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kestrellNote that this petition is posted to DreamWidth and cross-posted to LiveJournal.
This was my favorite ReaderCon ever, as you cam read more about in my ReaderCon report
http://kestrell.livejournal.com/517755.html .
One of the highlights was finding a stack of out-of-print Walter de la Mare story collections at the table of Bill Keaveny, proprietor of VanishingBooks.com. He and I had so much fun talking about why we were de la Mare fans that I found myself asking, "Hey, wouldn't it be great to have Walter de la Mare as a ReaderCon Memorial GOH?" to which Bill (and later Liz Hand) agreed.
So this is my official petition to propose Walter de la Mare as a Memorial GOH for a future ReaderCon.
Walter de la Mare
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_de_la_Mare
[Kes: I note that the Wikipedia bibliography of DLM's works is incomplete, refer to the external links I include at the end of this list for more complete bibliographies and databases.]
Walter de la Mare (25 April 1873 – 22 June 1956) was, likemany of the early fantasists, extremely popular in his own lifetime, but has faded somewhat from general discussions of fantasy and supernatural fiction. He remains, however, much anthologized in collections of children's poetry, in anthologies of weird fiction by such notable critics as John Clute and S. T. Joshi, and in discussions by fantasy and horror writers who mention their influences. He is now probably more of a writer's writer, the sort of writer who many writers discover when they trace back the origins of the prose styles and narrative forms which they find most influences their own work.
Like many of his contemporaries such as Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen, de la Mare wrote stories which do not easily fit into a single category of fantasy, science fiction, or horror, but instead include elements of all of these genres. H. P. Lovecraft mentions Walter de la Mare as aninfluence in his foundational text _Supernatural Horror in Literature_, and many other writers mentioned and continue to mention de la Mare as an influence. Yet there remains something unique about de la Mare's prose style, in the way in which he tells a story, for, even when nothing fantastic or supernatural explicitly happens, the reader feels as if she is poised on the threshold of a liminal space, teetering on the edge, and that something uncanny could happen at any moment. Perhaps it is this sense of the ineffable which is woven through all of de la Mare's prose and poetry which continues to draw and fascinate readers of all ages.
1. Fantasy poetry
De la Mare not only wrote his own poetry but also provided useful criticism on his fellow
Georgian poets
http://theotherpages.org/poems/gp2_4.html .
He was a friend of Thomas Hardy ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/profilepages/delamarew1.shtml ),
a legatee of Rupert Brook, and Lord Dunsany wrote a eulogy for de la Mare's funeral. T. S. Eliot and W H Auden would also write about de la Mare, Auden even editing a collection of de la Mare's poetry.
This is a poem I remember from an anthology of children's poetry which I had as a child, and which has always spoken strongly to me about the power of spoken stories. Charles de Lint's character Rosalind in _Memory and Dream_ always makes me think of this poem.
Martha
"Once...Once upon a time..."
Over and over again,
Martha would tell us her stories,
In the hazel glen.
Hers were those clear gray eyes
You watch, and the story seems
Told by their beautifulness
Tranquil as dreams.
She'd sit with her two slim hands
Clasped round her bended knees;
While we on our elbows lolled,
And stared at ease.
Her voice and her narrow chin,
Her grave small lovely head,
Seemed half the meaning
Of the words she said.
"Once...Once upon a time..."
Like a dream you dream in the night,
Fairies and gnomes stole out
In the leaf-green light.
And her beauty far away
Would fade, as her voice ran on,
Till hazel and summer sun
And all were gone:--
All fordone and forgot;
And like clouds in the height of the sky,
Our hearts stood still in the hush
Of an age gone by.
And another poem, this one from
Peacock Pie
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3753/3753.txt
The Song of the Mad Prince
Who said, 'Peacock Pie?'
The old King to the sparrow:
Who said, 'Crops are ripe?'
Rust to the harrow:
Who said, 'Where sleeps she now?'
Where rests she now her head,
Bathed in eve's loveliness'? ---
That's what I said.
Who said, 'Ay, mum's the word'?
Sexton to willow:
Who said, 'Green duck for dreams,
Moss for a pillow'?
Who said, 'All Time's delight
Hath she for narrow bed;
Life's troubled bubble broken'? ---
That's what I said.
