More Comic and Curious Verse – Buch antiquarisch kaufen

leichte Gebrauchsspuren

319

220 g

Taschenbuch

Deutsch

Foreword
The collection for this second rag-bag of Comic and Curious Verse began from the moment that the first was packed up for the Printers. There were, necessarily, pieces left out that I should greatly have liked to include, and so for some months there lay in a folder a batch of poems that had just failed to fit into the stipulated length. Among these was ‘The Hunting of the Snark’, which would have been entirely spoiled by cutting but which would have forced out many of my less known finds if I had put it in complete. Soon this folder was swelled by my newspaper critics and correspondents. Wot, no Byron? . . . But, why did you not put in this, that or the other? The field of comic verse is very wide, and there was a great deal which others had treasured and could repeat from memory that I had never even seen. But when, this year, Penguins asked me to fill the bag again, things went from good to better. For not only did the libraries prove to possess collections that were quite new to me, but many friends began to offer heaven-sent suggestions. Did I know X, who wrote the best nonsense verse of the present day? Poems by X are included in this book. Did I know that some bril-liant translations of the Austrian, Christian Morgenstern, had been done before the war by R. F. C. Hüll, and were lying unprinted in a drawer? I had very much wanted to include Morgenstern in the first Comic and Curious, but had seen no good versions in English. So readers will find here, for the first time, a fair selection from the poems of the sly and whimsical inventor of Palmström and Korf, who is, in my opinion, the equal of Carroll or Lear. -Then Michael Hamburger undertook a few more translations of favourite pieces that have never been seen in English dress. So, the new book will be found to contain just as much unfamiliar material as the first -perhaps even more.

I have set myself roughly the same terms of reference as last time, and assembled my poems under eight headings: ‘Odd Voices’, ‘Doubtful Tales’, ‘Squints at Nature’, Tricks and Teases’, ‘Mockery and Invective’, ‘Studied Irreverence’, ‘Ballads to Harp Accom- usw....

Nachgedunkelt.

1956

BN32205BIBE