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Tag Archives: Luise Putcamp jr

Gilgamesh, King of Erech

09 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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ad Diwaniyah, clay tablets, Dorothea Braby, EPIC, Erech, Frank Lawrence Lucas, Gilgamesh, Golden Cockerel Press, Hebrew Bible, London, Luise Putcamp jr, Nippur, Pu-Abis, Sumerian, Ur, Urak, Ziusudra


“The white-haired Ziusudra gazes dreaming out to sea.
Above his white head, the tall palms dream also,
Undulating slowly the green indolence of their leaves.
The old man remembers
Long days, long since, when he watched other waves
Heaving like these, heaving onward eternally,
Yet never breaking
On any earthly shore;
For earth itself lay drowned.
Now he watches them breaking for ever,
Like the years;
The blue of his old eyes changes no more
Than the blue of ocean,
And his hoar locks blow like its foam.
Almost as ancient he seems as the rock of granite,
Of red granite, where he sits above the sea.
Yet still his immortal soul regrets
The brief years of his mortality.”

Gilgamesh, King of Erech
Frank Lawrence Lucas (1894-1967)
London: Golden Cockerel Press, 1948
PR6023 U3 G5 1948

The story of part man, part god hero Gilgamesh was first recorded on clay tablets well before 2000 BC. Gilgamesh was a historical king who reigned circa 2700 BC, the fifth in line of the founding first dynasty of Ur, centered around the ancient city of Urak, known in the Hebrew Biblle as Erech. The historical Gilgamesh built one of the first temples in the holy city of Nippur, now ad Diwaniyah, which is where two of our clay tablets are from. This edition is a free translation of the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, with twelve engravings by Dorothea Braby. Edition of five hundred copies, numbered. University of Utah copy is no. 263.


Excavations at Ur

Pu-Abis Burial Pit

No time, no tomb can hide what we have been.
See what the searchers have uncovered where
Hills are laid low in long-abandoned air,
Centuries swiftly sifted through a screen.
Bay leaves in circlet, gold instead of green,
Carnelian that this river land called rare,
Lapis bought dearly with some distant ware
Crown a crushed skull. Surely here lay a queen.

That future digger who can read the dead,
Build dynasties from what the past discards,
Dust and a different sunlight on his head,
Shaking my grave for artifacts and shards
Will bare no gold bedecking this brown bone
And rightly call a commoner’s skull my own.

———–

Clay Tablets

Molded like primal man from lumps of mud
And pressed with dents peculiar to old needs
The tablets tell of gods’ outlandish deeds,
Record the names kings bore before the Flood.
Now tufted hills lie where the city stood.
The kings eat endless earth and the wind feeds
On eyeless gods. The river stirs far reeds.
The clay alone survives long solitude

And even now some men can read its signs.
The double strokes say water, and the star
Signifies heaven. All the fragile lines
Hold meaning that millenniums fail to mar
While in a familiar alphabet my words
Today go meaningless as marks of birds.

–Luise Putcamp jr., 1964

Excavations at Ur published here by permission of the poet to whom we wish a happy 94th birthday.

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Now is the night one blue dew.

26 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

American History Printing Association, antiquarian, booksellers, Carol Sandberg, Carolee Campbell, cousins, Essex House Press, Fairfax, floriated initials, Gaylord Schanilec, Jack Stauffacher, James Agee, Jerry Kelly, John Keats, Joni Kay Miller, Kathleen Thompson, London, Los Angeles, Luise Putcamp jr, Melrose, Michael R. Thompson Rare Books, Michael Thompson, Mississippi, music, poems, poetry, poets, Robin Price, Rover Art Books, Third, Universal Books, vellum, Walter de la Mare, William Shakespeare, Zeitlin & Van Brugge

PS3501-G35-H3-1964-cover

“…do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou has not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!”
— John Keats from Ode on a Grecian Urn

In Memoriam — Kathleen Thompson

Kathleen Thompson of Michael R. Thompson Rare Books worked for several Los Angeles antiquarian booksellers, including Universal Books, Royer Art Books, and Zeitlin & Ver Brugge, before entering into a partnership with her husband, Michael Thompson, and Carol Sandberg in 1985. Hers was often the first face one encountered when visiting their shops on Melrose, Fairfax, and Third. We remember Kathleen for her warmth, sense of humor, thoughtfulness, and intelligence.

I had the pleasure of many conversations with Kathleen over the phone and by email. I will miss her soft Mississippi meter, which, thank goodness, she never did lose, even though she swore she had. We wrote to each other about cousins, music, poets and poems. Here are a few of her favorites.

