Poem - pages 97 - 99
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Let me introduce myself. I am Claudia Samperi-Warren, the daughter of the american Poet Frank Samperi. This blog will be in honor of my father's life as a poet.
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A letter to Frank from Will Petersen, 1967
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Hi Claudia Samperi-Warren --
ReplyDeleteI love reading F. Samperi's poetry. Am I correct that this poem here from Caterpillar was not otherwise published in one of your father's books?
And may I ask another bibliographic question? I have just bought, and happily, a copy of Day, published in 1998 by the estate, with illustrations by . . . (of course you know!) you. A very nice little collection. I don't recognize the poems in the book as having been previously published in one of your father's many books (I am fortunate to have most).
Are the poems in Day previously unpublished? Are they from a particular period of time? Thanks in advance for any information you might be able to provide.
Hello Steven,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your post.I believe you are correct about the poem in Caterpillar as not being published in any of my father's books.
You are correct on Day - I found it as one of my father's hand written manuscripts and thought the paintings would work well with the poems. It was never published anywhere before.
I will include it on the blog as I think it is one of the many gems of my father's unpublished works.
Are you a poet as well? Claudia
Thanks Claudia, for the comment-response.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a poet I don't think, and surely not one compared to what I really do with poetry, which is read (and read and read) it!
I write about some of what I read on a blog called "the glade of ornithic theoric hermetica"(that's a line from a poem).
I thank poet Joseph Massey for pointing me to your father's poetry. There's a four line poem titled "After Frank Samperi" in his book Areas of Fog. He has also mentioned Samperi, the importance of the work, elsewhere. So I went out and started reading, and am fortunate also to have been able to buy many Samperi books. I intend sooner or later to post something on my blog about what I especially love in your father's poetry.
Needless to say, I greatly enjoy your posts here.
There are lots of great poems in Day. Two of my favorites are:
Flame
poised
mathematically
correct
+++
if
you
don't
have
time
then
levitate
Hi Steven,
ReplyDeleteYour words were of much inspiration and so I posted some more of Day. In looking around I found one copy of Morning & Evening by Frank Samperi and Will Petersen. So beautiful! My father signed it in 1967 for his Aunts who took care of him as a child as he was an orphan. The words and the stone prints are beautifully matched. Thank you for your passion for my father.
Yes, Claudia, your are right: the over-sized Morning & Evening (1967) is quite something. While the text (the poetry) can be read in The Prefiguration (Mushinsha Grossman, 1971), the work really comes to life with the handwritten presentation and prints in the 1967 edition.
ReplyDeleteThat 1967 Morning & Evening was a very limited edition (50 copies, all signed by your father and Petersen, presented via loose leaves in a portfolio). That publication is exceedingly scarce today. WorldCat shows only nine copies in libraries, and copies of it almost never show up on the used book websites.
As you may also know, a greatly reduced sized facsimile of the 1967 handwritten / stoneprint version of Morning & Evening was published in an early issue of the Clayton Eshleman edited magazine Caterpillar.