More poems can be found at the Walter de la Mare page at the Poetry Foundation Web site
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=1681
2. Liminality
Long before the word liminal became a favorite of literary critics, de la Mare had perfected a style for both his poetry and prose which manages to convey, even when nothing fantastic occurs, a sense of liminal spaces. According to Wikipedia, Joan Aiken cites some of his short stories such as "The Almond Tree" and "Snow Mountains" for their sometimes unexplained quality, which she often conveyed in her own work.
[from Aiken, Joan; in Geoff Fox, Graham Hammond, Terry Jones, Frederic Smith, Kenneth Sterck (eds.) (1976). Writers, Critics, and Children. New York: Agathon
Press. pp. 24]
3. Anthologies of collected poetry, ballads, and folklore
De la Mare not only wrote his own poetry but collected and commented upon other poetry, but perhaps his most magical collection is _Come Hither_ originally published in 1923, but republished in newer editions throughout de la Mare's lifetime. _Come Hither_ also includes fragments from Shakespeare, and various bits of folklore as footnotes to the various poems and prose. This is my favorite anthology of poetry, although it always has much more the feeling of a Book of Shadows than anything so organized and educational as a poetry anthology.
You can read
my review of it for Green Man Review here
http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/book_delamare_comehither.html
4. One of the reasons I love _Come Hither_ is its frame story, which goes way beyond the requirements and restrictions of most frame stories, creating not only an explanation for the book, but a tone, even a sort of atmosphere, in which one can read the book. While de la Mare pragmatically titled this introduction "The Story of This Book," it stands as one of his best and possibly most mysterious short stories, an atmosphere of mystery which it seemsto me quite similar to that of Lord Dunsany's _The King of Elfland's Daughter_, with its refrain of "beyond the fields we know."
You can download and read the intro to _Come Hither_ here (if you have any trouble with the file, e-mail kestrell at livejournal and I can send it to you)
https://download.yousendit.com/dVlxNWNzTkxCSWZIRGc9PQ
5. Horror poetry
I ran across this poem when I was about twelve or so, happily unaware that it is a classic of sorts and, despite having a poor rote memory, many of its haunting lines have remained with me over the years.
The Listeners
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/2.html
Note: Go to the bottom of the page to find T. S. Eliot's poem about de la Mare.
6. Weird fiction
mentioned in Lovecraft's classic literary criticism The _Supernatural Horror in Literature_
http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/superhor.htm
block quote start
Deserving of distinguished notice as a forceful craftsman to whom an unseen mystic world is, ever a close and vital reality is the poet Walter de la Mare,
whose haunting verse and exquisite prose alike bear consistent traces of a strange vision reaching deeply into veiled spheres of beauty and terrible and
forbidden dimensions of being. In
the novel The Return
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3075
we see the soul of a dead man reach out of its grave of two centuries and fasten itself upon the flesh of the living, so that even the face of the victim becomes that which had long ago returned to dust. Of the shorter tales, of which several volumes
exist, many are unforgettable for their command of fear's and sorcery's darkest ramifications; notably
Seaton's Aunt,
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9363
in which there lowers a noxious background of malignant vampirism; The Tree, which tells of a frightful vegetable growth in the yard of a starving artist;
Out of the Deep,
http://www.litgothic.com/Texts/out_of_the_deep.pdf
wherein we are given leave to imagine what thing answered the summons of a dying wastrel in a dark lonely house when he pulled a long-feared bell-cord in the attic of his dread haunted boyhood; A Recluse, which hints at what sent a chance guest flying from a house in the night; Mr. Kempe, which shows us a mad clerical hermit in quest
of the human soul, dwelling in a frightful sea-cliff region beside an archaic abandoned chapel; and All-Hallows, a glimpse of dæmoniac forces besieging
a lonely mediaeval church and miraculously restoring the rotting masonry. De la Mare does not make fear the sole or even the dominant element of most of
his tales, being apparently more interested in the subtleties of character involved. Occasionally he sinks to sheer whimisical phantasy of the Barrie order.
Still he is among the very few to whom unreality is a vivid, living presence; and as such he is able to put into his occasional fear-studies a keen potency
which only a rare master can achieve. His poem The Listeners restores the Gothic shudder to modern verse.
block quote end
"Seaton's Aunt" was included in David Hartwell's classic horror anthology _The Dark Descent_.
John Clute
comments that "in his long career, De la Mare deems to have published about 100 stories, of which about eighty-five have been collected. At least forty
of these have supernatural content". [John Clute, "Walter de la Mare" in E.F. Bleiler, ed, Supernatural Fiction Writers: Fantasy and Horror Vol 1 (Scribners Sons, 1985)]
[Kes: This is a hard to find text but I should have an etext copy in the near future.]
