Poetry: A Magazine Of Verse

Clements, James Wiley: Yesterday, or Long Ago - Poems by Wiley Clements, Harwich Port Clock & Rose Press 2004
ISBN: 1-59386-025-0 As New Campbell, Jeanette Sloan

First edition. Limited, numbered & signed edition of 125 copies. Cloth binding, 93 pp. In slipcase. James Wiley Clements, although he would deny it, stands as a remnant of a transitory time in the evolution of our consciousness as a people. This is a man who stood with Douglas MacArthur on the bridge of his flagship at Inchon, Korea, when to be an American was to stand for bravery, strength, and compassion- virtues we seem to have lost sight of now. Born in 1928 and raised by his grandmother on a one-mule farm in rural Alabama, the product of a fundamentalist Christian upbringing, he made the transition into a world larger than any he could have envisioned as a child. It is his (and our) gift that he observed the details of this passage so well and for so long. These poems, his first published book, preserve a perspective both wry and gentle that is almost extinct in American letters. These are immensely appealing poems: sometimes caustic, sometimes pensive, always alive with a vivid undercurrent of humor and compassion. He speaks to the Confederate dead, whose dying world shaped his early days. He speaks to the grace and humility that lives in all of us, urging, in his understated manner, a return to the roots of our national humanity before it withers away entirely. Wiley would say these are the simple poems of a simple man near the end of his days. He'd say he's publishing them because he wants to please a few friends and leave something behind for his grandson to remember him by. Yet, in "Yesterday, or Long Ago" there is a palpable sense of a man bearing witness to his times, appealing to the common denominator that makes us, collectively, the American people. And in this sense, we are all his grandchildren, and we may well be moved by this simple testament of a not-so-simple man. We hear him arguing with us already; "You can't say that. I make no such claims!" And this, of course, is true; Wiley makes no such claims. His poems speak for themselves. About the Author: Born in 1928, James Wiley Clements was raised by his widowed grandmother on a one-mule farm in central Alabama. With only a fourth grade education herself, his grandmother filled many lined tablets with her own poems and taught the little boy to write rhyming verse even before he entered elementary school. He attended a semi-rural high school at the village of Maplesville, Alabama, where his English teacher encouraged him to send poems to Senior Scholastic Magazine, which became his first publishing "credit." When his grandmother died in 1945, Clements was taken in by his uncle Alonzo, a farmer and Nazarene preacher who taught him, among other precepts, "You can't quarrel with a man about what he likes, as long as it's decent." Graduating from high school virtually penniless, he took a competitive examination and won a four-year scholarship to Birmingham-Southern College. He left college before the end of his first year to join the Navy, which sent him to journalism school, and he spent the next 7 years as a journalist and as political affairs assistant in the Pacific. At the outbreak of the Korean war Clements was called to Tokyo, and from thence to Douglas MacArthur's flagship, where he witnessed the first landing in Korea. He mustered out of the Navy in 1952, took his degree from Birmingham Southern in 1954, and eventually entered the nascent HMO business, where he spent his working career. Retiring from his consulting business in 1992, he undertook a study of Japanese language and literature, translating several important Japanese novels little known in the West, two of which had never before been put into English. He also resumed writing poetry in a serious way. In 1999, unhappy with the state of formal verse, Clements recruited two poets, Robert Mezey of Pomona College in Claremont Calif., and Bill Morgan of Illinois State University, to help him create and edit The Susquehanna Quarterly, an online magazine for new traditional poetry. After lapsing in 2003, the magazine was revived in 2004 and continues as one of the most respected poetry journals on the Internet. Clements now lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania with his wife, Deane Ellen. They have a daughter and a grandson living in Urbana, Illinois. Yesterday, or Long Ago is Wiley Clements' first published book of poetry. Signed by Author First Edition As New Cloth 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall Limited and Numbered

Details

Clements, James Wiley: Yesterday, or Long Ago - Poems by Wiley Clements, Harwich Port Clock & Rose Press 2004
ISBN: 1-59386-025-0 As New Campbell, Jeanette Sloan

