Online bookgroup

[Peggy]

Dead or alive, time travel acceptable and select a guest list/menu/venue for a tea party:

Mine would feature Stevie Smith (just because she's wonderful), Byron (to see what all the fuss was about), Marjorie Fleming (because her chat would carry the thing), Sylvia Plath (out of curiosity but she may be hard work), T S Eliot (for the high brow bits), Ivor Cutler (for the sing song), Emily Dickinson (because she didn't get invited to much, but probably wouldn't come anyway, poor lamb), Seamus Heaney (because could you not listen to him all day?)

venue: an over run country garden with a gremophone turning gently in a corner.

Beverage: tea (darjeeling and earl grey), Hendricks gin and tonic with cucumber, irn bru (just to see what they'd all make it) (though it's probably got nothing on good old-fashioned pop - SP), milkshakes for Pet Marjorie. Bushmills 12 year old malt (for SH)

eats: i demand a proper cake stand, piled with dainties such as scones with cream and jam, a chocolate cake, crustless sandwiches, ben & jerrys in little glass bowls, and jelly (ED's face!)

[Lilias]

can we have security at this party?

Because it's Ben Jonson for my money, any day. Obsession. But we'd need a despicable alehouse brawl to get him back from the dead. (And what a pain in the neck the man would have been in real life..)

Though I'm sure I read there was once an unpleasant incident once involving Emily D and some industrial-size pickle jars and a litter of kittens while everyone was out at church. I'm just saying. She could be big trouble too. Jelly might fly.

[Ryan]

Hmmm, I am always the worst at these kind of questions BUT, I would really have loved to have seen Robert Creely and Richard Brautigan together. I reckon Creely would have enjoyed seeing William Carlos Williams and Alan Ginsberg, who both reassured him that 'you can write directly from that which you feel'. I think I'd let Richard cook and I feel like there would be a lot of plums, red wine, and smoke.

Of course, Creely and Brautigan did like to spend time together and I would have loved to have been there. Keith Abbott, a friend of Brautigan, told this anecdote in "Downstream From Trout Fishing in America" (Santa Barbara: Capra Press, 1989). In this memoir Abbott recalls a dinner party at Brautigan's Bolinas residence in the early 1970s at which the poet Robert Creeley was a guest.

"Just before dinner was served, Richard made a big show of putting on a Grateful Dead record. He said that he had been saving the record as a surprise for Creeley. Bob nodded his thanks. When the first cut started Creeley brought his head up abruptly "This is my favourite cut on that record" he announced. Richard beamed happily. As Creeley listened to the song Richard told a story of all the obstacles that he had encountered during the day in his attempt to find this particular record for Bob. Content that he had made Creeley happy, Richard went back to the kitchen to attend to dinner. When the song was over, Creeley got up, went over to the stereo and, trying to play the cut again, raked the needle across the record, ruining it. "Uh-oh" he said. Then he went back to the couch and resumed his discussion. At the sound of the record's being ruined, Richard came rushing out of the kitchen and stood there, watching the whole 'uh-oh' performance by Creeley. Going over to the stereo he brought out a second copy of the album from the stack alongside it. In his own funny , precise way, Richard congratulated himself. "I'm, ready for Bob this time" he boasted. Then he went on to relate how Creeley had wrecked the very same album on a previous visit."

Apparently, someone out in internet land wondered which album it was that Brautigan played and which song was Creeley's "favourite cut". Apparently he wrote to Robert Creeley online and within days got a generous and friendly reply: (this is about 3 years prior to Creely's death). Here is what Creely wrote:

"That was one drunken evening, like they say -- of probably all too many. Richard knew my failings, call them, and so had backed up the record he expected me witlessly to scratch with another, which I seem then to have x'd as well. Ah eagerness -- and drink. We were neighbors at that time in Bolinas, with him just down the road from us headed into town.

Anyhow the terrific song, as I remember at least, is Robert Hunter's "Ripple" and one of my prized possessions is Robert Hunter's collected lyrics, A Box of Rain, which he generously sent me some years after. Anyhow I love that echoing "Ripple in still water..."

Best to you,
Robert Creeley

(Thanks to John Low for plucking up the courage to write to Creely and for posting this online!)