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#poetry

Sixteen Poems, Roger Lonsdale

The Roger Lonsdale archive, at Balliol College, Oxford, includes his reflections, in 2005, on his poetry, with lists of his ninety poems—alphabetically by first lines, and chronologically—as well as his notebooks as a poet; and, at that time, he noted, in reference to these sixteen poems from Un-Gyve Press in a numbered, limited edition of seventy-five: “At present the following seem worth preserving for one reason or another.”

Parting

Written circa 1959, New Haven

There are days when all turns capable of grief,

Deploring rain, outraging wind, and sky

Burdened with fire;

When causes of corresponding sorrow cry

From any heart — absence without relief,

Heavy desire.

Then is it to be vile or natural

To find the following day the weather calm,

Know those late sufferings

Too vast for lamentation, to pace a room

Only an hour catching at pain, once more to fall

To small and regular things?

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The Goldkorn Variations: a trilorgy, Leslie Epstein

“There is one house in a man’s life—to wit, from the days of his youth—that he will always own. All the others who have lived in it since are only renters.”

— Leib Goldkorn 

The Goldkorn Variations collects in one definitive volume, with a new afterword by the author, three previously published novels (originally from E.P. Dutton and Norton presses) about an aged European flautist, his music and his loves, from childhood to age one hundred and four. The author, Leslie Epstein, introduced Leib Goldkorn in his novella The Steinway Quintet which received the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ award for Distinguished Achievement in Literature, later expanded as one of three tales collected in the first of these volumes, and which spawned what came to be known as Goldkorniana. The illustration by Pablo Picasso, “Scène Erotique II 02-08-1962,” 1962, appearing on the cover of The Goldkorn Variations courtesy of the Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), and the Pace Gallery, is one which the author, Leslie Epstein feels “particularly captures the undying energy of a man who never seems to grow old-in that sense, perhaps, Leib Goldkorn is like Picasso himself.”

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Un-Gyve Press Publishes The Goldkorn Variations: a trilorgy by Leslie Epstein

The Goldkorn Variations: a trilorgy by Leslie Epstein. The cover illustration by Pablo Picasso, “Scène Erotique II 02-08-1962,” 1962, appears courtesy of the Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), and the Pace Gallery.

November 9, 1901, the day on which, in the empire of the late Franz Joseph, in the town of Iglau, L. Goldkorn was born. Happy birthday to you! Will this day be remembered like February 12, the birth date of A. Lincoln, who walked miles through the snow to pay the one penny fine on a book; or like February 22, the nativity of G. Washington, who hurled a larger coin across the Potomac? We cannot yet say. Perhaps if the score of my Esther should, at the Metropolitan Opera, receive a premiere. Then might the musical world recall a ninth of November the way they do a third of April or a fifteenth of March, the birthdays of Halévy and Meyerbeer.

Let us turn our gaze from the gazette cover to its rear. Here we see a full female form, platinum-haired, in a dickey too small to contain the mams. With one hand she holds the base of a telephone, with the other she presses the receiver to her ear. So that we might know her thoughts, we see the printed words, I’m Waiting For You and the following number: 1-800-666-HOTT. I was not, as they say, born overnight. If one accepted this toll-free proposal, one could engage in frank discussions. Alas, I have been by the Bell Company for many years non-connected.

Of course November 9 is well known as the day of the abdication of Wilhelm II and the founding of the Weimar Republic. Also for the anniversary of one of those days so infamous that—as with the assassinations of President “Jack” Kennedy and the Archduke Ferdinand—one can never forget precisely where one was or what one was doing.

BOSTON, MA, NOV. 9, 2022

The Goldkorn Variations collects in one definitive volume, with a new afterword by the author, three previously published novels (originally from E.P. Dutton and Norton presses) about an aged European flautist, his music and his loves, from childhood to age one hundred and four. The author, Leslie Epstein, introduced Leib Goldkorn in his novella The Steinway Quintet, which received the American Academy of Arts and Letters award for Distinguished Achievement in Literature, and which later became one of the three tales collected in the first of these volumes. That in turn spawned what came to be known as Goldkorniana. The illustration by Pablo Picasso, “Scène Erotique II 02-08-1962,” 1962, appearing on the cover of The Goldkorn Variations courtesy of the Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), and the Pace Gallery, is one which the author, Leslie Epstein feels “particularly captures the undying energy of a man who never seems to grow old—in that sense, perhaps, Leib Goldkorn is like Picasso himself.”

