"SMOKE FROM THIS ALTAR" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

Winter Winds 68
Let It Snow 69
Then Came Spring 70
Rain 71
Mutation 72
To One Without Faith 73
Rose of Memory 74
Let Me Forget 75
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INTRODUCTION by Kathy L'Amour
The first book Louis purchased for his own library was The Standard Book of British
and American Verse. It was publ
ished in 1932 and much used an
d loved. It is still in our library, now in its second binding. Louis' love of poetry
and the English language was so strong and important in his
life
that it carried him through many dangerous and lonely days. At the time, poetry was
the expression
of Louis' most important thoughts and feelings. It was the first manner in which
he wrote about his life,
his views and the places he had seen. Some
of these poems got publ
ished in various newspapers and magazines, and though he made
only a few dollars from these sales, they gave him the optimism to keep writing.
One of his most encouraging moments came in 1936, when he received a letter from
George Riley Hall, the editor of the
Daily Free-Lance,
about his poem, "Banked Fires," which had just been published in the Daily Oklahoman.
A section of the letter read: ". . . The poem is exquisite. . . . The craftsmanship
shows the master workman. . . . The imagery is all one could ask. The treatment is
skilled. The sentiment one that will appeal to millions. There is one line that is
worthy of the old masters-'The arching of a dream across the years.' A gifted writer
might produce a whole volume and not write a line like that."
Louis returned to the United States in the late nineteen
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thirties, after years at sea. He moved in with his parents on a small farm near
Choctaw, Oklahoma, that Parker, his brother, had bought for them a few
years before. He was thirty years old, and knew that if he was ever going to make
something of himself as a writer he ha
d b
etter get started. He began writing short story after short story but they almost
always were rejected. I think that he must have
felt very tempted to leave again, to go back to the kind of life he had lived before
he settled down and forced himself
to think about his
future. You can feel that wanderlust calling to him in his poems, "I'm a Stranger
Here," "Words From a Wanderer," and "I Sh
all Go Back." He even wrote about putting his old life behind him and facing his