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) Sun, 22 Apr 2012 15:39:00 GMT Sun, 22 Apr 2012 15:39:00 GMT steef@solearabiantree.net 60 http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/images/reedportrait.jpg http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/ 98 98 Reeding Lessons "The Naming of Parts" (2003), acrylic on wood and found objects, by P J Crook, in the collections of the Imperial War Museum: This piece refers to Henry Reed's poem of the same name, drawing on his experiences in the Second World War. It was made during the recent war with Iraq in 2003, in reaction to another of the artist's pieces in the Museum's Art collection, 'Other Mothers' Sons.'... http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/pjcrooksthenamingofparts http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/pjcrooksthenamingofparts Sun, 22 Apr 2012 15:39:00 GMT Reeding Lessons The Publishers' Circular & Booksellers' Record was a fortnightly journal for the British publishing trade, featuring lists of new books, reviews, serial fiction, and statistics, but also including schedules for upcoming literary programs on the BBC. The issue for December 22, 1945, has this listing for the Home Service on Sunday, December 23: 10.38 pm: Time for Verse — 'The Poet's Christmas,' selections of poems for Christmas, including new poems specially written by Siegfried Sassoon, Henry Reed, George Barker. (I can't seem to get the relevant snippet to appear.) A quick glance at the radio schedule in the Times for that weekend confirms a "Poetry reading" that evening. "Time for Verse" was a popular and long-running feature produced by Patric Dickinson. This broadcast would seem to be a revisit to a program from the year before. On Christmas Eve, 1944, Reed read his poem "The Return" as part "A Poet's Christmas," which featured verse especially written by Cecil Day Lewis, Louis MacNeice, Edith Sitwell, V. Sackville West, Laurie Lee, John Heath-Stubbs, Frances Cornford, Ann Ridler, Henry Reed, and [music composed by Benjamin] Britten (Chorale and The Shepherd's Carol—both by W.H. Auden), Lennox Berkeley (Francis Cornford's There was neither grass nor corn), and Michael Tippet (Edith Sitwell's The Weeping Babe)[The Score, 1961] The 1945 program sounds like a less celebrated affair, but I'm intrigued by the suggestion of poems commissioned from the likes of Sassoon and Barker. Would anyone care to suggest which poems they might have chosen for Christmas, 1945? Sassoon wrote both "Litany of the Lost" and "Sanctuary" in November of that year. If I had to venture a guess, I would think Reed would have simply fallen... http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/apoetschristmas http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/apoetschristmas Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:06:51 GMT Reeding Lessons I'm a sucker for a good list poem. Henry Reed's "Naming of Parts" is a list poem, of the cockamamie, villanelle sort. A list poem that includes Henry Reed? That much better. The last one we had, I think, was Anthony Thwaite's "On Consulting 'Contemporary Poets of the English Language'," from the anthology New Poetry (1976), edited by Patricia Beer. Not surprisingly, this poem also comes from New Poetry (Julian Symons, ed., 1983): "Contemporary Dearth," by Valerie Blake. Blake has a little something to say about Dame Edith Sitwell's decision not to be included in Kenneth Allott's 1950 survey, The Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse (something about which her brother Sachie, apparently, had no qualms): Contemporary Dearth Miss Edith Sitwell, from whose work I had selected two 'late' pieces for inclusion. . .felt unable to grant my request on the ground that this selection would not do her justice. . .Yeats and Eliot, Wyndham Lewis Lawrence, Joyce and de la Mare; John Heath-Stubbs and William Plomer Francis Scarfe and Edwin Muir. Sidney Keyes and David Gascoyne Williams, Charles, and Laurie Lee; Lawrence Durrell, Peter Quennell Herbert Read and Watkins, V. Normans Nicholson and Cameron Terence Tiller, Wilfred O.; Blunden, Rosenberg and Huxley Empson, Auden, H. Monro. Robert Graves and Alun Lewis Edward Thomas, Barker, G.; Michael Roberts, Dylan Thomas Fuller, Roy, Day Lewis, C. Siegfried Sassoon and Arthur Waley Andrew Young and Henry Treece; Heppenstall, R., and W. R. Rodgers Kathleen Raine and Louis MacNeice. Kenneth Allott, Stephen Spender Richard Church and Spencer, B.; Betjeman, John, Sacheverell Sitwell Henry Reed and Prince, F. T. Campbell, Roy, Charles Madge, Anne Ridler Patric Dickinson, Alan Hodge; Lehmann, John, and Laurence Binyon Warner, Rex, and Ruthven Todd. . . .As a result there is a gap, which I regret, in the representative nature of this collection. Kenneth Allott, Editor, The Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse, 1950.