POETRY

Hombre   Wednesday, 16 December 2020

Hello. I have looked this up but could not find any clear information, so maybe you could help me: as it was published by "a Schoolmaster," I was wondering how do we know that Arnold Smith is the writer of A Boy's Absence. Any hint would be appreciated. Thank you.

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Editor   Wednesday, 16 December 2020

I am afraid I don't know. My authority for this was Timothy d'Arch Smith's Love in Earnest (1970), which I believed because it is exceptionally well-researched and reliable. He says:

"The Uranian group held one further schoolmaster, Arnold W. Smith, headmaster of Battersea Polytechnic Secondary School. In 1919 he had published anonymously a long, moving poem, A Boy’s Absence, with the firm of Allen & Unwin. It is the lament of a neurotic, insomniac schoolmaster at the end of term for a boy whom he will not see again until the autumn. The poem—much admired by Montague Summers—embodies the highest ideals and a praiseworthy self-criticism. In 1926, Smith published a second book, The Isle of Mistorak and Other Poems, this time allowing his initials to appear on the title-page." [He then quotes from this book at length].

I don't know d'Arch Smith's source, but it could be the following given in a footnote as the source for Summers' admiration: "his unpublished autobiography, The Galanty Show, MS. Leslie C. Staples, London."

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ANON   Friday, 15 October 2021

Perhaps the following poets/books may be added to the poetry page:

Constantine Cavafy: The Complete Poems of Cavafy: Expanded Edition, trans. by Rae Dalven, Harcourt Brace, 1976

Kurt Neuburger: Knabennicht minder - Gedichte, VerlagGruppe Vis-à-Vis, Berlin 1988
Sandro Penna: Remember Me, God of Love: Selected Poems and Prose, translated by Blake Robinson, Carcanet Press, 1993

Sandro Penna: This Strange Joy: Selected Poems of Sandro Penna, translated by W.S. Di Piero, Ohio State Univ. Press, 1982

Stefan George: The Works of Stefan George, 2nd Edition, Olga Marx and Ernst Morwitz, UNC Press, 2020

Staton of Sardis: Das Hohelied der Knabenliebe: ErotischeGedichteaus der GriechischenAnthologie, translated into German by Wolfram Setz; Verlag Rosa Winkel,1987

Straton of Sardis: La Muse Garçonnièreet Les Amours, trans. by Roger Peyrefitte, Flammarion, 1973

Straton of Sardis: Eros gai: AntologiaPalatina, llibre XII, translated into Catalan by Jaume Juan Castelló, AdesiaraEditoria, 2018