Anton Romatka was a poet, editor, publisher, calligrapher, and teacher, who held forth in Greenwich Village in the 1930s and ’40s. He died in 1948; his body was discovered by the writer John Keel, then a young Village poet himself, working on a magazine with Romatka. You can read the story here.

I found very little about Romatka on the web. It’s a pity, since he seems to have been a sympathetic and eccentric character, and somewhat of a Village institution. Keel kept many of Romatka’s publications, which included poetry, poetry magazines, and instructional manuals on poetic technique, usually lettered in his distinctive calligraphy. Here are two poems printed on cards, both 6 x 8 1/2″, from 1939 and 1945. I suspect they were meant for the annual exhibit by the Ravens Poetry Circle, in which poems were pinned to the fence outside Judson Church, on Washington Square, and offered for sale.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)