[pp. 28-29]... http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/contemporarydearth http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/contemporarydearth Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:26:41 GMT Reeding Lessons Henry Reed was very much in demand in 1973. He made at least three public appearances that year: the first, in May, was "Poets in Person" with Édouard Roditi, at the Poetry Society. In October, Ian Hamilton organized "The Poetry of War" at the Mermaid Theatre, with Charles Causley and Roy Fuller. On Tuesday evening, September 25, 1973, we find Reed at a reading hosted at The Pindar of Wakefield pub, bringing with him an "unpublished war poem" to share. This announcement appeared in The Observer on September 23: The Pindar of Wakefield could boast of being established in 1517, although the current building was constructed after a fire in 1878. A pinder (or pinner) was a person employed to impound stray cattle and to look after the pound. The pub takes its name from a traditional ballad about a mythical Wakefield pound-keep who resisted Robin Hood. As an underground music venue, its stage has been graced by the likes of Bob Dylan in 1962, The Pogues in 1982, and Oasis in 1994. In 1986 it became The Water Rats Theatre Bar, and it's now the Monto Water Rats: [Water Rats Theatre Bar, St Pancras, WC1, by ... http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/thepindarofwakefield http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/thepindarofwakefield Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:17:34 GMT Reeding Lessons The place where our two gardens meet Is undivided by a street, And mingled flower and weed caress And fill our double wilderness Among whose riot undismayed And unreproached, we idly played, While, unaccompanied by fears, The months extended into years, Till we went down one day in June To pass the usual afternoon And there discovered, shoulder-tall, Rise in the wilderness a wall....Henry Reed's poem "The Wall," set to music by Professor Emmy van Deurzen. "The Wall" first appeared in The Penguin New Writing, in 1943. Emmy accompanies a bunch of poems with guitar on her YouTube channel, including Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," and Louis MacNeice's "A Prayer Before Birth" and "Sunlight on the Garden."... http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/thewall http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/thewall Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:20:40 GMT Reeding Lessons Ages ago, back in 2007, I had a post about the critic and Eliot scholar, Dame Helen Gardner. Henry Reed had been a student of Gardner's at the University of Birmingham in the 1930s, and had introduced her to Eliot's poetry when he sent her a copy of "East Coker" in 1940. Gardner had credited Henry Reed in an article she wrote for the Summer, 1942 New Writing & Daylight on "The Recent Poetry of T.S. Eliot," saying that Reed had pointed out to her that some of the sea imagery in Eliot's "The Dry Salvages" may have come from the works of Herman Melville, and that 'the voice of Mr. Eliot's seabell is certainly like the sound of the Liverpool bell-buoy which Redburn heard as he sailed in to the Mersey.' This last is, of course, entirely incorrect. How do we know it's not true? Because Eliot tells us so. In her book, The Composition of Four Quartets (Oxford University Press, 1978), Gardner states: After the publication of Little Gidding I wrote to Eliot, wishing to let him know how much these poems had meant to me, and told him that Mr. Lehmann had passed on his remarks. He replied saying my article had given him 'great pleasure' and went onOnly two very small points occur to me. The first is that I have no such connection as you suggest with the house at Burnt Norton. It would not be worth while mentioning this except that it seemed to me to make a difference to the feeling that it should be merely a deserted house and garden wandered into without knowing anything whatsoever about the history of the house or who had lived in it. ... The other point is that I have never read or even heard of the book by Herman Melville.24 American critics and professors have been so excited about Melville in the last ten years or so that they naturally take for granted that everybody has read all of his books, but I imagine that bell buoys sound very much the same the world over.24 I had suggested, with acknowledgement to Henry Reed, that a passage from Redburn lay behind the close of Part I of The Dry Salvages, Eliot mistakenly assumed Henry Reed was an American Professor of that name.... http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/kippled http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/kippled Fri, 23 Dec 2011 13:33:49 GMT Reeding Lessons Here, in an announcement from the Manchester Guardian from November 5, 1945, we find Henry Reed a good deal north of his normal environs, giving a lecture on modern poetry near Withington, outside Manchester proper: The Lamb Guild, according to their website, was founded in 1938 by the University of Manchester's department of Extra-Mural Studies to make residential continuing education available to local adults through lectures, conferences, and field trips. The location given in the ad on Palatine Road is the Holly Royde mansion, which you can still see today via the magic of Google Maps.... http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/lambguildhouseassociation http://www.solearabiantree.net/reedinglessons/post/lambguildhouseassociation Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:55:35 GMT