About Don Blanding
Don Blanding (November 7, 1894—June 9, 1957) was an American poet, sometimes described as the Poet Laureate of Hawaii. He was also a journalist, cartoonist, author and speaker. He published first poems in the Honolulu Star Bulletin for an advertiser between 1921 and 1923. The popularity of these ad-poems led Blanding to follow the advice of newspaper colleagues by publishing a collection of his poetry in 1923. When his privately published 2000 copies quickly sold out, he followed it with a commercially published edition the same year, and with additional verse and prose books. For his fifth book in 1928, he no longer used a local or West Coast publisher, but the New York publisher Dodd, Mead & Company. The result, Vagabond's House, also published under the title Aloha House, was reviewed promptly by The New York Times, and was a great commercial success. By 1948 it went through nearly fifty printings in several editions that together sold over 150,000 copies. He published several other poetry collections including Paradise Loot (1925), Flowers of the Rainbow (1926), The Virgin of Waikiki (1926), Stowaways in Paradise (1931), Let Us Dream (1933), Memory Room (1935) and Pilot Bails Out (1943), which as also reviewed by the New York Times.Browse all poems and texts published on Don Blanding