. Many of De la Mare's ghost stories can be found in the collections Eight Tales ]Kes: though these are his earliest stories published and really only for the completist],
The Riddle and Other Stories, The Connoisseur and Other Stories, On the Edge and The Wind Blows Over.
7. Speculative fiction
A number of de la Mare's works are weird even for the genre of weird fiction. The most notable of these works is
_Memoirs of a Midget_ (1921)
http://www.archive.org/stream/memoirsofmidget00dela/memoirsofmidget00dela_djvu.txt
Angela Carter provided an introduction for the 1982 Oxford University Press edition and _Memoirs of a Midget_ has said to have influenced Carter's _Nights at the Circus_. _Memoirs of a Midget_ is often cited in regard to images of disability in fiction, and the character is oddly ambiguous, queer in all senses of the word.
8. other strange writings which are difficult to categorize, such as
BEHOLD THIS DREAMER, 1939
perhaps best described as a prolonged meditation upon dream and sleep.
9. De la Mare fans come to admire his work through a variety of genres, but they're all agreed on how unique and unsettling his prose style is. For more discussion, check out
Jessica Amanda Salmonson's The Weird Review Web site, especially
Walter de la Mare's Ten Best Stories
http://www.violetbooks.com/REVIEWS/rbadac-delamare1.html
10. My last, my best, reason for proposing Walter de la Mare as a ReaderCon Memorial GOH is that, while I previously referred to him as a writer's writer, his poetry and stories continue to draw readers of all ages, even as many of his poetry and story collections seem to be undergoing a revival, if the new publications of the past few years are any clue. Still, the rarity of his physical books and their reissue often by small presses has meant that de la Mare's works have remained sadly out of sight of the general reader of fantastic literature, a situation which, I hope, making de la Mare ReaderCon Memorial GOH would help toward remedying.
External links
Walter de la Mare: A Database
Compiled by Gary William Crawford
This website is an ongoing annotated secondary bibliography of Walter de la Mare
http://delamareaickman.com/wdlm.html
The Official Page of The Walter de la Mare Society
http://www.bluetree.co.uk/wdlmsociety/contents.htm
Another bibliography page from The Authors' Calendar Web site
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/delamare.htm
This was my favorite ReaderCon ever, as you cam read more about in my ReaderCon report
http://kestrell.livejournal.com/517755.html .
One of the highlights was finding a stack of out-of-print Walter de la Mare story collections at the table of Bill Keaveny, proprietor of VanishingBooks.com. He and I had so much fun talking about why we were de la Mare fans that I found myself asking, "Hey, wouldn't it be great to have Walter de la Mare as a ReaderCon Memorial GOH?" to which Bill (and later Liz Hand) agreed.
So this is my official petition to propose Walter de la Mare as a Memorial GOH for a future ReaderCon.
Walter de la Mare
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_de_la_Mare
[Kes: I note that the Wikipedia bibliography of DLM's works is incomplete, refer to the external links I include at the end of this list for more complete bibliographies and databases.]
Walter de la Mare (25 April 1873 – 22 June 1956) was, likemany of the early fantasists, extremely popular in his own lifetime, but has faded somewhat from general discussions of fantasy and supernatural fiction. He remains, however, much anthologized in collections of children's poetry, in anthologies of weird fiction by such notable critics as John Clute and S. T. Joshi, and in discussions by fantasy and horror writers who mention their influences. He is now probably more of a writer's writer, the sort of writer who many writers discover when they trace back the origins of the prose styles and narrative forms which they find most influences their own work.
Like many of his contemporaries such as Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen, de la Mare wrote stories which do not easily fit into a single category of fantasy, science fiction, or horror, but instead include elements of all of these genres. H. P. Lovecraft mentions Walter de la Mare as aninfluence in his foundational text _Supernatural Horror in Literature_, and many other writers mentioned and continue to mention de la Mare as an influence. Yet there remains something unique about de la Mare's prose style, in the way in which he tells a story, for, even when nothing fantastic or supernatural explicitly happens, the reader feels as if she is poised on the threshold of a liminal space, teetering on the edge, and that something uncanny could happen at any moment. Perhaps it is this sense of the ineffable which is woven through all of de la Mare's prose and poetry which continues to draw and fascinate readers of all ages.
1. Fantasy poetry
De la Mare not only wrote his own poetry but also provided useful criticism on his fellow
Georgian poets
http://theotherpages.org/poems/gp2_4.html .
