FRED JORDAN, PUBLISHER AT GROVE PRESS ~

 

F R E D       J O R D A N

ALWAYS READING RICHARD SEAVER ~

R E A D      M E

Farrar, Straus, Giroux

2012

Richard Seaver, quietly, surely, was behind
many of the terrific books of the twentieth century —
whether as editor at Grove Press, Viking, and his own
publishing house, ever the reader, seeker, doer.
One of the invaluables.

[ BA ]

RE-READING JIM DODGE ~

Learning to Talk




Whenever Jason said "beeber" for "beaver"

or "skirl" for "squirrel"

I secretly loved it.

They're better words:

The busy beeber beebing around;

the grey squirrel's tail

like a skirl of smoke along a maple branch.

I never told him he was saying

their names "wrong,"

though I did pronounce them conventionally.

One time he noticed, and explained,

" 'Beeber' is how I say it."

"Great," I told him, "whatever

moves you."

But within a week

he was pronouncing both "properly."

I did my duty

and I'm sorry.

Farewell Beeber and Skirl.

So much beauty lost to understanding.




____________________

Jim Dodge
Rain on the River
Grove Press, 2002




Jim Dodge in 1984. Photograph: Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

Jim Dodge lives right, sees right and writes right and he writes right in both poetry and prose, a two pistol gunslinger, with some of the funniest and plainly unique books like FUP, and story poems that you will want to read aloud to anyone you can find. Find the poem about his brother and Dodge giving their dog a bath and what happens. I'm still laughing.

[ BA ]   

BARNEY ROSSET ~

B A R N E Y      R O S S E T

O R      B O O K S






Rosset was a wonderful storyteller as it shows
in this memoir, never mind one of the heralded
mavericks in the US Publishing: Grove Press
when it was really Grove Press; Evergreen Review,
Evergreen Films. Thank heavens for Barney Rosset
and the books by Samuel Becket, Jean Genet,
William Burroughs, Marguerite Duras
Hubert Selby and Henry Miller he and 
some of his excellent editors like 
Richard Seaver and Fred Jordan 
brought forth.

UNCOLLECTED ALLEN GINSBERG ~

[ P O E M ]




3'd day down Yangtze River, yesterday

passed vast mountain gorges and hairpin

river-bends, mist sun and cement factory

soft coal dust everywhere, all China

got a big allergic cold. Literary dele-

gation homebound after 3 weeks, now I'm

traveling separately like I used to — except

everywhere omnipresent kindly Chinese

Bureaucracy meets me at airports & boats

& takes me to tourist hotels & orders meals. I'm

trying to figure a way out — envious of 2

bearded hippies traveling 4th class in

steerage eating tangerines & bananas —

sleepers in passageways on mats, Chinese

voyagers playing checkers. Saw Beijing,

Great Wall, tombs & palaces, Suchow's

Tang gardens, Hangchow's West Lake walkway

dyke to hold the giant water in years of drought

built up by governors Tsu-Tung-Po and Po-Chu-I.

Saw Cold Mt. Temple w/ Snyder who'd

heard its bell echo across ocean.


                                                   — China, November 11, 1984


Published in: Big Scream, no. 20 (February 15, 1985), p. 4, November 11,1984

Now, here's a poet and his editor who know how to honor its small press.

Each poem in this book is individually notated and graced. 

BARNEY ROSSET ~

Barney Rosset
Grove Press

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1187/the-art-of-publishing-no-2-barney-rosset

 http://www.evergreenreview.com/history.html


http://realitystudio.org/bibliographic-bunker/evergreen-review-archive/