Monday, February 4, 2013

Bill Shakespeare once wrote ...

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, 
And with old woes' new wail my dear times waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, 
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances forgone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of a fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.

Sonnet 30, William Shakespeare

(painting by Gustave Courbet)

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Carter Brown Covers

Hot covers helped drive 70,000,000 book sales

When I was barely a teenager I found the Carter Brown books in drug stores all over my town. The covers were perfect fantasy fodder for horny adolescent kids who had no idea what sex was about.

And then the mysteries were fast paced, if somewhat conventional -- but good enough for kids and old men who were to discriminating.

But the covers ...

One of the early ones, available only in Australia and England


The amazing prolific horny Robert McGinnis covers drove American males wild!

Another Aussie cover, but this may be one of the very first! So amateurish! Why did the artist make this woman CROSS-EYED?


By the 1980s, when Carter Brown was beginning to wear thin and run out of steam, the covers went for  big-boobed photographs.


This photo treatment was also used in the 1970s for Mickey Spillane reprints.


My copy of the Carter Brown autobiography, Ready When You Are C.B.!, is now up for sale. It was hard to find when I bought it. A fast fun read. Carter Brown was the pen name for Alan Geoffrey Yates (1 August 1923 - 5 May 1985. A Brit who moved to Australia after WWII.

Want to buy it?

Carter Brown Ebay listing





How to end a letter (or email)

"If doubtful whether to end with ‘yours faithfully’, or ‘yours truly’, or ‘yours most truly’, &c. (there are at least a dozen varieties, before you reach ‘yours affectionately’), refer to your correspondent’s last letter, and make your winding-up at least as friendly as his; in fact, even if a shade more friendly, it will do no harm!"
This charming bit advice was written by Lewis Carroll, author of the beloved Alice books...

Sincerely,
BancheroMedia

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Yeats: The Wild Swans at Coole


W B Yeats
The Wild Swans At Coole

A fine fine song from the Grand Master ...

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

And because all poetry should be read aloud ...


Saturday, January 5, 2013

Imagination and poetry

William Carlos Williams
From: Kora in Hell: Improvisations

There is neither beginning nor end to the imagination but it delights in its own seasons reversing the usual order at will. Of the air of the coldest room it will seem to build the hottest passions. Mozart would dance with his wife, whistling his own tune to keep the cold away and Villon ceased to write upon his Petite Testament only when the ink was frozen. But men in the direst poverty of the imagination buy finery and indulge in extravagant moods in order to piece out their lack with other matter.

Charles Bukowski
From: "In Defense of a Certain Type of Poetry, a Certain Type of Life, a Certain Type of Blood-Filled Creature Who Will Someday Die"

Most of our bad and acceptable poetry is written by English profs of state-supported, rich-supported, industry-supported universities. These are careful teachers picked to breed careful men to keep the upper-game going while the lower-game. the lower echelon of men and nations, gets the going over.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Winter 2013 -- Waiting


Waiting Out the Winter

New Year's Day 2013


In his preface to his 1964 short story collection, _Waiting for Winter_, John O'Hara -- the mid-Twentieth Century American author famous for such titles as _Appointment in Samara_ and _BUtterfield 8_ -- noted that he wrote willingly and easily during the long, dark winter months when the cold and gray out of doors forced him to remain in his study ... but stirred his imagination most deeply.

Such is not the case for me.

On the coldest, wettest days I wrap myself in wool. My furnace is blasting. My body remains chilled. All I want is to sleep, and wait for summer. When the clouds occasionally break and the yellow winter sun weakly warms my room, I remain in my bed, my skin sticky under the blankets, cherishing the warmth... much like my cat, Charlie, a lazy old boy who is currently snugly curled up on my wife's lap.

Such times are not conducive to any writing.

And so I wait.