13 October 2018

Archibald Lampman's 'October Sunset' in October



OCTOBER SUNSET
          One moment the slim cloudflakes seem to lean
          With their sad sunward faces aureoled,
          And longing lips set downward brightening
          To take the last sweet hand kiss of the king,
          Gone down beyond the closing west acold;
          Paying no reverence to the slender queen,
          That like a curved olive leaf of gold
          Hangs low in heaven, rounded toward the sun,
          Or the small stars that one by one unfold
          Down the gray border of the night begun.
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12 October 2018

Ce Soir à Montréal: The Louis Dudek Plaque



Tonight will see the Montreal Writers' Chapel 2018 plaque dedication.
This year's honouree is poet, critic and academic Louis Dudek.

Speakers include:
Bernhard Beutler
Simon Dardick
Gregory Dudek
and Michael Gnarowski.

Stephen Morrissey and Marc Plourde will read.

A wine and cheese reception will follow.
This is a free event. All are welcome!

I'll be there. Please come and say hello.

Friday, October 12 @ 6:00pm

St Jax
1439 St. Catherine Street West (Bishop Street Entrance)

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09 October 2018

The Dustiest Bookcase: K is for Kelley


Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
They're in storage as we build our new home.
Patience, please.

I Found Cleopatra
Thomas P. Kelley
West Linn, OR: Fax Collector's Editions, [1977]
111 pages

Thomas P. Kelley was a regular in the early years of the Dusty Bookcase. From 2009 to 2012, his writing was the focus of a steady parade of posts, which included reviews of No Tears for Goldie (1949), Bad Men of Canada (1950), and two markedly different versions of The Fabulous Kelley (1968), a loving memoir about his snake oil-selling father.*

All this came to an end my review of 'The Soul Eater', a lost world story Kelley published in the May 1942 number of Uncanny Tales. Of all the things I've written on Kelley, it's my favourite. So what made me stop?

Something to do with the remaining Kelley titles in my collection, I suppose.


I wasn't much interested in taking time to separate truth from fiction in his books about the DonnellysSimon Gunanoot, and the Mad Trapper of Rat River. Things would've been different if I'd found a copy of this:


After The Black Donnellys and Vengeance of the Black Donnellys, I Found Cleopatra is Kelley's most reprinted work. First published in the Weird Tales (November 1938) – and again in Uncanny Tales (July 1941) – the novel has appeared three times in book form, most recently  in 1980 by Borgo Press. I found and bought my Fax Collector's Editions copy last summer.

It's now in a storage locker just outside the town of Merrickville, Ontario.

Wish it wasn't.


* Here I ignore my growing suspicion that Kelley was the author of No Place in Heaven, a 1949 News Stand Library pulp published under the name "Laura Warren."

Note: Not to be confused with I Found Cléopâtre, the 1988 account of my discovery a Montreal drag bar with the longest and cheapest Happy Hour in the whole damn city.


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03 October 2018

No Picnic



Murder's No Picnic
E.L. Cushing
London: Wright & Brown, 1956
188 pages

My latest Dusty Bookcase review, of E.L. Cushing's Murder's No Picnic, is now available gratis at the Canadian Notes & Queries website:
A House Full of Orphans
I wish I could say I liked the novel. I didn't. Given its cover, I was at the very least expecting a fun read. It wasn't. Regular readers may remember my enjoyment of Murder Without Regret. Now that was fun!


I don't know that I'll read anything more by Cushing. Her books aren't at all common and tend to be quite expensive. My warped copy of Murder's No Picnic was purchased earlier this year £16.00 from an English bookseller located somewhere in Devon. With shipping added, the thing set me back well over fifty dollars. The true first edition was published in 1953 by New York's Arcadia House. There has never been a Canadian edition. I don't expect we'll ever see one.

Not a Ricochet Books candidate.


01 October 2018

Archibald Lampman's 'In October' in October


The Poems of Archibald Lampman (Toronto: Musson, 1900)
IN OCTOBER
     Along the waste, a great way off, the pines
          Like tall slim priests of storm, stand up and bar
     The low long strip of dolorous red that lines
          The under west, where wet winds moan afar.
     The cornfields all are brown, and brown the meadows
          With the blown leaves' wind-heaped traceries,
     And the brown thistle stems that cast no shadows,
          And bear no bloom for bees. 
     As slowly earthward leaf by red leaf slips,
          The sad trees rustle in chill misery,
     A soft strange inner sound of pain-crazed lips,
          That move and murmur incoherently;
     As if all leaves, that yet have breath, were sighing,
          With pale hushed throats, for death is at the door,
     So many low soft masses for the dying
          Sweet leaves that live no more. 
     Here I will sit upon this naked stone,
          Draw my coat closer with my numbed hands,
     And hear the ferns sigh, and the wet woods moan,
          And send my heart out to the ashen lands;
     And I will ask myself what golden madness,
          What balmed breaths of dreamland spicery,
     What visions of soft laughter and light sadness
          Were sweet last month to me. 
     The dry dead leaves flit by with thin weird tunes,
          Like failing murmurs of some conquered creed,
     Graven in mystic markings with strange runes,
          That none but stars and biting winds may read;
     Here I will wait a little; I am weary,
          Not torn with pajn of any lurid hue,
     But only still and very gray and dreary,
          Sweet sombre lands, like you.

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