He was a friend of Thomas Hardy ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/profilepages/delamarew1.shtml ),
a legatee of Rupert Brook, and Lord Dunsany wrote a eulogy for de la Mare's funeral. T. S. Eliot and W H Auden would also write about de la Mare, Auden even editing a collection of de la Mare's poetry.
This is a poem I remember from an anthology of children's poetry which I had as a child, and which has always spoken strongly to me about the power of spoken stories. Charles de Lint's character Rosalind in _Memory and Dream_ always makes me think of this poem.
Martha
"Once...Once upon a time..."
Over and over again,
Martha would tell us her stories,
In the hazel glen.
Hers were those clear gray eyes
You watch, and the story seems
Told by their beautifulness
Tranquil as dreams.
She'd sit with her two slim hands
Clasped round her bended knees;
While we on our elbows lolled,
And stared at ease.
Her voice and her narrow chin,
Her grave small lovely head,
Seemed half the meaning
Of the words she said.
"Once...Once upon a time..."
Like a dream you dream in the night,
Fairies and gnomes stole out
In the leaf-green light.
And her beauty far away
Would fade, as her voice ran on,
Till hazel and summer sun
And all were gone:--
All fordone and forgot;
And like clouds in the height of the sky,
Our hearts stood still in the hush
Of an age gone by.
And another poem, this one from
Peacock Pie
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3753/3753.txt
The Song of the Mad Prince
Who said, 'Peacock Pie?'
The old King to the sparrow:
Who said, 'Crops are ripe?'
Rust to the harrow:
Who said, 'Where sleeps she now?'
Where rests she now her head,
Bathed in eve's loveliness'? ---
That's what I said.
Who said, 'Ay, mum's the word'?
Sexton to willow:
Who said, 'Green duck for dreams,
Moss for a pillow'?
Who said, 'All Time's delight
Hath she for narrow bed;
Life's troubled bubble broken'? ---
That's what I said.
More poems can be found at the Walter de la Mare page at the Poetry Foundation Web site
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=1681
2. Liminality
Long before the word liminal became a favorite of literary critics, de la Mare had perfected a style for both his poetry and prose which manages to convey, even when nothing fantastic occurs, a sense of liminal spaces. According to Wikipedia, Joan Aiken cites some of his short stories such as "The Almond Tree" and "Snow Mountains" for their sometimes unexplained quality, which she often conveyed in her own work.
[from Aiken, Joan; in Geoff Fox, Graham Hammond, Terry Jones, Frederic Smith, Kenneth Sterck (eds.) (1976). Writers, Critics, and Children. New York: Agathon
Press. pp. 24]
3. Anthologies of collected poetry, ballads, and folklore
De la Mare not only wrote his own poetry but collected and commented upon other poetry, but perhaps his most magical collection is _Come Hither_ originally published in 1923, but republished in newer editions throughout de la Mare's lifetime. _Come Hither_ also includes fragments from Shakespeare, and various bits of folklore as footnotes to the various poems and prose. This is my favorite anthology of poetry, although it always has much more the feeling of a Book of Shadows than anything so organized and educational as a poetry anthology.
You can read
my review of it for Green Man Review here
http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/book_delamare_comehither.html
4. One of the reasons I love _Come Hither_ is its frame story, which goes way beyond the requirements and restrictions of most frame stories, creating not only an explanation for the book, but a tone, even a sort of atmosphere, in which one can read the book. While de la Mare pragmatically titled this introduction "The Story of This Book," it stands as one of his best and possibly most mysterious short stories, an atmosphere of mystery which it seemsto me quite similar to that of Lord Dunsany's _The King of Elfland's Daughter_, with its refrain of "beyond the fields we know."
You can download and read the intro to _Come Hither_ here (if you have any trouble with the file, e-mail kestrell at livejournal and I can send it to you)
https://download.yousendit.com/dVlxNWNzTkxCSWZIRGc9PQ
5. Horror poetry
I ran across this poem when I was about twelve or so, happily unaware that it is a classic of sorts and, despite having a poor rote memory, many of its haunting lines have remained with me over the years.
The Listeners
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/2.html
Note: Go to the bottom of the page to find T. S. Eliot's poem about de la Mare.
