http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/ Researching the British poet, radio dramatist, and translator Henry Reed (1914-1986), author of "Naming of Parts." en-us steef@solearabiantree.net (Reeding Lessons) Sat, 06 Jun 2009 00:40:25 GMT Sat, 06 Jun 2009 00:40:25 GMT steef@solearabiantree.net 60 http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/images/reedportrait.jpg http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/ 98 98 Reeding Lessons In 1963, Poetry Northwest, of the University of Washington, Seattle, began sponsoring a Theodore Roethke Prize for poetry. This was followed up the next year with a Roethke Memorial Poetry Reading, in order to "preserve the university as a poetry center." The first of these readings, in 1964, was given by John Crowe Ransom. I looked this up, because, tickling Google Book Search for information, this snippet emerges in the June, 1964 issue of Poetry, under "News Notes" (p. 196): * The University of Washington has established a Theodore Roethke Memorial Reading, the first of which was given by John Crowe Ransom on Theodore Roethke's birthday, May 25th. The judges for this year's selection were Henry Reed, William Matchett, and Carolyn Kizer. * So, Henry Reed had a small role in bringing Ransom, a fellow "major minor poet," to the first annual Roethke Memorial Reading (read Ransom's "Piazza Piece," and more). Carolyn Kizer had studied Creative Writing with Roethke in 1959, and was an editor of Poetry Northwest in 1964. William H. Matchett, we recall, had some nice things to say about Reed in Remembering Elizabeth Bishop. The University of Washington diligently provides a list of previous Roethke Readers. This past ... http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/reedattheransomdrop http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/reedattheransomdrop Sat, 06 Jun 2009 00:40:25 GMT Reeding Lessons Robert Frost, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, is apparently alive and well, and using Twitter: Ezra pointed out that my 'Fever Pitch' epic poem sounds awfully similar to a movie starring something called a 'Jimmy Fallon.' 2:09 PM May 13th from web... http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/frostytweets http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/frostytweets Sun, 31 May 2009 01:32:11 GMT Reeding Lessons I'm not in the habit of buying Reed ephemera online, though I've occasionally done so in the past. I bought a couple of old Listener issues which are rather difficult to find in libraries in the States, and if I were a richer man, I might consider buying a whole forest's worth of Radio Times back issues. So I was rather torn when I found this short article in The Bookseller for March 3, 1951: Poetry Sold in Cambridge Streets Some enterprising Cambridge undergraduates have been trying the effect of offering modern poetry for sale in the streets. The first experiment took place on a Saturday—a market day in Cambridge—and out of 2,000 copies printed, about 1,100 were sold. A further 200 copies were disposed of afterwards. The publication offered was the first issue of a series of pamphlets of poetry, entitled Oasis. The selling price is 3d. The first issue contained poems by W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, C. Day Lewis, Louis MacNeice, Robert Graves, Dylan Thomas, and Henry Reed. In the next issue, work of lesser-known poets will be printed; and for May Week the organisers hope to bring out a Cambridge Poetry for the previous year. The aim of the scheme is to overcome present-day apathy to poetry. 'All the authors and publishers allowed us to reprint these poems without fee,' writes Mr. David Stone, of Queens' College. 'Without this help it would have been very difficult to sell the pamphlet at a price attractive to everyone. There has been some disapproval of the street-selling, but most seemed to think it was a good idea.' The pamphlet carried an invitation: 'If you enjoy this selection and are interested in modern poetry come and hear these and other poems read and ask questions to-morrow evening at the Union.' The reader, on the Sunday evening, was Mr. Hamish Henderson.(p. 344) At first I was a bit confused by the title, since Reed also makes an appearance in the Salamander Oasis Trust's... http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/acambridgeoasis http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/acambridgeoasis Sun, 31 May 2009 01:32:11 GMT Reeding Lessons A few odds and ends relating to Henry Reed can be found in the Internet Archive's digital library, the Open-Access Text Archive. They don't have as many titles for the second-half of the 20th century as they do for pre-1920 material that is in the public domain, but they have a bit. Reed is mentioned in a 1961 special number of the Times Literary Supplement, The British Imagination: A Critical Survey, in a section devoted to radio: "In what other form of drama could one mirror the life of an era through one man's mind and reactions, as in Mr. Reed's Return to Naples, or through a many-layered pattern of experience, from that of the professor to that of a lizard on a hot stone, as in his The Streets of Pompeii?" (p. 94). The Streets of Pompeii also appears in two program schedules for WBAI radio, New York, NY. The play was broadcast on