Ode to the Dodo by Christopher Logue

by Christopher Logue

BRAND NEW FIRST EDITION softcover, Jonathan Cape 1981, clean text, solid binding, NO remainders NOT ex-library slight shelfwear / storage-wear; WE SHIP FAST. Carefully packed and quickly sent. 201601880 Christopher Logue, CBE (23 November 1926 – 2 December 2011) was an English poet associated with the British Poetry Revival and a pacifist. Christopher Logue (1926 - 2011) spent over forty years working on his contemporary version of Homer's Iliad. Begun in 1959 the project expanded into five full-length collections, known collectively as War Music. Born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, Logue was part of a post-war artistic milieu that encompassed friendships with Samuel Beckett and Henry Miller in Paris. As well as his poetry, Logue wrote for the theatre and cinema, including two screenplays one of which, Savage Messiah, was directed by Ken Russell, and he also appeared in front of the camera for the same director as Cardinal Richelieu in The Devils. For many years he contributed to the satirical magazine, Private Eye. The various instalments of War Music have been highly acclaimed, being shortlisted for the 2002 International Griffin Poetry Prize, and winning the Bernard F O'Connor Award from The Paris Review. All Day Permanent Red is the fourth book in the War Music series, but deals with some of the early battle scenes from The Iliad. This non-chronological approach is typical of the freedom Logue allows himself in relation to his source material, changing or omitting episodes and sometimes inventing entirely new scenes. His approach to language is similarly non-literal, mixing traditional imagery with the jarringly modern as in his description of the death of a Greek soldier from an arrow wound that makes "a tunnel the width of a lipstick through Quist's neck." This visceral immediacy is evident in the structure of the verse which is informal and flexible. We recommend selecting Priority Mail wherever available. (No shipping to Mexico, Brazil or Italy.)

Paperback

First published May 7, 1981

About the author

Christopher Logue, CBE was an English poet associated with the British Poetry Revival. He also wrote for the theatre and cinema as well as acting in a number of films. His two screenplays are Savage Messiah and The End of Arthur's Marriage. He was also a long-term contributor to Private Eye magazine, as well as writing for the Merlin literary journal of Alexander Trocchi. He won the 2005 Whitbread Poetry Award for Cold Calls.

His early popularity was marked by the release of a loose adaptation of Pablo Neruda's "Twenty Love Poems", later released as an extended play recording, "Red Bird: Jazz and Poetry", backed by a Jazz group led by Tony Kinsey.

One of his poems, "Be Not Too Hard" was set to music by Donovan Leach, and made popular by Joan Baez, from her 1967 album "Joan". Donovan's version appeared in the film "Poor Cow"(1967).

His major poetical work was an ongoing project to render Homer's Iliad into a modernist idiom. This work is published in a number of small books, usually equating to two or three books of the original text. (The volume entitled Homer: War Music was shortlisted for the 2002 International Griffin Poetry Prize.) He also published an autobiography called Prince Charming (1999).

His lines tend to be short, pithy and frequently political, as in Song of Autobiography:

"I, Christopher Logue, was baptized the year
Many thousands of Englishmen
Fists clenched, their bellies empty,
Walked day and night on the capital city."

He wrote the couplet that is sung at the beginning and end of the 1965 film A High Wind in Jamaica, the screenplay for Savage Messiah (1972), a television version of Antigone (1962), and a short play for the TV series The Wednesday Play titled The End of Arthur's Marriage (1965).

He also appeared in a number of films as an actor, most notably as Cardinal Richelieu in Ken Russell's 1971 film The Devils and as the spaghetti-eating fanatic in Terry Gilliam's 1977 film Jabberwocky.

Logue wrote for the Olympia Press under the pseudonym, Count Palmiro Vicarion, including a pornographic novel, Lust.

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source: wikipedia.org