Tuesday, September 29, 2015

The Egoist, September 1915

Sweet-sadness of the end of many a month's serial story:


I'll be teaching it in a few weeks, for the first time--so it's not like I'm parting ways with The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for long. A note on serialization: this book is poetic enough, and the chapters self-contained enough, that I never felt like I was utterly lost in regard to plot, etc. But on thinking back over the last two years of it, I have trouble remembering what happened--I can recall the plot via the time I read the book-as-book, but as serial, strangely, it seems like a whole different novel. 

Quick Notes:

John Cournos eulogizes Gaudier-Brzeska, drawing a strong contrast between Gaudier-Brzeska's artistic power and motives and that of the Futurists, saying that the Futurists represent things, while G-B interpreted them. 

Richard Aldington contributes a series of short translations from Anyte of Tegea, "one of the great women-poets of Greece."

There's more--Marsden's anti-democratic philosophy, for one--but no more time today. 

Friday, September 25, 2015

Others 1, 2, 3

It's the beginning of a new quarter here in Seattle, which means chaotic wrappings-up of summer projects and chaotic scramblings to get new projects going. But I have to do a quick post on Others
   
The first three issues are absolutely epic.

The first issue (July) contains poetry by Mina Loy, and is the first time I've seen her on the MJP. Her Love Songs are racy and provocative, right away.

The August issue contains poems by this august crew (deep breath): Amy Lowell, William Carlos Williams, and Wallace Stevens. It also has a couple mostly-forgotten poets that I'm interested in: Skipwith Cannell and Robert Carlton Brown. The real treat, though, is Wallace Stevens.  I think this is the first time I've seen Stevens in the archive, and like Loy, his first contributions are amazing: "Peter Quince at the Clavier" as debut!



Lastly, to get me up to date, the gem of the September issue is T.S. Eliot's "Portrait of a Lady." John Gould Fletcher appears too, but his appropriative Native American themed poem is a mess.

I have to go to work!