[Andrew Frisardi]

Thanks for the evocative and vivid memorial, Clive.

I have a copy of Robert Mezey's Hardy edition, which is excellent, and I've enjoyed his posts here in the past, though I don't recall ever interacting with him directly on the Sphere.

I did meet him once in person, however, in 1999 at the one West Chester conference I ever attended. The highlight of that conference for me was the translation panel, including Tim Murphy and Alan Sullivan reading from their Beowulf translation, Mezey reading his Borges, and Dick Davis from somebody, probably a Persian poet. I bought a floppy disk of Mezey's Borges from him after the reading, and I remember the wry look of disbelief on his face when I only had a fiver to offer for it. I also recall being bowled over by the translations.

[Gregory Dowling]

Thanks, Clive. As Andrew says, an evocative memorial.

I never met him but a few years back we held a critical seminar at West Chester on Hardy's poetry and Tim Murphy managed to get him to Skype in during one of our sessions. His knowledge of the poetry was impressive; as soon as we mentioned the poems we were looking at he was able to recite them from memory (as you testify, Clive), in addition to commenting on them. It wasn't a long call but it was very rewarding.

By the way, the vicarage of Bemerton, just opposite the church (and about three times the size of the church), is now home to Vikram Seth.

[Clive Watkins]

Thanks for this, Gregory. Yes, you are right about the Bemerton Vicarage, including about its size.

That whole stretch of country around Salisbury and west towards Sherborne (where Louis MacNeice experienced part of his schooling - and where my godfather was, after the War, a house-master) and on down to Beaminster and the coast have special associations for Irene and myself. But though this gave a particular context to our visit to that part of the world back in 2004, it is, I concede, not relevant here.

Clive

[Rick Mullin]

Here is an obit in the LA Times.


I tried to post the following earlier, but clumsily posted it in the comment about the New Yorker and succeeded in putting the Merzey in the New Yorker thread from years ago at the top of Accomplished Members. That may be a good thing--a reminder that landing one in New Verse News (which I did again today) is NOT a noteworthy accomplishment. Same with Asses of Parnassus, though always chuffed to be in either. My earlier attempt to comment here:

Thanks Clive. That New Yorker poem is tremendous! I didn't put myself through being here until something like 2007, so I don't remember Bob Mezey. Nice to see Janet in the thread~,:^) And a taste of early 2000s Sphere--a time, it seemed, when New Formalism was dropping off like the first stage of a Saturn V rocket, having served its purpose, and the good quality stuff was surging forward. I wish Ray Pospisil were more involved in here in those days.

[David Anthony]

Happy to read this obituary of one of the finest t.o.c formal poets, since I have searched in vain for anything in the British newspapers.

[David Rosenthal]

My time here overlapped with Mezey's, but I don't remember ever interacting with him. However, the collections of Robinson and Hardy that he edited, and his introductions to both, are dear to me. Same for the "Poems of the American West," a lovely little volume if you haven't seen it.

--David R.

[Tim McGrath]

Mezy is entirely new to me, Borges an old friend. I was very impressed by Andrew Hurley's translation of Ficciones. Any thread that starts with Borges and goes on to mention Hardy, Herbert, E. A. Robinson, and Vikram Seth has been spun into a golden thread, which is both a legal term of art and a prized addition to fine embroidery. The comments were also invaluable, ore from the Comstock Lode.

Does anyone know this masterpiece by Seth?

All you who sleep tonight
Far from the one you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above,

Know that you're not alone,
That all men share your tears,
Some for two nights or one
And some for all their years.

Or this passage from Hardy?

Amid the happy people of my time
Who work their love's fulfillment I appear
Numb as a vane that cankers on its point,
True to the wind that kissed ere canker came.

The brilliant critic R.P. Blackmur has a chapter on Hardy in "Language as Gesture," a primer on modern poetry. Among at least a dozen great essays, "Lord Tennyson's Scissors" is the nonpareil, the ne plus ultra.