Saturday, April 8, 1961, and again on Monday, February 4, 1963. A real treasure is an electronic copy of Oscar Williams' 1951 anthology, A Little Treasury of British Poetry (1951). Williams compiled not only the original three Lessons of the War poems, but also Reed's lesser-known verses, "The Wall" (p. 843) and "Lives" (p. 844). The book is a little unwieldy at almost 900 scanned pages, so I took the liberty of lifting Reed's section and putting it in a separate, much smaller, file, including Williams' introduction.... http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/internetarchivetexts http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/internetarchivetexts Sun, 31 May 2009 01:32:11 GMT Reeding Lessons In the 1960s, the British Council teamed up with the Harvard Library Poetry Room to record contemporary British and American poets reading from their own work, and in interviews discussing poetry and the process of writing. English poets who participated in the project included John Betjeman, C. Day-Lewis, William Empson, Hugh MacDiarmond, Louis MacNeice, Kathleen Raine, Stephen Spender, John Heath-Stubbs, W.R. Rodgers, and Vernon Watkins, to name just a few. Interviews were conducted by Ian Scott-Kilvert, Hilary Morrish, Peter Orr (head of the British Council's Recorded Sound department), and John Press. A few details are mentioned in "Poetry, for Crying Out Loud," a 1999 Independent article. The final product of these recordings was a set of ten LP records released by the Argo Recording Company, along with an accompanying book of transcripts called called The Poet Speaks: Interviews with Contemporary Poets (London: Routledge, 1966). The project didn't end when the record collection was produced, however, because we can find recordings of a 1970 interview with Henry Reed, both at the British Library Sound Archive, and at Harvard's Poetry Room: "Interview with Henry Reed sound recording, by Peter Orr, British Council Recorded Sound Dept., June 11, 1970." Alas, the Reed interview was too late to get included in the Poet Speaks project. The Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard has one of the largest collections of recorded poetry in the world. Sadly, they provide only a few links to select recordings on their homepage (and several of those do not seem to be working, currently).... http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/thepoetspeaks http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/thepoetspeaks Sun, 31 May 2009 01:32:11 GMT Reeding Lessons Here's a small, but lovely thing: a record at the British Library Sound Archive for a recording of a birthday tribute for Henry Reed, produced by R.D. "Reggie" Smith, and broadcast on Friday, February 22nd, 1974, from 8:35 to 8:55 pm, on BBC Radio 3: Henry Reed Reed, Henry, 1914-1986 (speaker) Broadcaster: BBC R3 19740222 Item title: Henry Reed Performer name: Reed, Henry, 1914-1986 (speaker) Item notes: A tribute on the occasion of the poet's 60th birthday. R.D. Smith introduces the recorded voice of Henry Reed reading his poetry (mostly archive material) FIND FORMAT: M510W LIST RECORDINGS: M5127BW Here's a link to everything with Reed listed as a speaker in the Sound Archive catalog.... http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/60thbirthdaytribute http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/60thbirthdaytribute Sun, 31 May 2009 01:32:11 GMT Reeding Lessons Published last October, Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (edited by Thomas Travisano and Saskia Hamilton, Farrar, 2008), finally reveals both sides of a conversation I discovered last spring, in The Letters of Robert Lowell (Hamilton, ed., 2005). Bishop and Lowell first began exchanging letters in 1947, after meeting at a party given by Randall Jarrell. In the mid-60s, Bishop met Henry Reed when they were both teaching at the University of Washington, Seattle. Here are the relevant excerpts from the Bishop-Lowell correspondence, which include several classic Reed witticisms, expressions of Bishop's admiration and concern for her new friend, and even a mention of Reed's desire to expatriate to the United States (!):June 15, 1965Dearest Elizabeth, I rather hope you'll take in the Washington job. You'll like the landscape and the relative quiet for America, and I think [Robert] Heilman, the head of the department, will shape the conditions [to] suit you. He did marvels with Ted Roethke and has since had such unacademic shy people as Henry Reed and Vernon Watkins. Everyone seems terribly excited for your arrival...[.]    All my love,       Cal (p. 576) Apt. 212, 4135 Brooklyn Ave., N.E. Seattle, Washington, 98105 Washington's Birthday [Feb. 23, 1966]Dearest Cal: I don't know where to begin. You are much admired here and several of my "students" ) I have to keep putting everything in quotes because none of it seems quite real to me, even now) are using you for their term-papers . . . you are being compared (to his discredit) frequently with Eliot, I think—Henry Reed is here—a bright spot in my life, I must say. I had dinner with him last night and he told me how he had heard a beautif... http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/morefromelizabethbishop http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/morefromelizabethbishop Sun, 31 May 2009 01:32:11 GMT