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11-09-2006, 07:41 PM
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Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Pasadena, California
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They don't publicize these things very well. Perhaps they don't want people to attend. Anyway, this is from the Calendar of Events of the Huntington Library, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA 91108 626) 405-2100.
"Poetry Reading, Nov. 16 (Thursday) 7:30 p.m.
Local poets will read the works of 20th-century American poet Henri Coulette, whose papers are housed at The Huntington. Free. Overseers’ Room."
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11-09-2006, 09:19 PM
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Lariat Emeritus
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Fargo ND, USA
Posts: 13,816
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That's wonderful to hear Frank. You'll hear our Master of Memory for sure. Bob will get over Henri's death about the time when I get over Hecht's or Donaghy's--when we are reunited.
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11-12-2006, 10:42 AM
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Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: New York, NY
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This is one occasion I wish I were in your area, Frank.
I've heard Robert Mezey perform and assuming it's true he will be reading, don't miss this, Californians!
Terese
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11-12-2006, 03:29 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Fargo ND, USA
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Bob Mezey and Jackie Coulette will be reading. Don't miss it, Californians. I can't go, but I have been reading Henri Coulette in place of travel. Let me share with you a sip of his verse.
After the Third Martini
Some dispensation of the light, perhaps,
But just now when you came into the room,
I thought you were the light, and held my glass
Just so, so it might catch your sweet reflection.
Great Scott, I think I must have been inspired!
How many men you know have sipped a rainbow?
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11-12-2006, 06:12 PM
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Monterey, CA USA
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I heard Mezey read Mezey and Coulette last month here in Monterey, and I can recommend the experience. Mezey has edited a pretty little volume of "Poems of the American West" (in the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets series)that I picked up at the reading, and I recommend that too. Among other riches, it's got 4 Coulettes, 1 Espaillat, 1 Mezey, 1 Gwynn, and 4 Murphys. Enjoy, ye southern californians!
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11-13-2006, 08:27 AM
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Lariat Emeritus
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Fargo ND, USA
Posts: 13,816
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Thank you Simon. Grateful Dead Fans, it also has the lyric to Me and My Uncle. It's a terrific little book.
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11-13-2006, 02:41 PM
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Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Pasadena, California
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I didn't mean to disparage the Huntington, it's a great resource. Last year, it hosted an incredible seminar on the "Movement" poets, with panelists Robert Conquest, Anthony Thwaite, James Fenton, Alan Jenkins, and Blake Morrison.
I still regret missing Timothy Steele and Leslie Monsour earlier this year, though.
Tim, I saw Prof. Mezey read from his own works there last year; he autographed my battered copy of his Collected Poems.
Thanks for the rec, Simon; I'll be sure and pick up a copy.
--Frank
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11-14-2006, 07:01 AM
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Fargo ND, USA
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Frank, everyone. Bob is a terrific reader, and he is carefully preparing this reading, meaning he is probably recommitting to memory everything. One of the best afternoons of my life I sat in his office with its ten thousand books, and we just recited to one another. No book was touched.
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11-17-2006, 03:02 PM
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Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Pasadena, California
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This was a great reading - a fitting tribute to a poet as unjustly neglected today as at his death, almost 20 years ago. I urge everyone (professed poetry supporters, you know who you are!) to avail themselves of Amazon or Alibris or whatever, and pick up a copy of The Collected Poems of Henri Coulette, edited by Donald Justice and Robert Mezey. I wanted to share a couple of things.
The first is a quote, which I found as clear-eyed and cogent as Larkin's "Statement About Poetry."
Coulette described himself as "a maker rather than a bard. From this consideration all else follows. I am interested in technique and take pride in demonstrating it . . . . I like to think that I bear witness to my experience, i.e., that my subject matter is being me, here, now. I hope that I may rise above these limitations, but I have no illusions about being a spokesman for others, or of possessing the truth. Limitation is a mystery, and I try to live with the excitements and discomforts thereof."
Second, one of his epigrams:
The Collected Poems of What's His Face
Sixteen thousand lines, give or take sixteen--
And no two lines that you can read between.
[Anyone care to guess who that's about?]
This is one of Coulette's last poems:
On a Theme of X
Violin and cello subside. The masked musicians,
Still in the throes,
Assume a dark repose--
As if they listened to an echo
Waking, among their loftiest intuitions,
Rooftree, rafter, and stucco.
The quiet is the quiet one imagines
Color achieves
Rioting among leaves.
It lingers just a shade too long,
Till bravos come and small talk wells from regions
Where things are comfortably wrong.
Where are we going after this is over?
It's a hard life
With or without a wife.
That goes, my darling, without saying.
What shall I say? A friend, perhaps? A lover?
Well, how much are you paying?
Enough, enough. The wakeful nightingales
Of Heraclitus
Note by note invite us
Out of our brief and shadowy selves.
That is the work of art, and it prevails,
If only on dusty shelves.
[The answer: apparently Allen Ginsberg]
[This message has been edited by FOsen (edited November 18, 2006).]
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11-18-2006, 12:37 AM
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Lariat Emeritus
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Fargo ND, USA
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Thank you for the report, Frank. I wish we had strolled through the garden of the Huntington with Our Master of Memory after the reading. Were Tim Steele and Pete Fairchild there, and if so, did you have a chance to talk to them? Was Bruce McBirney there? If anybody here thinks she or he can write a heterometrical ode as good as what Frank just posted, please put it at TDE.
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