First edition. Limited, numbered & signed edition of 125 copies. Cloth binding, 93 pp. In slipcase. James Wiley Clements, although he would deny it, stands as a remnant of a transitory time in the evolution of our consciousness as a people. This is a man who stood with Douglas MacArthur on the bridge of his flagship at Inchon, Korea, when to be an American was to stand for bravery, strength, and compassion- virtues we seem to have lost sight of now. Born in 1928 and raised by his grandmother on a one-mule farm in rural Alabama, the product of a fundamentalist Christian upbringing, he made the transition into a world larger than any he could have envisioned as a child. It is his (and our) gift that he observed the details of this passage so well and for so long. These poems, his first published book, preserve a perspective both wry and gentle that is almost extinct in American letters. These are immensely appealing poems: sometimes caustic, sometimes pensive, always alive with a vivid undercurrent of humor and compassion. He speaks to the Confederate dead, whose dying world shaped his early days. He speaks to the grace and humility that lives in all of us, urging, in his understated manner, a return to the roots of our national humanity before it withers away entirely. Wiley would say these are the simple poems of a simple man near the end of his days. He'd say he's publishing them because he wants to please a few friends and leave something behind for his grandson to remember him by. Yet, in "Yesterday, or Long Ago" there is a palpable sense of a man bearing witness to his times, appealing to the common denominator that makes us, collectively, the American people. And in this sense, we are all his grandchildren, and we may well be moved by this simple testament of a not-so-simple man. We hear him arguing with us already; "You can't say that. I make no such claims!" And this, of course, is true; Wiley makes no such claims. His poems speak for themselves. About the Author: Born in 1928, James Wiley Clements was raised by his widowed grandmother on a one-mule farm in central Alabama. With only a fourth grade education herself, his grandmother filled many lined tablets with her own poems and taught the little boy to write rhyming verse even before he entered elementary school. He attended a semi-rural high school at the village of Maplesville, Alabama, where his English teacher encouraged him to send poems to Senior Scholastic Magazine, which became his first publishing "credit." When his grandmother died in 1945, Clements was taken in by his uncle Alonzo, a farmer and Nazarene preacher who taught him, among other precepts, "You can't quarrel with a man about what he likes, as long as it's decent." Graduating from high school virtually penniless, he took a competitive examination and won a four-year scholarship to Birmingham-Southern College. He left college before the end of his first year to join the Navy, which sent him to journalism school, and he spent the next 7 years as a journalist and as political affairs assistant in the Pacific. At the outbreak of the Korean war Clements was called to Tokyo, and from thence to Douglas MacArthur's flagship, where he witnessed the first landing in Korea. He mustered out of the Navy in 1952, took his degree from Birmingham Southern in 1954, and eventually entered the nascent HMO business, where he spent his working career. Retiring from his consulting business in 1992, he undertook a study of Japanese language and literature, translating several important Japanese novels little known in the West, two of which had never before been put into English. He also resumed writing poetry in a serious way. In 1999, unhappy with the state of formal verse, Clements recruited two poets, Robert Mezey of Pomona College in Claremont Calif., and Bill Morgan of Illinois State University, to help him create and edit The Susquehanna Quarterly, an online magazine for new traditional poetry. After lapsing in 2003, the magazine was revived in 2004 and continues as one of the most respected poetry journals on the Internet. Clements now lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania with his wife, Deane Ellen. They have a daughter and a grandson living in Urbana, Illinois. Yesterday, or Long Ago is Wiley Clements' first published book of poetry. Signed by Author First Edition As New Cloth 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall Limited and Numbered

Details

Clements, James Wiley: Yesterday, or Long Ago - Poems by Wiley Clements, Harwich Port Clock & Rose Press 2004
ISBN: 1-59386-025-0 As New Campbell, Jeanette Sloan

First edition. Limited, numbered & signed edition of 125 copies. Cloth binding, 93 pp. In slipcase. James Wiley Clements, although he would deny it, stands as a remnant of a transitory time in the evolution of our consciousness as a people. This is a man who stood with Douglas MacArthur on the bridge of his flagship at Inchon, Korea, when to be an American was to stand for bravery, strength, and compassion- virtues we seem to have lost sight of now. Born in 1928 and raised by his grandmother on a one-mule farm in rural Alabama, the product of a fundamentalist Christian upbringing, he made the transition into a world larger than any he could have envisioned as a child. It is his (and our) gift that he observed the details of this passage so well and for so long. These poems, his first published book, preserve a perspective both wry and gentle that is almost extinct in American letters. These are immensely appealing poems: sometimes caustic, sometimes pensive, always alive with a vivid undercurrent of humor and compassion. He speaks to the Confederate dead, whose dying world shaped his early days. He speaks to the grace and humility that lives in all of us, urging, in his understated manner, a return to the roots of our national humanity before it withers away entirely. Wiley would say these are the simple poems of a simple man near the end of his days. He'd say he's publishing them because he wants to please a few friends and leave something behind for his grandson to remember him by. Yet, in "Yesterday, or Long Ago" there is a palpable sense of a man bearing witness to his times, appealing to the common denominator that makes us, collectively, the American people. And in this sense, we are all his grandchildren, and we may well be moved by this simple testament of a not-so-simple man. We hear him arguing with us already; "You can't say that. I make no such claims!" And this, of course, is true; Wiley makes no such claims. His poems speak for themselves. About the Author: Born in 1928, James Wiley Clements was raised by his widowed grandmother on a one-mule farm in central Alabama. With only a fourth grade education herself, his grandmother filled many lined tablets with her own poems and taught the little boy to write rhyming verse even before he entered elementary school. He attended a semi-rural high school at the village of Maplesville, Alabama, where his English teacher encouraged him to send poems to Senior Scholastic Magazine, which became his first publishing "credit." When his grandmother died in 1945, Clements was taken in by his uncle Alonzo, a farmer and Nazarene preacher who taught him, among other precepts, "You can't quarrel with a man about what he likes, as long as it's decent." Graduating from high school virtually penniless, he took a competitive examination and won a four-year scholarship to Birmingham-Southern College. He left college before the end of his first year to join the Navy, which sent him to journalism school, and he spent the next 7 years as a journalist and as political affairs assistant in the Pacific. At the outbreak of the Korean war Clements was called to Tokyo, and from thence to Douglas MacArthur's flagship, where he witnessed the first landing in Korea. He mustered out of the Navy in 1952, took his degree from Birmingham Southern in 1954, and eventually entered the nascent HMO business, where he spent his working career. Retiring from his consulting business in 1992, he undertook a study of Japanese language and literature, translating several important Japanese novels little known in the West, two of which had never before been put into English. He also resumed writing poetry in a serious way. In 1999, unhappy with the state of formal verse, Clements recruited two poets, Robert Mezey of Pomona College in Claremont Calif., and Bill Morgan of Illinois State University, to help him create and edit The Susquehanna Quarterly, an online magazine for new traditional poetry. After lapsing in 2003, the magazine was revived in 2004 and continues as one of the most respected poetry journals on the Internet. Clements now lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania with his wife, Deane Ellen. They have a daughter and a grandson living in Urbana, Illinois. Yesterday, or Long Ago is Wiley Clements' first published book of poetry. Signed by Author First Edition As New Cloth 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall Limited and Numbered

