I'm forwarding this with PQ's permission. There's also a lengthy obit in today's (Friday's) NY Times. SP At 12:00 AM -0500 1/7/05, Automatic digest processor wrote: >Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2005 21:34:41 -0800 >From: Peter Quartermain <[log in to unmask]> >Subject: Guy Davenport. > >5 January 2005 > >I go to the bookshelf, take down Flowers & Leaves, that striking and alas so >little-known long poem so elegantly published back in 1966 by Jonathan >Williams, Guy's lifelong friend. And drew the sorts: my hand flips back and >forth, I do not watch, and the motion stops, my thumb at page 110. > > "The cat of Pierre Loti. _Hippolyte on l'appelle_. > A sardine of paleological silver the great artist > Gave him when he sat for his portrait, aromatic > And with the _soupcon_ of _huile d'olive_ about it, > As was proper, whose family reached back > To Nilotic tax collectors in porcelan wigs, > To the bee gums of Beersheba, Akkadian hotels, > (A cousin removed was friend to Mr Smart the poet); > Leo Alektor kept the high gates at Mycenae, > Quite Hebraic, the family tree, rich in detail. > But we are companion to Monsieur Loti.." > >Yes. His love for cats. His restless curious and so astonishingly generous >and open mind, its passionate delights. "Guy Davenport went round in a dream >the day he learned the Greek alphabet," he told me in 1979. That dream never >faded, any more than will he in my remembrance and delight. The debt - my >debt - is enormous. Our debt, I should say. > >He read, thought, remembered. He remembered _everything. And cared, >profoundly. > >Oh damn! damn! damn! the loss. What else is there to say. > >Peter > >======================================= >"Nothing is so helpless as the liberal spirit >face to face with fundamentalism." >Guy Davenport, on Osip Mandelstam > ======================================= >Peter Quartermain >846 Keefer Street >Vancouver B.C. >Canada V6A 1Y7 > >voice 604 255 8274 >fax 604 255 8204 >[log in to unmask] >=====================================