Condition:
Edith Sitwell - Reading Her Poems
33 1/3 rpm microgroove LP.
Caedmon Records TC 1016. Recorded in NYC in 1955
Record is VG + surface wear
Cover is VG+ (See pic)
1955 Caedmon LP Poetry
Tracklisting:
A1 The Wind's Bastinado
A2 Trio For Two Cats And A Trombone
A3 Said King Pompey
A4 Spinning Song
A5 Green Flows The River Of Lethe-O
A6 Serenade: Any Man To Any Woman
A7 Tattered Serenade: Beggar To Shadow, II
A8 Street Song
A9 An Old Woman
A10 The Youth With The Red Gold Hair
A11 A Sylph's Song
A12 Most Lovely Shade
A13 The Queen Of Scotland's Reply To A Reproof From John Knox
A14 Who Shall Have My Fair Lady?
B1 The Bee Oracles, 1. The Bee Keeper
B2 Dido's Song
B3 The Canticle Of The Rose
B4 The Gardener's And Astronomer's
B5 Sailor, What Of The Isles?
B6 Song Of Queen Anne Boleyn; At Cockcrow
B7 Where Is All The Bright Company Gone?
Poetry
Sitwell published her first poem The Drowned Suns in the Daily Mirror in 1913 and, between 1916 and 1921, she edited Wheels, an annual poetic anthology compiled with her brothers—a literary collaboration generally called "the Sitwells".
In 1929 she published Gold Coast Customs, a poem about the artificiality of human behaviour and the barbarism that lies beneath the surface. The poem was written in the rhythms of the tom-tom and of jazz, and shows considerable technical skill. Her early work reflects the strong influence of the French symbolists.
She became a proponent and supporter of innovative trends in English poetry and opposed what she considered the conventionality of many contemporary backward-looking poets. Her flat became a meeting place for young writers whom she wished to befriend and help: these later included Dylan Thomas and Denton Welch. She also helped to publish the poetry of Wilfred Owen after his death.
Her only novel, I Live under a Black Sun, based on the life of Jonathan Swift, was published in 1937.
Publicity and controversy
Sitwell had angular features resembling Queen Elizabeth I (they also shared the same birthday) and stood 6' (183 cm) tall, but often dressed in an unusual manner with gowns of brocade or velvet with gold turbans and a plethora of rings - her jewelry may be seen in the jewelry galleries of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Her unusual appearance provoked critics almost as much as her verse, and throughout her life she was the subject of more or less virulent personal attacks from Geoffrey Grigson, F. R. Leavis and others, which she returned with vigour. As she lay dying, the critic Julian Symons published the last of these attacks in The London Magazine of November 1964, accusing her of 'wearing other people's bleeding hearts on her own safe sleeve.' Her 'enemies' were treated with scorn; after Noel Coward wrote a skit on Sitwell and her two brothers as The Swiss Family Whittlebot for his 1923 revue London Calling! she refused to speak to him until they were reconciled after her triumphant 70th birthday party at London's Festival Hall. To her friends she showed great sweetness and invariable kindness.
Sitwell was most interested by the distinction between poetry and music, a matter explored in Façade (1922), which was set to music by William Walton, a series of abstract poems the rhythms of which counterfeited those of music. Façade was performed behind a curtain with a hole in the mouth of a painted face and the words were recited through the hole with the aid of a megaphone. The public received the first performance with bemusement, but there were many positive reactions.
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