prolific output puts me to shame. In recent years she has been writing a poem a day in addition to prose sketches and reminiscences, and her letters come with sheets of poems, which reveal her remarkable vision and gift of language as she looks outward and inward. There is something amazing in the forthright way she contemplates her mortality. When we do meet, each time I walk through the gate of her primrose-edged garden, I discover the same wise friend standing at the door. Time seems to have stood still, or to have hovered over her benevolently during each absence. We have tea and Forgie reads me her recent poems in the same clear and lilting voice I first heard when she was a young eighty. I have begun to think of Forgie as immortal. ii She has also become a link for me with one of my daughters who slipped into her own special relationship with Forgie when I moved to Jerusalem.