Newly Discovered Hemingway Love Poem

While conducting research in the Oak Park Public Library for his book Hidden Hemingway: Inside the Ernest Hemingway Archives of Oak Park, Robert K. Elder has uncovered a never-before-published love poem from the young Hemingway to “Annette.”  He speculates that the addressee of the poem was probably Annette DeVoe, a classmate of Hemingway’s at Oak Park and River Forest High School.  As Elder and other scholars such as Scott Donaldson note, the discovery urges us to reassess our ideas about the teenage Hemingway who has often been characterized as more interested in fishing and hunting than romance and dating.  The find could not have come at a better time, with the Hemingway conference beginning this Sunday, July 17th, in Oak Park.