Edwin Rolfe

American journalist and poet Edwin Rolfe was born in Philadelphia to a family of Russian immigrants. Rolfe joined the Communist Party in 1925 and published his first poem, “The Ballad of the Subway Digger” in 1927. His first book, To My Contemporaries (1936) appeared shortly before Rolfe moved to Spain to volunteer for the Spanish Civil War. He returned to the U.S. in 1939 and served in the Armed Forces in World War II. Following the war, Rolfe published a mystery novel and worked briefly in film before writing a series of poems attacking Senator McCarthy’s policies.

Poet Reginald Gibbons has praised Rolfe’s verse, writing that his “[Spanish] Civil War poems may be the best written by an American writer.” He died in 1954.