PR2841-A2-E55-pg153
THE POEMS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
London: Essex House Press, 1899
PR2841 A2 E55

Printed in black and red. Illustrated with floriated initials and one full-page drawing. Bound in vellum with ties. Edition of four hundred and fifty copies. Rare Books copy is no. 274.


Z250-V47-2006-3panel
VERSE INTO TYPE THE APHA POETRY PORTFOLIO
American Printing History Association
S. l.: American Printing History Association, 2006
Z250 V47 2006

Seventeen gatherings contributed by fifteen different presses in a variety of typefaces, colors, formats, papers, all letterpress printed, some illustrated. Contributors include Carolee Campbell, Jerry Kelly, Robin Price, Gaylord Schanilec, Jack Stauffacher, and others. Issued in blue cloth clamshell box with paper label. Edition of two hundred copies.


And this from Walter de la Mare:

All That’s Past

Very old are the woods;
And the buds that break
Out of the brier’s boughs,
When March winds wake,
So old with their beauty are–
Oh, no man knows
Through what wild centuries
Roves back the rose.
Very old are the brooks;
And the rills that rise
Where snow sleeps cold beneath
The azure skies
Sing such a history
Of come and gone,
Their every drop is as wise
As Solomon.

Very old are we men;
Our dreams are tales
Told in dim Eden
By Eve’s nightingales;
We wake and whisper awhile,
But, the day gone by,
Silence and sleep like fields
Of amaranth lie.

PR1309-C485-N85-1925-CoverPattern


And this from James Agee:

Knoxville: Summer of 1915

(We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville Tennessee in that time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.)

…It has become that time of evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently and watching the street and the standing up into their sphere of possession of the trees, of birds’ hung havens, hangars. People go by; things go by. A horse, drawing a buggy, breaking his hollow iron music on the asphalt; a loud auto; a quiet auto; people in pairs, not in a hurry, scuffling, switching their weight of aestival body, talking casually, the taste hovering over them of vanilla, strawberry, pasteboard and starched milk, the image upon them of lovers and horsemen, squared with clowns in hueless amber.

A streetcar raising its iron moan; stopping, belling and starting; stertorous; rousing and raising again its iron increasing moan and swimming its gold windows and straw seats on past and past and past, the bleak spark crackling and cursing above it like a small malignant spirit set to dog its tracks; the iron whine rises on rising speed; still risen, faints; halts; the faint stinging bell; rises again, still fainter, fainting, lifting, lifts, faints foregone: forgotten. Now is the night one blue dew.

PS3501-G35-H3-1964-cover


And this from the aunt of Kathleen’s “dearest old friend,” Joni Kay Miller (1945-2017):

It is peculiar mercy none can find
In this lost time where only losers dwell
Who lose the most, the ones who left behind
Wisdom and love and never knew them well
Or those who know too well and as they stay
Inherit silence and the vacant day.
— Luise Putcamp jr.


And I had the honor of being called by Kathleen “a kindred spirit, too.”
— Luise Poulton


Memory eternal!

PS3501-G35-H3-1964-cover(feature)

26 March 2017

Friends Gather for Kathleen, 26 March 2017

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Memorial Day 2016

30 Monday May 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

American, British, cemetery, conflict, drawings, engravings, General Assembly, Harrisburg, House of Representatives, James Smillie, Kaleidograph Press, Luise Putcamp jr, Memorial Day, Military Cemetery, Nehemiah Cleaveland, Pennsylvania, Soldiers' National Cemetery, Sonnets for the Survivors, troops

“Stones stand at stiff attention as sun nears”


MILITARY CEMETERY

Here stationed without trumpet, without tears
Are the unwilling dead. Days walk the rounds
Of sentry duty past the ordered mounds.
Stones stand at stiff attention as sun nears,
Inspects them and departs. On earthen ears
The volley from the silent rifle sounds
And the slow winds police the sterile grounds
Where seconds march of equal rank with years.
Look long and with your heart until you see
In place of stone the man he planned to be,
Uproot the useless grass and find in place
The sons he might have fathered, or erase
The bare, official words and read instead:
He laughed at dying, so he is not dead.

– Luise Putcamp jr., Sonnets for the Survivors, Kaleidograph Press, 1952
“Military Cemetery” published here with permission of the author


F129-B7-G756-BattleHill

“In that vicinity, — upon ground traversed in part by every visitor to the Cemetery, and lying immediately below and around it, — occurred the first serious conflict between the British and American troops, on the memorable 26th of August, 1776.”