“As his earlier fiction has demonstrated, Mr. Epstein is an exuberant writer, whose ambitions to address the large matters of history, and our moral and intellectual choices, is matched by a commodious talent—an ease in story-telling and a screwball feeling for comedy that counterpoints the high seriousness of his subjects and invests them, at once, with humanity and a sense of emergency…. Reason and passion, death and life, the mundane and the momentous come crashing brightly together. And by the end, as Leib Goldkorn re-embraces music as a symbol of nature and harmony, the reader, too, is moved to celebrate the redemptive powers of the imagination—and to applaud Mr. Epstein’s artistry and ambition.”  – Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Leslie Epstein is an award-winning author who has written twelve books of fiction, including the celebrated novels San Remo Drive and King of the Jews, and his most recent, Hill of Beans: A Novel of War and Celluloid, a chronicle of the making of Casablanca, for which his father Philip and uncle Julius were the screenwriters. He teaches at Boston University, where he directed the Creative Writing Program for thirty-six years.

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The Goldkorn Variations: a trilorgy, Leslie Epstein

“There is one house in a man’s life—to wit, from the days of his youth—that he will always own. All the others who have lived in it since are only renters.”

— Leib Goldkorn 

The Goldkorn Variations collects in one definitive volume, with a new afterword by the author, three previously published novels (originally from E.P. Dutton and Norton presses) about an aged European flautist, his music and his loves, from childhood to age one hundred and four. The author, Leslie Epstein, introduced Leib Goldkorn in his novella The Steinway Quintet which received the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ award for Distinguished Achievement in Literature, later expanded as one of three tales collected in the first of these volumes, and which spawned what came to be known as Goldkorniana. The illustration by Pablo Picasso, “Scène Erotique II 02-08-1962,” 1962, appearing on the cover of The Goldkorn Variations courtesy of the Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), and the Pace Gallery, is one which the author, Leslie Epstein feels “particularly captures the undying energy of a man who never seems to grow old-in that sense, perhaps, Leib Goldkorn is like Picasso himself.”

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The Goldkorn Variations: a trilorgy, Leslie Epstein

“I don’t even know what a Nazi is.”

— Sonja Henie

The Goldkorn Variations collects in one definitive volume, with a new afterword by the author, three previously published novels (originally from E.P. Dutton and Norton presses) about an aged European flautist, his music and his loves, from childhood to age one hundred and four. The author, Leslie Epstein, introduced Leib Goldkorn in his novella The Steinway Quintet which received the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ award for Distinguished Achievement in Literature, later expanded as one of three tales collected in the first of these volumes, and which spawned what came to be known as Goldkorniana. The illustration by Pablo Picasso, “Scène Erotique II 02-08-1962,” 1962, appearing on the cover of The Goldkorn Variations courtesy of the Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), and the Pace Gallery, is one which the author, Leslie Epstein feels “particularly captures the undying energy of a man who never seems to grow old-in that sense, perhaps, Leib Goldkorn is like Picasso himself.”

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The Goldkorn Variations: a trilorgy, Leslie Epstein

“I yi-yi-yi-yi-yi, I like you very much.

I yi-yi-yi-yi-yi, I think you’re grand.”

— Miss C. Miranda

The Goldkorn Variations collects in one definitive volume, with a new afterword by the author, three previously published novels (originally from E.P. Dutton and Norton presses) about an aged European flautist, his music and his loves, from childhood to age one hundred and four. The author, Leslie Epstein, introduced Leib Goldkorn in his novella The Steinway Quintet which received the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ award for Distinguished Achievement in Literature, later expanded as one of three tales collected in the first of these volumes, and which spawned what came to be known as Goldkorniana. The illustration by Pablo Picasso, “Scène Erotique II 02-08-1962,” 1962, appearing on the cover of The Goldkorn Variations courtesy of the Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), and the Pace Gallery, is one which the author, Leslie Epstein feels “particularly captures the undying energy of a man who never seems to grow old-in that sense, perhaps, Leib Goldkorn is like Picasso himself.”

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The Goldkorn Variations: a trilorgy, Leslie Epstein

“Oh, Leibie, your magic takes my breath away.”

— Miss Esther Williams

The Goldkorn Variations collects in one definitive volume, with a new afterword by the author, three previously published novels (originally from E.P. Dutton and Norton presses) about an aged European flautist, his music and his loves, from childhood to age one hundred and four. The author, Leslie Epstein, introduced Leib Goldkorn in his novella The Steinway Quintet which received the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ award for Distinguished Achievement in Literature, later expanded as one of three tales collected in the first of these volumes, and which spawned what came to be known as Goldkorniana. The illustration by Pablo Picasso, “Scène Erotique II 02-08-1962,” 1962, appearing on the cover of The Goldkorn Variations courtesy of the Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), and the Pace Gallery, is one which the author, Leslie Epstein feels “particularly captures the undying energy of a man who never seems to grow old-in that sense, perhaps, Leib Goldkorn is like Picasso himself.”

