Publishers Bedford/St. Martin's have revamped their LitLinks database, which contains brief biographies and links to resources on the web for more than 700 authors. One of the enhancements is the ability to display lists of Bedford/St. Martin's titles in which a particular author's work appears. Handy!
Here's their page for Henry Reed (small factual error: Reed received an MA from the University of Birmingham in 1936, not a BA in 1937. See his Who's Who entry). And here's the list of their anthologies in which "Naming of Parts" is included.
Unfortunately, although the site is slick-looking and a large improvement over the previous, static version, the new design relies heavily on JavaScript and frames to serve from the database, which makes linking to a particular author difficult, if not impossible, and functionality is lost if you do. Frames are a big accessibility no-no! Pages can take an eternity to load, if at all (which may indicate database or server problems), so let us hope Bedford/St. Martin's are still working out all the LitLinks kinks.
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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."
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Elsewhere:
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Reeding Lessons: the Henry Reed research blog |
7.9.2008 |
LitLinks
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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.
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The View From 1946
The Annual Register, a "Review of Public Events at Home and Abroad," is a serial survey of history, politics, and the humanities, published in the U.K. since 1758. My campus library has nearly a complete run, parceled between print volumes and short stretches on microfilm. The trick, apparently, is to pay attention to the record in the online catalog, before realizing in the third floor stacks that the year you're looking for is actually on film in the basement, nine flights below.
The Register volume for 1946 delivers a quick criticism of Reed's first volume of poetry: 'In The Map of Verona [sic] (Cape), Henry Reed, one of the younger poets, develops a meditative romanticism not as yet sure of its own direction.'
The fact that his collection received notice at all speaks for Reed's promise as a poet, despite any reservations the editor may have had. The chapter surveying the literature of 1946 mentions several publications which also contain poems written by Reed: John Lehmann's Poems from New Writing, 1936-1946, which collects "Chrysothemis," and "The Wall"; and the journal Orion, which published Reed's "King Mark." Special attention is also paid to Edith Sitwell's The Song of the Cold (which Reed reviewed for the New Statesman in January, 1946), Richard Church's The Lamp, John Pudney's Selected Poems, Theseus and the Minotaur and Poems by Patric Dickinson, Poems from the North by Sir Shane Leslie, Vivian Locke Ellis' Collected Lyrical Poems, C.C. Abbott's The Sand Castle, Laurence Durrell's Plains and People, and Talking Bronco by Roy Campbell, among others.
Also noted is an anthology called For Those Who Are Alive (London: Fortune, 1946), an anthology of fifty of the 'youngest poets,' compiled by Howard Sergeant, editor of the journal Outposts. I wonder if, perhaps, something of Reed's is also collected there?
The Register volume for 1946 delivers a quick criticism of Reed's first volume of poetry: 'In The Map of Verona [sic] (Cape), Henry Reed, one of the younger poets, develops a meditative romanticism not as yet sure of its own direction.'
The fact that his collection received notice at all speaks for Reed's promise as a poet, despite any reservations the editor may have had. The chapter surveying the literature of 1946 mentions several publications which also contain poems written by Reed: John Lehmann's Poems from New Writing, 1936-1946, which collects "Chrysothemis," and "The Wall"; and the journal Orion, which published Reed's "King Mark." Special attention is also paid to Edith Sitwell's The Song of the Cold (which Reed reviewed for the New Statesman in January, 1946), Richard Church's The Lamp, John Pudney's Selected Poems, Theseus and the Minotaur and Poems by Patric Dickinson, Poems from the North by Sir Shane Leslie, Vivian Locke Ellis' Collected Lyrical Poems, C.C. Abbott's The Sand Castle, Laurence Durrell's Plains and People, and Talking Bronco by Roy Campbell, among others.
Also noted is an anthology called For Those Who Are Alive (London: Fortune, 1946), an anthology of fifty of the 'youngest poets,' compiled by Howard Sergeant, editor of the journal Outposts. I wonder if, perhaps, something of Reed's is also collected there?
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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.
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Point of Balance
I think every staff member working at the main library noticed I was there late this afternoon, and not at work. I snuck out an hour early to pick up a couple of books waiting for me from offsite storage. Everybody said hi, even the head of Access Services, whom I was disturbed to discover could recognize me even hunched over a table, pouring over a book, from behind.
