[Steve Mangan]

Thanks for sharing your journey with us Steve, a great story.

[Ed Shacklee]

I think a great present would be to bring out a book of selected poems -- unless he'd rather not, but I think he might enjoy making the selections and helping to put it together. If we did a subscription, surely there's a publisher out there who'd want a group of ready buyers for his or her wares. I, for one, would be happy to chip in.

Ed

[Steve Bucknell]

Thanks, Janice, I get the same feeling. R.P. describes it as "the Holy Ghost".

Thanks David. It reminds me of a Paul Auster tale.

Cally, I'm not sure what that vocation is...A stalker of elderly writers?
As for greatness, a character of his writes: "I do not think her love for Pellinew ever died away at all, so there it all is, still lit up with the same light, though it is long ago." From TQB.

Thanks Steve, his book on Turkey must be high on your list.

Ed, I'm taking your ideas on board. I'm a hopeless organiser, but my wife Adrienne is good at making things happen.

R.P. makes me laugh...He quotes Johnson:" Sir, there are only two things that a man can and should absorb in unlimited quantities. One is air, the other is praise."

[Adam Elgar]

An utterly wonderful adventure. Thank you, Steve. What drama, and what a denouement.

[Jerome Betts]

Steve, a questing Bucknell if ever there was one. Marvellous! So glad the quest in this case achieved such a happy result. What a fascinating transition from metallurgist to master of light verse up there in the New Yorker etc with Nash and the others, not to mention the novels and other books. The collection or festschrift idea sounds interesting.

Another snippet from the web (whose quirks would surely provide a wealth of topics for RPL if he were still writing): 'Defenestration' was set to music by the group Instant Sunshine, one of whose members was the late Miles Kington of 'Franglais' fame.

I too am off to order 'The Idle Demon' and any others I can find. In the meantime, I hope RPL won't mind one more appetite-whetter appearing here, the wry knockabout of 'The Albatross', still flying in a far corner of cyberspace, though I can't answer for the punctuation, another reason for searching out the originals. Enjoy Corfu, Steve, you've earned it!

The Albatross R.P. Lister

I sailed below the Southern Cross
(So ran the seaman's song);
A pestilential albatross
Followed us all day long.

The creature's aspect was so grim,
And it oppressed me so,
I raised and on a sudden whim,
I lowered my crossbow.

The weather grew exceeding thick;
The sullen tempest roared.
A dozen of the crew fell sick,
The rest fell overboard.

The skies were so devoid of light
We could not see to pray.
The donkeyman went mad by night,
The second mate by day.

We set the live men swabbing decks,
The dead man manned the pumps.
The cabin steward changed his sex;
The captain had the mumps.

The cargo shifted in the hold,
The galley boiler burst.
My hair turned white, my blood ran cold -
I knew we were accurst.

I helped the purser dig his grave
On the deserted poop;
I leaped into the foaming wave
And swam to Guadeloupe

And there (he said) I nibbled moss
Beside the stagnant lake . . .
I should have shot the albatross,
That was my big mistake.

[Stephenie McKinnon]

Note To Jerome,
I read this and roared with laughter! The "Rime" was a favorite of my nerdy literary family.. a topic of family dinner discussions. [Just one sad example: my brother came home from a date one night and told my mom it had reminded him of the poem. She replied, "Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink?" He grumbled, "NO! 'Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was as white as leprosy, The nightmare, life in death was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold!'"] Yes... As you might imagine, bringing any of my dates home to meet the family was pretty much social suicide.

Mr. Lister's version is a hilarious, delightful read. I'll have to share this with the crazy bunch I grew up with. Thanks for posting it.

To Steve: Thank you again! Wonderful that you got to speak to him, you lucky man. Wonder-full. I'm with Janice... contemplating calling this a spiritual experience. I hope you get to meet him, soon, talk poetry, life, and love in person. That would be amazing. I'll expect an update. Have fun in Greece. Is it warm enough there to swim?

[Steve Bucknell]

Thanks again, Jerome, for your research and posts. I think your:" What a fascinating transition from metallurgist to master of light verse up there in the New Yorker etc with Nash and the others..." is spot-on. I hope to ask R.P. more about this. The more clues I pick up he seems a fascinating mix of down-to-earth scientist and almost-mystic. There's a transformation of base metals into....much improved base metals!

I read "Allotments" while I was in the British Library. A skillful and pretty coffee-table book with nice verse about life on allotments, celebrating the small, disorderly and particular. He describes the characters on a typical suburban allotment :" the orderly, the disorganised, the laborious, the lazy, the experts, the simpletons, the practical, the philosophers, the experimenters and the traditionalists." Sound like anywhere you know?

Thanks again, Steph.

And I leave you for now with a touch of R.P.'s mystical side:

"Be of good comfort, for the light once lit
May shine when life has long extinguished it,
And, being a kind of lingering reflection,
Prove the sole evidence of resurrection."