No Time for Roses
di Michael G.R. Tolkien
Poetry Salzburg, 2009, pp. 80
Firmato dall’autore
Brossura
Raccolte di poesie di Michael G.R.
Tolkien, figlio di Michael H.R. e nipote di J.R.R. Tolkien, autografato.
Michael George Reuel Tolkien,
docente, scrittore e poeta è nato a Birmingham l’11 gennaio 1943, da Joan
Griffiths e Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien, secondogenito del professor
J.R.R.Tolkien. Michael G.R. è il primo nipote dell’autore del Signore degli Anelli e, tra nonno e
nipote, vi è stato un rapporto speciale così emerge dalla corposa
corrispondenza tra i due fino al 1973 e che è possibile leggere nel volume di
Christina Scull e Wayne G. Hammond The
J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology (HarperCollins)
così come nelle Lettere curato da Humphrey Carpenter (Bompiani) – e dai
racconti dello stesso Michael G.R.
I ricordi del nonno, si posso
leggere qui:
based on a public talk* requested by The Leicester Writers' Club at College
of Adult Education, Wellington Street - October 19th, 1995.
This essay took shape from two linked occasions:
1.) A talk and discussion in ‘an evening of fantasy’ shared with the
novelist Graham Joyce at the Leicester Adult Education College: 21st Oct.,1997.
2.) A lecture on Tolkien’s Fantasy given at the Swanwick 50th Writers’
Summer School in Derbyshire: 11th Aug.,1998.
Address given to The Tolkien Society at the A.G.M. dinner - Birmingham.
April, 1998.
Themes and emphases in JRR Tolkien’s Essay on Fairy Stories related to Michael
Tolkien’s tale, Rainbow.
Lecture given at The Tolkien Society’s Return of the Ring Celebration: Loughborough
University: August 2012 (Uncut version with appendices
Questo libro va a unirsi agli
altri libri appartenuti e firmati da M.G.R: The
Gay Galliard di Margaret Irwin, The Winter’s Tale di William
Shakespeare e ai suoi libri di poesia Exposures e Outstripping Gravity.
Libri che trovano posto nella mia
biblioteca accanto ad altri appartenuti e firmati da membri della famiglia
Tolkien: a Tolkien padre (lettere del 1926,
e 1973,
e una lettera con libro del 1970),
ai figli Michael H.R. (Le
avventure di Tom Bombadil, Leo
VI’s Concept of Divine Monarchy.
Illustrated
in a Cave Chapel, e A
History of the Greek World 323-146 B.C.) Priscilla (The
Garden di Sackville-West) e John F.R. (The
Church in the Christian Roman Empire, 2 voll.) e un segnalibro che
la sorella di Michael G.R., regala a suo padre M.H.R. nel 1962.
Dal sito dell'autore
The first three parts of No Time for Roses explore various kinds of illusion
in our formative experience and in our emotional, artistic and spiritual lives.
The final part celebrates the power of love and mature perspectives over
negative influences such as the loss of circumstances, objects and people we
are attached to.
Acknowledgements
Some of these poems appeared in Ambit and in annual editions of Behind
the Scenes Workshops, a Leicestershire Literature Development project.
"Elegy at Pantasaph" won second prize in the Bedford Open Poetry
Competition 2007 and featured in The Interpreter's House 37. The author owes
much to members of Inky Fish with whom he has workshopped countless poems since
1994, and in particular to Robert Hamberger and Pam Thompson. Their detailed
reading of this collection provided crucial perspectives for its structure,
content and text. Thanks are due also to Gordon Braddy. His perception rescued
several poems from being laboured or obscure. And the personal and professional
support of Darin Jewell (Inspira Group Literary Agency) has been indispensable.
Epigraph
'...He sulks, snorts, preaches new art forms...But there's enough space
for all, new and old: why do we have to wrestle?'
(Chekov: The Seagull, act iii)
'It may come to the notice of posterity...
that this our age ran wild in
the quest for new ways to be new.'
(Robert Frost: Introduction to King Jasper, poems of E.A. Robinson,
1935.)
NO TIME FOR ROSES
...I'd celebrate the roses of Paestum that flower twice a year...
(Virgil: Georgics IV: 119)
...he made for the rose-gardens of sunny Paestum... (Ovid: Metam. XV:
708)
For Ruth, recalling a visit to Castle Howard in 1991
July’s claws fix us. Needing a change
from burnt skin and sandy crotches,
we join a glinting cavalcade that rolls
over switchbacks towards the Great House,
once founded on trade, now buttressed
by trusts to open as a drive-in shrine.
Is this where
gardens of roses
burst their buds
twice a year.
Obelisk raised to a wily duke’s campaigns
and the founder’s glorious heritage
parts the straight road. We give way
at gatehouse arches, inhaling velour
and plastic as the ‘noble prospect’ towers
and expands in a haze of heat and fumes.
Cars graze a flattened paddock. We sweat
in a blazing queue of leisure wear
towards sash-windowed livery stables.
Turnstiles crank us in. Grounds Only
for me and my youngest. I’d sag with facts.
She loves space and nosing into flowers.
Not timed past ropes and arrows, pilfered
art, red rooms of state,
glass-locked porcelain,
we cross manicured gravel where lord-
and-lady peacocks pick at their demesne.
Ranked limes drench us with shade.
We bathe under canopies of bees and leaves.
Scampering after birds my child leads me
to uncut grass hedged by lopped
yews,
dances with butterflies, splashing her summer
stripes round a plinth and urn. I read
HERE A VIRGIL THERE AN OVID
REMEMBER THE ROSES OF PÆSTUM.
Here too a lost son of the house
is mourned and I read from his crumbled
tribute, darkening our talk as we pass
through a thick grove of laurels. Deep
in their shade sculptures pale as new
mushrooms, writhe and leer in twisted postures.
There spreads the south front’s ochre mask.
Its fifty steps once fell to four-season
gardens, patterned like a Persian carpet.
Round the Palladian gable triumphal
chariots, banners, plumed helmets moulder
behind moss and scaffold taped red for danger.
Where are the
gardens of roses
that burst their
buds again?
(pp. 76-77)