I had a couple of leads to run down, tangential, but leads nonetheless. An article in an old British Museum Quarterly on the papers of Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, bibliophile and former director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, from 1908 to 1937. Reed wrote a letter to Cockerell in 1955, but I haven't found any mention of its contents anywhere in his collected letters. The article in the BMQ shed no light.
I also had an obscure reference to something the poet John Ciardi calls the fulcrum of a poem, the point of balance where a change in attitude or tone takes place, which, Ciardi argues, is always accompanied by a change in structure or technical handling. (Oh, terrific: Poets.org changed their site organization again, and all my links now point to a big, fat 404.)
"Point of balance" is an interesting phrase, since it also refers to the point on a rifle where the weight of the weapon is evenly distributed between the butt and muzzle. In a shooting stance, the point of balance should ideally fall midway between the shooter's hands, making aiming and firing easier and more accurate. The point of balance is mentioned in "Naming of Parts," and I wondered if Ciardi may have taken the phrase from Reed's poem.
After reading the chapter in How Does a Poem Mean? on "The Poem in Countermotion," it would appear, however, that Ciardi was just taking the metaphor of a fulcrum to its logical end, and he was genuinely attempting to describe a poem's silent tipping point, something like the volta or "turn" in a sonnet, after which a realization or resolution is reached. The point between the fourth and fifth stanzas of "Naming of Parts" is a good example of this, where the two, duelling voices of Army and Spring finally merge.
Reading How Does a Poem Mean? (or any scholarly work on the study of poetry) makes me feel a little like Agent Starling visiting Dr. Hannibal Lecter, and I'm a bit out of my depth and on my guard.
"What does it do, this pome you seek?"
"Uh, well. See, it's about mending a stone wall...."
"No. That is in-cidental. First principles..." and Ciardi (or whoever) launches into a rail on Marcus Aurelius, leaving me behind, standing in a cloud of my own ignorance.
And apparently, John Frederick Nims makes a similar point about an "emotional fulcrum." What need does this poem serve by turning? What is its nature?
I had a couple of leads to run down, tangential, but leads nonetheless. An article in an old British Museum Quarterly on the papers of Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, bibliophile and former director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, from 1908 to 1937. Reed wrote a letter to Cockerell in 1955, but I haven't found any mention of its contents anywhere in his collected letters. The article in the BMQ shed no light.
I also had an obscure reference to something the poet John Ciardi calls the fulcrum of a poem, the point of balance where a change in attitude or tone takes place, which, Ciardi argues, is always accompanied by a change in structure or technical handling. (Oh, terrific: Poets.org changed their site organization again, and all my links now point to a big, fat 404.)
"Point of balance" is an interesting phrase, since it also refers to the point on a rifle where the weight of the weapon is evenly distributed between the butt and muzzle. In a shooting stance, the point of balance should ideally fall midway between the shooter's hands, making aiming and firing easier and more accurate. The point of balance is mentioned in "Naming of Parts," and I wondered if Ciardi may have taken the phrase from Reed's poem.
After reading the chapter in How Does a Poem Mean? on "The Poem in Countermotion," it would appear, however, that Ciardi was just taking the metaphor of a fulcrum to its logical end, and he was genuinely attempting to describe a poem's silent tipping point, something like the volta or "turn" in a sonnet, after which a realization or resolution is reached. The point between the fourth and fifth stanzas of "Naming of Parts" is a good example of this, where the two, duelling voices of Army and Spring finally merge.
Reading How Does a Poem Mean? (or any scholarly work on the study of poetry) makes me feel a little like Agent Starling visiting Dr. Hannibal Lecter, and I'm a bit out of my depth and on my guard.
"What does it do, this pome you seek?"
"Uh, well. See, it's about mending a stone wall...."
"No. That is in-cidental. First principles..." and Ciardi (or whoever) launches into a rail on Marcus Aurelius, leaving me behind, standing in a cloud of my own ignorance.
And apparently, John Frederick Nims makes a similar point about an "emotional fulcrum." What need does this poem serve by turning? What is its nature?
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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.
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