Green-wood Illustrated
Nehemiah Cleaveland (1796-1877)
New York: R. Martin, 1847
First edition
F129 B7 G756 1847

Illustrated with engravings from drawings taken on the spot by James Smillie.


E475.55-P41-foldout

“These men came here from the east and from the west, stood side by side, and fought and fell in one common cause and for one common country…and their dust is now in common…”

Revised Report of the Select Committee Relative to the Soldiers’ National Cemetery
Pennyslvania. General Assembly. House of Representatives.
Harrisburg: Singerly & Myers, state printers, 1865
E475 .55 P41

 

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A Gift from the Past – A story from one of our readers

25 Friday Dec 2015

Posted by scott beadles in Uncategorized

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Albuquerque, American Legion, Amherst, attorney, bibliophile, Charles Scribner's Sons, childhood, Dallas, Depression, Dred Scott, Eugene Field, Fannie Smith, folk songs, fugitive slave, hero, initial, legends, Los Angeles, Luise Putcamp jr, lullabies, Massachusetts, Maxfield Parrish, migrant workers, Missouri, New York, newspaperman, Pecos, Placitas, poems, rare books, San Francisco, San Leandro, Sarmento, Texas

PS1667-P6-1904-pl28
Poems of Childhood
Eugene Field (1850-1895)
New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1904
PS1667 P6 1904

Newspaperman Eugene Field was born in Missouri. His father, an attorney, successfully defended Dred Scott, a fugitive slave. Field’s mother died when he was six. He and his younger brother grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, cared for by a paternal cousin. Field was the father of eight children. He worked for the St. Louis Evening Journal, St. Joseph Gazette, St. Louis Times-Journal, and the Kansas City Times. He wrote a column for the Chicago Morning News until his death. On the one hand a sharp satirist, on the other Field wrote sentimental verse. He is best known for “Little Boy Blue” (1888), a poem memorized by thousands of school children for many decades. He published several books of verse, some specifically about childhood. With Trumpet and Drum (1892), included “Wynken, Blynken and Nod” and lullabies, legends, and folk songs from different countries, a study of particular interest to him. Love-Songs of Childhood (1894) included “The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat.” Field, a bibliophile, collected rare and unusual books of beauty. He also made his own books, often rubricating the first initial of a poem with various color inks. Much of his published work was illustrated by Maxfield Parrish, including this popular collection of his poetry.

“A Gift From the Past”

Night was coming on.

The old car carrying the parents and their three stairstep children was headed south, down the highway from San Francisco. No destination. No money.

The year was 1933.

The hand-lettered sign stood in front of an orchard near San Leandro. Fruit Pickers Wanted. The dad pulled into the yard and knocked at the house door.

Three children? They’ll stay out of the way. There’s a house you can use.

We piled out of the car. With broom and mop and rags the parents soon had the corners of the two-room house swept, the worn linoleum clean, the gas-burner stove sanitary.

The mother told the orchard owner, Mr. Sarmento, that she had no money for food. He gave her an advance on fruit picker pay. She loaded up on staples. A roof! Food money! In an exuberance of relief, she made pies from peaches gleaned from beneath a nearby tree and gave one pie to the Sarmentos.

Migrant workers. Anglo braceros. 

After the fruit was picked, the Sarmentos found more work around the orchard for the parents. For the three kids, it was an idyllic time.

The oldest daughter spent much of it perched in a big old tree behind the Sarmento house, reading the few books salvaged in an earlier hegira from Los Angeles.

The big, beautiful books were presents from The Aunt Who Always Gave Books, Aunt Fannie Smith, in Dallas.One of them was the 1904 edition (still going in 1932) of Eugene Field’s Poems of Childhood with illustrations by Maxfield Parrish.
PS1667-P6-1904-frontis

Even at eight years old, this daughter knew that most of the poems were a mediocre mishmash. Mostly she immersed her mind in the Maxfield Parrish pictures that transported her so far from drab surroundings.

But there was an old faithful, “Just Fore Christmas.” How often she’d heard her Daddy Bill recite that!
“Father calls me William, sister calls me Will,
 “Mother calls me Willie but the fellers call me Bill.”
 
    PS1667-P6-1904-spread116-117
 
And she did memorize the lugubrious “Little Boy Blue.”

Over in Texas, the boy who would grow up to marry her would memorize it, too. He got an American Legion medal for making the best grades of any elementary school kid in Pecos. He blew the last lines in reciting “Little Boy Blue” but he was a hero, anyway.

The girl’s family left the Sarmento orchard behind and went on to other Depression Day adventures. Books and other treasures were left behind or lost in unpaid storage.

