Staring down the verdigris-covered faces of the divine

[sovay]

From the latest letters of the London Review of Books:

Elizabeth Vandiver mentions H.D.'s daughter Perdita (Letters, 2 March). In her memoir The Days of Mars, H.D.'s partner Bryher records that during the Second World War the American academic and OSS official Norman Holmes Pearson 'rescued Perdita from a dreary job in the country to do more interesting work in London'. The 'job in the country' was with the codebreaking operation at Bletchley Park, which Perdita called 'Tapeworm Manor'. In London, Perdita first became Pearson's secretary, then worked for his assistant, James Angleton, in the counter-intelligence unit of OSS. It seems that Perdita's pet name for Angleton was 'Ezra', a reference to Angleton's poetry and to his favourite poet, her mother's one-time lover Ezra Pound. Perdita's letters to 'Kitten' and 'My pets', her collective names for H.D. and Bryher, are at Yale.

The record scratch emitted by my brain on reading this submission was not the intelligence career of Perdita Macpherson, which I have been delighted by for years; it was the presence of Pearson, whose introductions to H.D.'s collected works I have been cordially side-eyeing for decades as he airbrushes as much of the poet's bisexual, non-monogamous life as he can from the picture. If he knew the family, what was his excuse? I need to get my hands on that memoir of Bryher's. I was just recommending her superb and still strange Visa for Avalon (1965) the other night.

I was thinking earlier this afternoon that I can remember having the energy to write long, excited, unimportant e-mails about my life and what it had contained lately, casually to friends and family without devouring all of my concentration and stamina for the rest of the day or the next. It hasn't been true for years. I miss those minimal resources. I am beginning to think that even when my health disintegrated and my entire former life with it, I wasn't in as bad a shape as the world over the last three and a half years has left me. I am enjoying my returned ability to watch and write about movies; it is something I look forward to making the time for. Everything else is like dragging a river for lead.

Comments

[gwynnega]

I didn't know about Perdita's intelligence career, so that is cool--but indeed, what was Pearson's deal?

I remember writing long emails to friends, but it feels as if social media and direct messaging siphoned away much of that impulse--and perhaps the energy for it as well. Which is not the same thing you're talking about, but it's something I have observed in myself and others. I am glad you can watch and write about movies again, and I hope your resources can be replenished.

[sovay]

I didn't know about Perdita's intelligence career, so that is cool--but indeed, what was Pearson's deal?

Right? Now I have to side-eye him with confusion, which I think is just giving me eyestrain.

(Perdita herself does not seem to have left a memoir, although reencountering mention of her nonfiction makes me wonder if anyone ever collected it, which would be cool.)

I remember writing long emails to friends, but it feels as if social media and direct messaging siphoned away much of that impulse--and perhaps the energy for it as well. Which is not the same thing you're talking about, but it's something I have observed in myself and others.

Understood. I used to write on LJ/DW and also just e-mail people and now I don't even write that much on DW! It really feels like my baseline of exhaustion has shifted and, thanks, I hate it.

I am glad you can watch and write about movies again, and I hope your resources can be replenished.

Thank you.

[selkie]

WHY DID EVERYBODY KNOW EVERYBODY
ALSO WHY ARE MEN

My ability to email even you my usual babbling missives of no import has just tanked this year. I think it's not you.

[sovay]

WHY DID EVERYBODY KNOW EVERYBODY
ALSO WHY ARE MEN

I KNOW WHY SOME MEN BUT NOT NORMAN HOLMES PEARSON AT ALL

My ability to email even you my usual babbling missives of no import has just tanked this year. I think it's not you.

*hugs*

I like them whenever they arrive, just so you know.

[selkie]

*hugs*
Thank you. I feel like sometimes they're like fridge poetry, just clicking in little magnetic bits of "leg stupid" and "can't go out; plague" and "aspidistra poisoned" and "MLEHHHHHH."

Also that book is hecka out of print and I didn't know if you had porch pirates along with the Rattus Norvegicus Waste Management Explorers' Union so you will pardon me sending it to your mother's address without appending the proper seasonal offerings &c, we were out of wood sorrel blossoms and apple boughs

[sovay]

I feel like sometimes they're like fridge poetry, just clicking in little magnetic bits of "leg stupid" and "can't go out; plague" and "aspidistra poisoned" and "MLEHHHHHH."

Hey, magnetic fridge poetry has produced some of the great literature of our time.

Also that book is hecka out of print and I didn't know if you had porch pirates along with the Rattus Norvegicus Waste Management Explorers' Union so you will pardon me sending it to your mother's address without appending the proper seasonal offerings &c, we were out of wood sorrel blossoms and apple boughs

Aaaaaaaaaaah!

*hugs*

Thank you. Knock wood, our only difficulty with packages so far has been when the delivery people ring the wrong doorbell, but my mother won't mind.