Details

Clements, James Wiley: Yesterday, or Long Ago - Poems by Wiley Clements, Harwich Port Clock & Rose Press 2004
ISBN: 1-59386-024-2 As New Campbell, Jeanette Sloan

First trade edition, preceded by a limited, numbered & signed edition of 125 copies. Cloth binding, 93 pp. James Wiley Clements, although he would deny it, stands as a remnant of a transitory time in the evolution of our consciousness as a people. This is a man who stood with Douglas MacArthur on the bridge of his flagship at Inchon, Korea, when to be an American was to stand for bravery, strength, and compassion- virtues we seem to have lost sight of now. Born in 1928 and raised by his grandmother on a one-mule farm in rural Alabama, the product of a fundamentalist Christian upbringing, he made the transition into a world larger than any he could have envisioned as a child. It is his (and our) gift that he observed the details of this passage so well and for so long. These poems, his first published book, preserve a perspective both wry and gentle that is almost extinct in American letters. These are immensely appealing poems: sometimes caustic, sometimes pensive, always alive with a vivid undercurrent of humor and compassion. He speaks to the Confederate dead, whose dying world shaped his early days. He speaks to the grace and humility that lives in all of us, urging, in his understated manner, a return to the roots of our national humanity before it withers away entirely. Wiley would say these are the simple poems of a simple man near the end of his days. He'd say he's publishing them because he wants to please a few friends and leave something behind for his grandson to remember him by. Yet, in "Yesterday, or Long Ago" there is a palpable sense of a man bearing witness to his times, appealing to the common denominator that makes us, collectively, the American people. And in this sense, we are all his grandchildren, and we may well be moved by this simple testament of a not-so-simple man. We hear him arguing with us already; "You can't say that. I make no such claims!" And this, of course, is true; Wiley makes no such claims. His poems speak for themselves. About the Author: Born in 1928, James Wiley Clements was raised by his widowed grandmother on a one-mule farm in central Alabama. With only a fourth grade education herself, his grandmother filled many lined tablets with her own poems and taught the little boy to write rhyming verse even before he entered elementary school. He attended a semi-rural high school at the village of Maplesville, Alabama, where his English teacher encouraged him to send poems to Senior Scholastic Magazine, which became his first publishing "credit." When his grandmother died in 1945, Clements was taken in by his uncle Alonzo, a farmer and Nazarene preacher who taught him, among other precepts, "You can't quarrel with a man about what he likes, as long as it's decent." Graduating from high school virtually penniless, he took a competitive examination and won a four-year scholarship to Birmingham-Southern College. He left college before the end of his first year to join the Navy, which sent him to journalism school, and he spent the next 7 years as a journalist and as political affairs assistant in the Pacific. At the outbreak of the Korean war Clements was called to Tokyo, and from thence to Douglas MacArthur's flagship, where he witnessed the first landing in Korea. He mustered out of the Navy in 1952, took his degree from Birmingham Southern in 1954, and eventually entered the nascent HMO business, where he spent his working career. Retiring from his consulting business in 1992, he undertook a study of Japanese language and literature, translating several important Japanese novels little known in the West, two of which had never before been put into English. He also resumed writing poetry in a serious way. In 1999, unhappy with the state of formal verse, Clements recruited two poets, Robert Mezey of Pomona College in Claremont Calif., and Bill Morgan of Illinois State University, to help him create and edit The Susquehanna Quarterly, an online magazine for new traditional poetry. After lapsing in 2003, the magazine was revived in 2004 and continues as one of the most respected poetry journals on the Internet. Clements now lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania with his wife, Deane Ellen. They have a daughter and a grandson living in Urbana, Illinois. Yesterday, or Long Ago is Wiley Clements' first published book of poetry. First Edition As New Cloth 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall

Details