My Annotated Edition of Sorley, the Lost WWI Poet

The revised second edition of the poetry of Charles Hamilton Sorley is now available from Poet's Press/Yogh & Thorn Books. Robert Graves called Sorley one of the three best poets killed in World War I. Shot by a German sniper in the Battle of Loos, Charles Sorley died at age 20, leaving behind enough poems for a slender volume published by his father in 1915: Marlborough and Other Poems. Several of Sorley's poems have been featured in countless war anthologies, but the poet's complete work was kept in print only until 1932. There was a reprint sometime in the 1980s and then Sorley seems to have been forgotten again. Sorley's nature poems, inspired by English naturalist Richard Jefferies (the British Thoreau), depict the haunted landscape of the Wiltshire Downs, from the days of Roman-occupied Britain to Sorley's own time.
As a student at Cambridge, young Sorley was steeped in the classics; he then traveled to Germany to study and was in school there when the War broke out. He was arrested and sent home by the German government, and within days of returning to England, Sorley enlisted. The last set of his poems, written in the battlefield, contain both stark soundings of death, but also a kernel of wisdom and tolerance, as when he addresses a poem to the Germans he cannot bring himself to hate.
Perhaps the most poignant poem is one he sent home retelling a key scene from Homer's Odyssey and then assuring his friend that he, too, ten years hence, would be telling his own war stories by the fire. Three months later, Sorley was dead. His last poem, a blistering war sonnet, was sent home to his father in his kit. Sorley's body was never found.
This volume includes passages from letters, selected by Sorley's father as illustrative of the themes of the poems in the book. To make this volume more accessible to today's readers (and to students), I have annotated both the poems and the letters, making clear the numerous classical and Biblical allusion that would have been well-known to Sorley's contemporaries. Some 1903 photos of the Wiltshire landscape have also been added, taken from an edition of Jefferies nature writing.
The book was completely re-typeset from the 1932 edition, using typefaces from the World War I era. The book also includes an annotated checklist of the critical reception of Sorley's work from 1915 through 1973, by Larry Uffelman; a biographical sketch of the poet written by his mother for the 1919 Letters of Charles Sorley; additional letters; and juvenilia. This second edition has a longer introduction, covering biographical and scholarly sources about Sorley that were not available to me when the first edition came out in 2010.

To order from Amazon: http://a.co/eoNmWt7

African Americans and the Classics

It has been fashionable for a long time to trash the classics -- the history, prose and poetry of Greece and Rome specifically. Yet the founders of the United States could almost all read Latin, and many read Greek as well, and they knew Greek and Roman history inside out. From this they learned what democracy is, and how republics rise and fall. There would be no United States had not a group of British Colonials in America fancied themselves as new Athenians and new Romans.
When African captives escaped from slavery, or, later, were freed, they knew that two things were vital to them: literacy, and the vote. Many former slaves craved the very classical knowledge that empowered the white man, and some used the wisdom of the classics in the further argument for their rights. It's more common to imagine these former slaves reading the Bible, but they craved -- and some got -- the education in the classics that white man wanted them not to have.
Finally, there's an important book about this, on a theme that is dear to me -- re-establishing the importance of the classics in American history. My friends who teach American literature or history will want to read this book. Other friends of a classical or historical bent will find it illuminating. Please ask your library to buy it. I'm sorry it's so expensive -- academic titles are criminally priced -- so you might need to have your library get it via interlibrary loan from another library that buys these kinds of books.

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Beverly Sills in "The Turk in Italy"

One of the happiest, happiest nights in the opera house ever was seeing Beverly Sills in Rossini's "The Turk in Italy," a sequel to his "Italian Girl in Algiers." Its empowered heroine defies her husband and makes a fool of an amorous Turkish pasha. This version is in English, in a hysterical translation by Andrew Porter. Jokes, gags and memorable lines abound, such as her aria threatening, "I'll take lovers by the hundreds, yes, a new one every night!" Lines like that you never forget. The work was never recorded, but there was a TV broadcast, and here it is, at last, copied from a VHS tape. Sit yourself down and have a romp with this joyous sex comedy. I wish Fellini had made a film of this opera!

Dvorak's Gloomy Seventh Symphony

The Carnegie Mellon Symphony Orchestra played Dvorak's Symphony No 7 in D Minor. Here is the full concerto from September 17, 2017. These programs are open to the public and are played in the historic Carnegie Music Hall. An outstanding program.

The program opens with the lively Carnival Overture, also by Dvorak, then continued with Chausson's Poeme for Violin and Orchestra. The Seventh Symphony is the second half of the program.

A Polka for Elephants, A Masque for Isabella d'Este

As the Carnegie Melon Wind Ensemble began their concert last night, one elderly audience member got up and fled in consternation at the raucous sounds coming from the stage. It was Stravinsky's "Circus Polka for a Young Elephant," a brief polka that Stravinsky actually composed for a circus. It includes a hysterical quote from Schubert's "March Militaire." The rest of this program shows a large array of CMU's wind and brass students playing some remarkable music. Renaldo Hahn's voluptuous neo-Renaissance piece for an imagined pageant at the court of Isabella d'Este; a lark for trumpet and trombone with full band; and a gorgeous rhapsody for solo flute and large band. CMU streams live from their concerts and here is the whole thing. This is a great demonstration of how vibrant the literature is for wind and brass bands, and how great these students are. The performance begins about 1:40 in, and after the intentionally honking and barking elephant music passes, it is smooth sailing. Enjoy! And remember, if you move to Pittsburgh, all this can be yours, for free!