6. Weird fiction
mentioned in Lovecraft's classic literary criticism The _Supernatural Horror in Literature_
http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/superhor.htm
block quote start
Deserving of distinguished notice as a forceful craftsman to whom an unseen mystic world is, ever a close and vital reality is the poet Walter de la Mare,
whose haunting verse and exquisite prose alike bear consistent traces of a strange vision reaching deeply into veiled spheres of beauty and terrible and
forbidden dimensions of being. In
the novel The Return
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3075
we see the soul of a dead man reach out of its grave of two centuries and fasten itself upon the flesh of the living, so that even the face of the victim becomes that which had long ago returned to dust. Of the shorter tales, of which several volumes
exist, many are unforgettable for their command of fear's and sorcery's darkest ramifications; notably
Seaton's Aunt,
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9363
in which there lowers a noxious background of malignant vampirism; The Tree, which tells of a frightful vegetable growth in the yard of a starving artist;
Out of the Deep,
http://www.litgothic.com/Texts/out_of_the_deep.pdf
wherein we are given leave to imagine what thing answered the summons of a dying wastrel in a dark lonely house when he pulled a long-feared bell-cord in the attic of his dread haunted boyhood; A Recluse, which hints at what sent a chance guest flying from a house in the night; Mr. Kempe, which shows us a mad clerical hermit in quest
of the human soul, dwelling in a frightful sea-cliff region beside an archaic abandoned chapel; and All-Hallows, a glimpse of dæmoniac forces besieging
a lonely mediaeval church and miraculously restoring the rotting masonry. De la Mare does not make fear the sole or even the dominant element of most of
his tales, being apparently more interested in the subtleties of character involved. Occasionally he sinks to sheer whimisical phantasy of the Barrie order.
Still he is among the very few to whom unreality is a vivid, living presence; and as such he is able to put into his occasional fear-studies a keen potency
which only a rare master can achieve. His poem The Listeners restores the Gothic shudder to modern verse.
block quote end
"Seaton's Aunt" was included in David Hartwell's classic horror anthology _The Dark Descent_.
John Clute
comments that "in his long career, De la Mare deems to have published about 100 stories, of which about eighty-five have been collected. At least forty
of these have supernatural content". [John Clute, "Walter de la Mare" in E.F. Bleiler, ed, Supernatural Fiction Writers: Fantasy and Horror Vol 1 (Scribners Sons, 1985)]
[Kes: This is a hard to find text but I should have an etext copy in the near future.]
. Many of De la Mare's ghost stories can be found in the collections Eight Tales ]Kes: though these are his earliest stories published and really only for the completist],
The Riddle and Other Stories, The Connoisseur and Other Stories, On the Edge and The Wind Blows Over.
7. Speculative fiction
A number of de la Mare's works are weird even for the genre of weird fiction. The most notable of these works is
_Memoirs of a Midget_ (1921)
http://www.archive.org/stream/memoirsofmidget00dela/memoirsofmidget00dela_djvu.txt
Angela Carter provided an introduction for the 1982 Oxford University Press edition and _Memoirs of a Midget_ has said to have influenced Carter's _Nights at the Circus_. _Memoirs of a Midget_ is often cited in regard to images of disability in fiction, and the character is oddly ambiguous, queer in all senses of the word.
8. other strange writings which are difficult to categorize, such as
BEHOLD THIS DREAMER, 1939
perhaps best described as a prolonged meditation upon dream and sleep.
9. De la Mare fans come to admire his work through a variety of genres, but they're all agreed on how unique and unsettling his prose style is. For more discussion, check out
Jessica Amanda Salmonson's The Weird Review Web site, especially
Walter de la Mare's Ten Best Stories
http://www.violetbooks.com/REVIEWS/rbadac-delamare1.html
10. My last, my best, reason for proposing Walter de la Mare as a ReaderCon Memorial GOH is that, while I previously referred to him as a writer's writer, his poetry and stories continue to draw readers of all ages, even as many of his poetry and story collections seem to be undergoing a revival, if the new publications of the past few years are any clue. Still, the rarity of his physical books and their reissue often by small presses has meant that de la Mare's works have remained sadly out of sight of the general reader of fantastic literature, a situation which, I hope, making de la Mare ReaderCon Memorial GOH would help toward remedying.
External links
Walter de la Mare: A Database
Compiled by Gary William Crawford
This website is an ongoing annotated secondary bibliography of Walter de la Mare
http://delamareaickman.com/wdlm.html
The Official Page of The Walter de la Mare Society
http://www.bluetree.co.uk/wdlmsociety/contents.htm
Another bibliography page from The Authors' Calendar Web site
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/delamare.htm