Fast forward to the late 1980’s, in Placitas.

From one of those bookfind places, the aging Depression child was able to buy, for $35, a battered copy of the memory-laden old book.

And this year, Scribner’s reissued Poems of Childhood. The Maxfield Parrish illustrations look true to the original.

Now the next generation (and the next) can wince at the poems and marvel at the illustrations.

Albuquerque, NM 1996
Luise Putcamp, jr.
PS1667-P6-1904-swing

alluNeedSingleLine

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Memorial Day 2015

25 Monday May 2015

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Alfred H. Guernsey (1824-1902), Chicago, Civil War, engravings, Harper's Weekly, Henry M. Alden, Kaleidograph Press, Luise Putcamp jr, New York, Sonnets for Survivors, Thomas Nast, United States, Winslow Homer

AFTERMATH

My heart’s a scrapbook pasted by a child.
The lines run rampant and the colors wild
In pictures unrelated, and the words
Hop inconsistent like the tracks of birds.
And every other page holds empty space
Where time tore out the pictures of your face.

Luise Putcamp jr from Sonnets for Survivors, Kaleidograph Press, 1952
“Aftermath” published here with permission of the author



Harper’s Pictorial History of the Great Rebellion
Alfred H. Guernsey (1824-1902)
Chicago, IL: McDonnell Bros, 1866-1868
E468.7 G932 1866 oversize

Culled from the pages of Harper’s Weekly, the most popular magazine of its day, Harper’s Pictorial History of the Great Rebellion illustrated the chronology of the Civil War and a brief history of the United States with an emphasis on the causes of the war. Most of the copy was taken directly from issues of the magazine as it covered the war. Harper’s sent both reporters and artists with the troops. Nearly one thousand original engravings kept recent past in memory: battle scenes, camps, marches, soldier life, portraits of officers, and maps. Artists such as Thomas Nast and Winslow Homer contributed to the magazine. Editors Alfred H. Guernsey and Henry M. Alden worked to compile and publish a definitive history of the war, using their own magazine as their main source, adding unpublished information as well. The Chicago edition was issued contemporaneously with the New York first edition, using the same sheets.

 

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Memorial Day 2014

26 Monday May 2014

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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1st South Carolina Volunteers, abolition, American Civil War, Arlington, Decoration Day, Harvard Divinity School, Kaleidograph Press, labor rights, Luise Putcamp jr, Massachusetts, Memorial Day, Newburyport, Reed Smoot, Republican, slavery, Sonnets for Survivors, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Union, Unitarian, Utah, Washington, women's suffrage

Memorial Day

If sudden statues rose for all who fell
They would not inundate the parks with stone
Where the forgotten heroes ride alone
To slow tongue of an abandoned bell.
Flaunting the remnants of their final hell
They would regain the streets their feet had known
Under the skies where their first words were sown
And stand as an alien citadel.

So rooted they would still with carven ear
The threadbare speech, the momentary tear,
With carven eye transfix the mocking flowers,
Wilt token flags above forgetful towers.
Who then would dare to go the usual way
Crowding the dead into a single day?

Luise Putcamp jr.
from Sonnets for the Survivors, Kaleidograph Press, 1952
“Memorial Day” published here with permission of the poet

 


Address on Decoration Day
Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911)
s.l.: s.n., 1904
E642 H53

“Without distinction of nationality, of color, of race, of religion, those men gave their lives to their country. Without distinction of religion, of color, of race, of nationality, their graves are being garlanded today….the war gave peace to the nation; it gave union, freedom, equal rights…”

Thomas Wentworth Higginson was graduated from Harvard Divinity School in 1847. He accepted the appointment of ministry of a Unitarian church in Newburyport, Massachusetts. His support for women’s suffrage, labor rights, and the abolition of slavery was too radical for the conservative community. He was asked to resign two years after his appointment. As a Union colonel in the American Civil War, Higginson commanded the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first federally authorized regiment of African-American soldiers.


Memorial Day Address at Arlington, VA.
Reed Smoot (1862-1941)
Washington: Govt. Printing Office, 1914
E642 S66 1914

“In all we say about the soldier, let us not forget the part taken and willingly assumed by the American women in time of war. What shall we say of the wives and the mothers who gave their husbands and their sons for their country? No woman who has not passed through this terrible ordeal can describe or measure the sacrifice our women made, or the horrors and hardships and sorrows they endured. What say you of the loving sisters who gave their brothers, yes, and their lovers too?”

Reed Smoot was a Republican senator from Utah, serving from 1903 to 1933.

 

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