In Memory of Paul West

Paul West  1930 - 2015

Paul West, noted novelist, essayist, and poet, passed away peacefully on October 18, 2015 at his home in Ithaca, New York after a long illness. Paul was born in Eckington, Derbyshire in England to Alfred and Mildred (Noden) West. He was a graduate of Oxford University and served in the Royal Air Force. He taught at Penn State University for many years, and was a literary critic for the Washington Post. Paul is survived by his wife Diane Ackerman, a writer, poet, and naturalist. 

In his lifetime Paul was the author of 54 books. The last four of which were published by Onager Editions. He has received awards from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Lannan Prize for Fiction and the Halperin-Kaminsky Prize. He was named a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library and a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Government. He has also been a runner-up for the National Book Circle Award and the Nobel Prize for Literature. 

We are reprinting here one of Paul's poems from his book Tea With Osiris, which was previously published in in this journal in August 2006: 

One summer's day in winter
      when the snow was raining fast, 
      a barefooted boy with clogs on
      stood sitting on the grass.
      He went to the movies that night
      and bought two front seats at the back, 
      ate a big plain cake with currents in, 
      and when he'd eaten it he gave it back.

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blondes, mike foldes

Oops Blonde, painting, Mike Foldes, 1997

i always liked blonde girls. they smelled different. tasted different, too. for some reason blondes and i never hooked up for long. i’m not sure why. maybe it was me. maybe it was their long term goal to cohabit with aristocrats or jocks. or that i was too eager and too shy at once. today i cannot see myself sitting at a kitchen table with a blonde woman next to or across from me, or at the stove making scrambled eggs, though i can and do see a dark-haired, brown-eyed mediterranean doing the same thing, and it feels natural as the day is long. i can also see her in a lot of other rooms, so it’s not like playing patty-cake, patty-cake on the living room floor in front of the zenith tv. it’s neither norman rockwell nor roman polanski. not dick and jane, but a blend of beardsley and parrish, if you know what i mean.

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Mike Foldes is the founder and managing editor of Ragazine, an online literary magazine. He is also the author of "Sleeping Dogs, A true story of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping," and "Sandy: Chronicles of a Superstorm," with artist Christine Devereaux." 
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Mike Foldes' 1997 painting "Oops Blonde" is in the collection of Gabriel Navar, Oakland, Ca.

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