After spending some time in Portland, Maine, where he received piano lessons, Gould returned to Lewiston and worked as an orchestra leader in a theater called The Music Hall. His foster father died in 1902. At about that time Gould moved to Waterville, Maine, and later to Madison, Maine. He supported himself by playing the piano in theaters where silent movies were shown. In Madison Gould got to know Marsden Hartley, the writer and painter, and it seems to have been Hartley who persuaded Waldo Frank, editor of the
Seven Arts , to publish four of Gould's poems in 1917. Gould was thirty-four when these poems were published, and he was never as productive as his near-contemporaries Wallace Stevens, Williams, or James Joyce. But Gould seemed to care little about publishing or doing anything else to advance his career or enhance his reputation.
Gould left Madison for Greenwich Village in 1920. There he lived hand to mouth, cared for by kind patrons and matrons. Through Hartley, Gould had access to various aesthetic movements, bohemian groups, and avant-garde magazines--some of which lacked distinction and endurance. Some, it could be said, lacked even sanity, but they did have effervescent ferment and a sense of fun,although most of the self-styled artists associated with them would turn out to be duds or frauds.
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