[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."

[Alex Pepple]

Steve, this is a wonderful thread, a historic quest for Eratosphere ... all the more so for the happy ending. I especially enjoyed the poems of R.P. Lister posted in this thread!

Cheers,
...Alex