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ONE WHITE CROW (ATTRIBUTED TO HENRY JAMES) — L A NEMROW — ESSAYS IN CRITICISM

One White Crow (Attributed to Henry James)

L A Nemrow

Essays in Criticism, Volume 69, Issue 3, July 2019, Pages 309–324

Published:

24 July 2019

Abstract

If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you musn’t seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white. My own white crow is Mrs Piper. In the trances of this medium, I cannot resist the conviction that knowledge appears which she has never gained by the ordinary waking use of her eyes and ears and wits.

(William James, Science, NS III, p. 884)

PHILIP LORING ALLEN PUBLISHED ‘LITERARY CHANGELINGS’ in Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly (vol. lvi, no. 3, July 1903), which opens: ‘Books are seldom what they seem, but people do not know this. They never wonder about anything except when...

© The Author(s) [2019]. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.

This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model

(Access the article on OUP site.)

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Robert Burns, Lincluden Abbey

“About three miles up the river we came upon the beautiful ruins of the abbey of Lincluden, standing on an elevated mound overlooking the junction of the Cluden and the Nith, and overlooked by a sort of large tumulus covered with larches, where the monks are said to have sat to contemplate the country, and where the country people still resort to loiter or read on Sundays. A profound tranquillity reigns over all the scene—a charm indescribable, which Burns, of all men, must have felt. For myself, I knew not where to stop. I advanced up the left bank of the river, opposite to the ruins, now treading the soft turf of the Nith's margin, now pent in a narrow track close on the brink of the stream among the alders, now emerging into a lofty fir clump, and now into a solemn grove of beech overhanging the stream. Further on lay the broad old meadows again, the fisher watching in his wooden hut the ascent of the salmon, the little herdboy tending his black cattle in the solitary field, old woods casting a deep gloom on the hurrying water, gray old halls standing on fine slopes above the Nith, amid trees of magnificent size and altitude. The mood of mind which comes over you here is that of unwritten poetry.

When one thinks of Burns wandering amid this congenial nature, where the young now wander and sing his songs, one is apt to forget that he bore with him a sad heart and a sinking frame.”

— William Howitt

Lincluden Abbey

A Vision

Robert Burns (1759–1796)

As I stood by yon roofless tower,

Where the wa’-flower scents the dewy air,

Where the howlet mourns in her ivy bower,

And tells the midnight moon her care,

The winds were laid, the air was still,

The stars they shot alang the sky;

The fox was howling on the hill,

And the distant-echoing glens reply.

The stream, adown its hazelly path,

Was rushing by the ruined wa’s,

Hasting to join the sweeping Nith,

Whase distant roaring swells and fa’s.

The cauld blue north was streaming forth

Her lights, wi’ hissing, eerie din;

Athort the lift they start and shift,

Like fortune’s favors, tint as win.

By heedless chance I turned mine eyes,

And by the moonbeam shook to see

A stern and stalwart ghaist arise,

Attired as minstrels wont to be.

Had I a statue been o’ stane,

His darin’ look had daunted me;

And on his bonnet graved was plain,

The sacred posy,—Libertie!

And frae his harp sic strains did flow,

Might roused the slumbering dead to hear;

But O, it was a tale of woe,

As ever met a Briton’s ear!

He sang wi’ joy his former day,

He weeping wailed his latter times;

But what he said it was nae play,

I winna ventur ’t in my rhymes.

The collected work Views of the Haunts and Homes of the British Poets, Oct. 19 1850., found by Christopher Ricks in the little bookshop in Nailsworth just a few miles from his home in Gloucestershire, contains the original mixed media/watercolour illustrations for the Howitt Haunts and Homes, presumably made by either one or both of the Measom brothers, George Samuel and William, (The London edition credits “The Illustrations by W. and G. Measom”) and bound for preservation in 1850, after the publication of the two Howitt volumes.

Published as a limited edition of 100 Views of the Haunts and Homes of the British Poets is available in the Un-Gyve bookstore.

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John Dryden, Burleigh House

Those who have homes, when home they do repair,

    To a last lodging call their wandering friends:

Their short uneasy sleeps are broke with care,

    To look how near their own destruction tends.

Those who have none, sit round where once it was,

    And with full eyes each wonted room require;

Haunting the yet warm ashes of the place,

    As murder’d men walk where they did expire.

