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Bought Crowley books that is.

An order came in today bearing a few of the books that are still in print that I didn’t already have. Including: Diary of a Drug Fiend (pictured right), White Stains, and the Sutin biography, Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley.

From the out of print market I also picked up The Revival of Magick and Other Essays (Oriflamme).

It’s great to see that Moonchild is in print again, even if it is a limited edition (I’ve already pre-ordered a copy), but with so many titles going out of print, I feel like I have to rush to fill the gaps in my library while I still can.

Whatever polarization there is amongst readers of Crowley, we’re not “beyond the books” (there is no such thing). This OOP situation needs to be rectified. I still can’t find a decently priced copy of Confessions.

Also, thanks to Joseph Thiebes who, on Plutonica.net’s Facebook page, let us know that Buying Crowley Books isn’t just a Facebook group and a Twitter account – it’s also a blog! Complete with an “Anti-Boycott” manifesto.

Final point, unrelated to Crowley (for now), but still on a bookish theme: the Esoteric Book Club is up and running. Check in and let us know where you’re at.

Teitan Press has released a new book, Thorn in the Flesh: A Grim-memoire, by Rosaleen Norton.

Thorn in the Flesh is comprised poetry, Norton’s reminiscences and various occult jottings, with reproductions of two photographs of Norton, as well as examples of her art.

I’m not familiar with Norton, but Wikipedia informs me she was an Australian artist and occultist of some renown. She certainly sounds like she lead an interesting life.

Excerpt from an e-mail received from Weiser Antiquarian: Continue reading »

The People have spoken and declared Eyeago’s Erisian haiku, “Discordian Death Epic Haiku in Five Chapters”, to be The Prettiest One:

King Kong died for You:
Ingrate domestic primate.
Banana peel death.

Five finger discount
Dun dun dun Dunnnnn, badum pshhh
Gobble gobble hey.

A Fnordian Slip
Aneristic nay-sayer
Hey: pull my finger Continue reading »

Last week I posted about my introduction to Baudelaire and shared a few excerpts from Twenty Prose Poems. I’ve been reading Les fleur du mal; my edition 1963 edition was translated in the ’30s by George Dillon and Edna St. Vincent Millay with an introduction written by the latter.

After praising the translation in which she played a part, Millay, a poet herself, explains in detail various poetic forms. In particular the differences between traditional French poetry, which tends to be written in alexandrines, and English poetry, which uses a variety of forms (iambic pentameter, dactylic hexameter, etc.) and notes the challenges she faced in translating poetry from French into English.

She also makes the following comment:

It is impossible to make a good translation of a poet of whom one disapproves. To excuse him or to condemn him is, for the translator, equally impertinent and equally fatal. Them poem is the thing. Is it interesting? – is it beautiful? – is it sublime? Then it was written by nobody. It exists by itself. The reader of poetry who has never had the brain-dizzying experience of being seduced into stupefied, into incredulous, into dismayed, into amused, into delighted, into wild unqualified enthusiasm for a poem written by his bitterest personal enemy, or by the person whom he has for years considered to be the Most Sickening Poet on the Face of the Earth, has never known one of the few authentic paradisiacal vertigoes of life.

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I’ve only recently started reading Baudelaire; I finished Twenty Prose Poems yesterday. Despite taking French from kindergarten through to OAC, it’s hardly surprising that the few trips I’ve taken to Quebec to exercise the tongue have not been sufficient to maintain bilingualism: I found the French quite challenging.

It’s strange, after so many years absent from the language, to see how easy it was to pick up again in some respects, but also quite different and difficult. I’m no longer sure if this is due to the differences between québécois and Parisian French, or because they were written before Canada was even a country and the language is antiquated, or, far more likely, c’est parce que mon français est terrible.

Fortunately, the City Lights edition I have was translated into English by Michael Hamburger, and, after struggling through the French, immediately following I was better able to appreciate the grace of Hamburger’s translation, and better understand the text.

Multitude, solitude: terms that, to the active and fruitful poet, are synonymous and interchangeable. A Man who cannot people his solitude is no less incapable of being alone in a busy crowd.

from “Crowds” (“Les foules“)

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