About:

Documenting the quest to track down everything written by (and written about) the poet, translator, critic, and radio dramatist, Henry Reed.

An obsessive, armchair attempt to assemble a comprehensive bibliography, not just for the work of a poet, but for his entire life.

Read "Naming of Parts."

Henry Reed Henry Reed
Henry Reed Henry Reed
Henry Reed, ca. 1960


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Reeding:

Balthazar: The second title in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet.
The Savage Detectives: In 1970s Mexico City, two young poets start a militant literary movement, the Visceral Realists.
The Last Picture Show: The poolhall, all-night cafe, parked cars, and picture show in a one-stoplight town in Texas.


Elsewhere:

Books

Libraries

Weblogs, etc.


Posts from August 2007

Reeding Lessons: the Henry Reed research blog

7.9.2008


Words and Music

Last Sunday, BBC Radio Three's Words and Music featured an episode with the theme of "Authority," including the "authority of armies and the law":

'The March to The Scaffold from Berlioz' 'Symphony Fantastique' is played in Liszt's piano transcription, over a reading from George Luis Borges amazing short story of a man, on the point of being executed, given the gift of a year of frozen time from God. Armies feature next, starting with Benjamin Britten's imperious War Requiem where the quiet, cruel words of Wilfred Owen are set against a grand and deliberately overbearing setting of the Latin Mass. Henry Reed's Second World War poem, 'Naming of Parts' follows, and we hear the final movement of Respighi's 'Pines of Rome', the Apennine Way, where scores of Roman Legions can be heard marching back to the Eternal City. From Joseph Heller's Catch 22 we move on to political power, with 'poems' by Donald Rumsfeld, and satire from Swift. Margaret Thatcher is the narrator in Copland's Lincoln Portrait, and we witness JS Bach encountering Frederick The Great of Prussia, offering a fawning dedication to him at the start of his 'Musical Offering' but slyly presenting the Emperor with fiendishly difficult music.

"Naming of Parts" is read enthusiastically by the actor Henry Goodman, and appears at about 19:54 (as I listen: YMMV. The playlist has it at 22:46). If you should care to Listen Again (RealPlayer), the August 19th, 2007 program should be available through next weekend.

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1348. Sonzogni, Marco. Afterword to Mottetti, by Eugenio Montale, translated by Henry Reed. PN Review 180 34, no. 4 (March-April 2008): 38-41.
Sonzogni appraises Reed's translations of Montale's Mottetti, and describes Reed's manuscripts and his history with the poems and the Italian language.


Duelling Accents

Here's a linguistic experiment conceived by our friend and counterpart, the Webrarian. It's Reed's "Naming of Parts" being read as a duet of sorts. The parts in the voice of the Sergeant-Instructor have been re-recorded in an Essex accent, while the voice of the Private is the original recording, read by Reed himself:


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1347. McCarey, Peter. "...and Other Blunders." Letter to the editor. PN Review 181 34, no. 5 (May-June 2008): 3-4.
Recommendations for Reed's translations (or mistranslations) of Montale's Mottetti.


Authorial Adjectives

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then to have been imitated enough to warrant having your name turned into an adjective must be an embarrassment of riches.

I came across this article this evening, "Adjectives and the Work of Modernism in an Age of Celebrity" (Project Muse) by Aaron Jaffe, which contains a partial list of authors whose names have been adjectivified, and entered popular use. To these, I would add the term "Reedsh", coined by Kingsley Amis in 1949 to apologize for sounding too much like Henry Reed.

Let's create a full list. What are some other authorial adjectives? (Must be in the O.E.D. to qualify!)
  • Aeschylean
  • Æsopic
  • Aristophanic
  • Arnoldian
  • Audenesque
  • Austenian
  • Balzacian
  • Baudelairean (or Baudelairian)
  • Blakean
  • Borrovian
  • Brechtian
  • Brontëan
  • Browningesque
  • Bunyanesque
  • Burnsian
  • Byronic
  • Carrollese (or Carrollian, or Carrolline)
  • Cervantic
  • Chattertonian
  • Chaucerian
  • Chestertonian
  • Chekhovian
  • Coleridgian
  • Conradian
  • Dickensian
  • Drydenian
  • Eliotian
  • Emersonian
  • Euripidean
  • Faulknerian
  • Firbankian
  • Flaubertian
  • Galsworthian
  • Gibbonian
  • Hardyan (or Hardian)
  • Hemingwayan (or Hemingwayesque)
  • Homeric
  • Huxleyan
  • Ibsenian (or Ibsenite)
  • Jamesian
  • Johnsonian
  • Joycean
  • Kafkaesque
  • Keatsian
  • Kiplingesque (or Kiplingish, or Kiplingite)
  • Larkinite
  • Lawrentian
  • Leavisian
  • Leveresque (or Leverish)
  • Lucianesque (also Lucianic, or Lucianical)
  • Malorian
  • Marlovian
  • Maughamesque
  • Melvillean
  • Menckenian
  • Meredithian
  • Miltonic
  • Molièresque
  • Montaignesque (or Montaignian)
  • Murdochian
  • Nabokovian
  • Orwellian
  • Paterian
  • Petrarchan
  • Pindaric
  • Popean
  • Poundian
  • Proustian
  • Ruskinian
  • Sapphic
  • Shakespearean
  • Shavian
  • Shelleyan
  • Sitwellian
  • Spenserian
  • Swiftian
  • Twainian
  • Waughian
  • Wellsian
  • Wildean
  • Woolfian
  • Wordsworthian
  • Yeatsian
Ibsenite could be some dim, carbon-like mineral, I imagine. A Firbankian is obviously a resident of Firbanks, AK. Brontëan reminds me of some extinct race of malformed giants. Lawrentian: the name of some unplumbed undersea abyss.

(Special thanks to I Witness, for adjecting!)

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1346. Krisak, Len. "Wrong Valves..." Letter to the editor. PN Review 181 34, no. 5 (May-June 2008): 3.
Criticizes Reed's translation of the word 'valve' in Montale's Mottetti.



1st Lesson:

Reed, Henry (1914-1986). Born: Birmingham, England, 22 February 1914; died: London, 8 December 1986.

Education: MA, University of Birmingham, 1936. Served: RAOC, 1941-42; Foreign Office, GC&CS, 1942-1945. Freelance writer: BBC Features Department, 1945-1980.

Author of: A Map of Verona: Poems (1946)
The Novel Since 1939 (1946)
Moby Dick: A Play for Radio from Herman Melville's Novel (1947)
Lessons of the War (1970)
Hilda Tablet and Others: Four Pieces for Radio (1971)
The Streets of Pompeii and Other Plays for Radio (1971)
Collected Poems (1991, 2007)
The Auction Sale (2006)


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