— John Dryden, from “Annus Mirabilis”

“Poor Dryden! what with his wife—consort one can not call her, and helpmeet she was not—and with a tribe of tobacconist brothers on one hand, and proud Howards on the other; and a host of titled associates, and his bread to dig with his pen, one pities him from one's heart. Well might he, when his wife once said it would be much better for her to be a book than a woman, for then she should have more of his company, reply, ‘I wish you were, my dear, an almanac, and then I could change you once a year.’ It is not well to look much into such a home, except for a warning.”

— William Howitt

The collected work Views of the Haunts and Homes of the British Poets, Oct. 19 1850., found by Christopher Ricks in the little bookshop in Nailsworth just a few miles from his home in Gloucestershire, contains the original mixed media/watercolour illustrations for the Howitt Haunts and Homes, presumably made by either one or both of the Measom brothers, George Samuel and William, (The London edition credits “The Illustrations by W. and G. Measom”) and bound for preservation in 1850, after the publication of the two Howitt volumes.

Published as a limited edition of 100 Views of the Haunts and Homes of the British Poets is available in the Un-Gyve bookstore.

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Greg Delanty, from Selected Delanty. 

❅ Softcover and limited edition hardcover with deckle edge available to ship for the holidays. ❅ >>

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Stella’s Cottage

No bloom of youth can ever blind

The cracks and wrinkles of your mind:

All men of sense will pass your door,

And crowd to Stella’s at four-score.

— Jonathan Swift, from “Stella’s Birth-day”

“The next victim of this wretched man was Esther Johnson, the Stella of this strange history. This young lady was the daughter of the steward of Sir William Temple at Moorpark; she was fatherless when Swift commenced his designs upon her; her father died soon after her birth, and her mother and sister resided in the house at Moorpark, and were treated with particular regard and esteem by the family. Miss Esther Johnson, who was much younger than Swift, was beautiful, lively, and amiable. Swift devoted himself to her as her teacher, and under advantage of his daily office and position, engaged her young affections most absolutely. So completely was it understood by her that they were to be married when Swift’s income warranted it, that on the death of Temple, and Swift’s preferment to the living of Laracor in Ireland, she was induced by him to come over and fix her residence in Trim near him, under the protection of a lady of middle age, Mrs. Dingley.”

— William Howitt

William Howitt is unsparing in his view of Swift (“in the category of heartless villains”) given in his Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets but devotes a section to “STELLA’S HOUSE” in his treatment of the poet which allows some of the idyll of the Irish thatched roof cottage:

Swift took much pleasure in his garden at Laracor; converted a rivulet that ran through it into a regular canal, and planted on its banks avenues of willows. As soon as he was settled, Stella, and her companion, Mrs. Dingley, came over and settled down too. They had a house near the gate of Knightsbrook, the old residence of the Percivals, almost half a mile from Swift’s house, where they lived when Swift was at Laracor, or were the guests of the hospitable vicar of Trim, Dr. Raymond. Whenever Swift left Laracor for a time, as on his annual journeys to England, the ladies then took possession of the vicarage of Laracor, and remained there during his absence. The site of Stella’s house is marked on the Ordnance Survey of the county of Meath.

The collected work Views of the Haunts and Homes of the British Poets, Oct. 19 1850., found by Christopher Ricks in the little bookshop in Nailsworth just a few miles from his home in Gloucestershire, contains the original mixed media/watercolour illustrations for the Howitt Haunts and Homes, presumably made by either one or both of the Measom brothers, George Samuel and William, (The London edition credits “The Illustrations by W. and G. Measom”) and bound for preservation in 1850, after the publication of the two Howitt volumes.

Published as a limited edition of 100 Views of the Haunts and Homes of the British Poets is available in the Un-Gyve bookstore.

[un-gyvepress]

No bloom of youth can ever blind

The cracks and wrinkles of your mind:

All men of sense will pass your door,

And crowd to Stella's at four-score.

— Jonathan Swift, from “Stella’s Birth-day”

Pictured: Stella’s Cottage, from Views of the Haunts and Homes of the British Poets (Un-Gyve Press).

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Greg Delanty reads “The Alien”

IAC | NYC April 11, 2018

Greg Delanty in Conversation with Colum McCann

 “The internationally celebrated poet Greg Delanty reads from his newest collection, Selected Delanty, and joins the acclaimed novelist Colum McCann in conversation.”

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From  The Truth of Two Selected Translations by Harry Thomas (Un-Gyve Press) @smallpressdistribution

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❦ Selected Delanty Among 2018 Vermont Book Award Finalists ❧

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Though we may never meet again, do not think that you have been forgotten. Remember me on your walks from time to time on Inisbofin or wherever you find yourself.

— from “Song” Liam Ó Muirthile (1950 – 18 May 2018), translated from the Irish by Greg Delanty in Selected Delanty.