The Object of an Affair and other poems

Julian SYMONS

ISBN 10: 0902616161 / ISBN 13: 9780902616165

Published by Edinburgh: Tragara Press, 1974

About this Item

Green Batik paper wrappers, printed paper label. Edge of lower cover slightly nicked. Edition limited to 90 numbered copies, of which this is one of 25 on brown Sheepstor handmade paper specially bound and signed by the author. The first of several titles by Julian Symons to come from the Tragara Press, in the same year as the first by his old friend Roy Fuller, An Old War: both authors introduced to Alan Anderson by George Sims, to whom Symons had given an early boost as a bookseller in unleashing him on the collections of his brother A.J.A. Symons. "A fiery elephant he called himself ['Fiery Elephant (B.S. Johnson 1933-1973)']. This creature roared / And stamped, trunk waving, rooting out imaginary / Enemies in the literary undergrowth, / Taking on everybody, Johnson v The World. / And Johnson could take punishment, my, see that elephant / Stop a publisher's rejection, both barrels, and come out / Bellowing with pain. And sorrow. But mostly anger. / Elephant Johnson never took a count. / Nobody chopped him down. / He chopped himself down. // But also but also / Looked for friendship and offered it, / Felt for young people, old people, all misfits, / Liked the companionship of pubs, / Watched Chelsea with eagerness, a South Londoner / ('We live in the North, so my boy Steve / Supports Arsenal, but I m trying / To get him out of it'). The questioning eyes / Asked for something, the clumsy hands / Made inexplicit gestures, but the fiery / Elephant turned them into theories / About not telling lies in his fictions. / Who wants to tell lies in his fictions? / Is what elephants remember the truth? / These are never the problems of art.".

Seller Inventory # 32M100488

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Object of an Affair and other poems
• Publisher: Edinburgh: Tragara Press
• Publication Date: 1974
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0902616161
• ISBN 13: 9780902616165
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)