[Gregory Dowling]

Prometheus Unbound

Still fettered, still unconquered, still in pain,
Bold in his hope and steadfast in his right,
The Friend of Man on the Caucasian height
Saw one vast flash to northward blast the plain.
As Hermes, swooping down, struck off the chain
And raised him, smiling, in that dazzling light,
"Does the old tyrant, then, repent his spite,"
He asked, "or has Zeus ceased at last to reign?"

"His wisdom is not mocked," the god replied,
"Nor alters nor repeals the great decree.
These are his words: 'Go, set the Titan free;
And let his torment be to wander wide
The ashes of mankind from sea to sea,
Judging that theft of fire from which they died.'"

What we might call the anti-Shelley version of the myth.

One of my reasons for starting this thread is to ask the question, "Why isn't there a full collected edition of Hope's works?" He died 14 years ago. It's easy enough to find the Collected Poems that came out in 1972, and the Carcanet Selected Poems of 1986, edited by Ruth Morse. But there were five new books of poetry after 1972, none of them easily available - at least, in Europe. The only edition that Amazon offers of one of them, A Book of Answers, comes at the modest price of £3000 (three thousand pounds).

Does anyone Down Under have any information on this? Does Australia have anything like the equivalent of the Library of America?

[Maryann Corbett]

Gregory, I don't have authoritative answers, but my curiosity was piqued, and in poking around I found Hope's page at the Australian Poetry Library. You've probably found it already, but perhaps it will be new to some.

I've only looked at it quickly, so I can't yet tell how many of Hope's books are represented there and how many are left out. I wonder whether the existence of sites like this discourages presses from doing the work of producing editions of collected works.

[Gregory Dowling]

Thanks, Maryann. Actually I hadn't come across this site, which is very helpful. And one nice thing is that it includes a number of poems from A Book of Answers - the three-thousand-pound volume. Not the same as having the book, of course, but unless I win the lottery that will have to wait a while.

I see your point about publishers perhaps being deterred. It remains a scandal, however, that the country's best poet from the last century is only available in very costly dribs and drabs...

[ross hamilton hill]

If you wanted to see these later books you could get them on inter-library loan, even a local suburban library can do this for you, they can access a database (forgotten the name of it, a long time since I have been a librarian) and the book/s will be sent, that way you could at least see it/them. Hope is certainly well known in Australia and I often see copies of his books in second hand stores, Judith Wright is our most popular dead poet and Les Murray the most famous living poet. I haven't read much Hope but I would say he is more an academic poet, not so popular ( and when I say popular I mean amongst the tiny educated 'elite' that read poetry). Our most famous/loved modern poem is 'Five Bells' by Kenneth Slessor.

[Gregory Dowling]

Thanks, Ross. Good to hear an Australian take on this. I can imagine that Hope is not a popular poet, but he is certainly a great one.

Yes, an inter-library loan is one possibility. But it's not the same as owning a copy... And there really should be a Collected Poems by now.

Hope wrote a book on Judith Wright, which I haven't read but would like to get hold of. Amazon.co.uk has it on offer at £108. As far as I can see, the Australian Amazon only has two books by him, both Kindle editions: a Selected Poems and the Dunciad Minor. It is actually very good to have these easily available - especially because the Selected contains a number of poems from the later books, which are so difficult to get hold of.

Anyway, at this point we need a little more poetry. Here's a link to The Death of the Bird on that great website Maryann indicated above.

[Cally Conan-Davies]

And here's one of my favourites, The School Of Night.

The first major poetry assignment we ever got at school was to choose any poem we wanted and record ourselves reading it with a background music we felt fitting. I did 'The Death of a Bird'. I read it to a piece of one of Beethoven's symphonies. I'm trying to recall which one! But I remember being 14 and crying my eyes out over this poem.

Thanks for raising Hope, Gregory!

Cally

[Gregory Dowling]

Your link doesn't seem to work, Cally. Here's another one .

And here's a link to a discussion of Hope led years ago by Alan Sullivan.

And here's another one , just to prove there's nothing we can say on this forum that hasn't already been said, probably better, by earlier members.

By the way, does anyone know of an easy way to get rid of the red evidencing of your search-terms, once you've found an old thread?

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Gregory Dowling

By the way, does anyone know of an easy way to get rid of the red evidencing of your search-terms, once you've found an old thread?

Gregory,

You just need to edit the URL in your browser's address bar. Here's what you linked (minus the initial h):

ttp://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=4763&highlight=Alec+Derwent+Hope

Now, if you cut everything after the ampersand, in other words, cut:

&highlight=Alec+Derwent+Hope

you end up with this:

ttp://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=4763

If you look closely, you'll see I cut the h off the http to keep the software from auto-formatting the link. When I add it back in:

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=4763

et, voila, the red is gone.

Thanks,

Bill

[Gregory Dowling]

Thanks, Bill!

[R. S. Gwynn]

http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/books-and-aut...et-who-forgot/

This is a good and poignant book. I had some correspondence with Alec in the late 70s and 80s, and I earlier heard him read in 1968, which occasioned a lifelong love affair with his work. He was a great poet, of course, but a great man as well. I would hate to see his works vanish into obscurity. He is part of the great tradition but, like Clive James (to a lesser degree), has suffered from being Antipodean. This sonnet should prove the peer of any in English. Any.