Home > Literature & literary studies > Poetry > Portrait Before Dark
24%
Portrait Before Dark

Portrait Before Dark

          
5
4
3
2
1

International Edition


Premium quality
Premium quality
Bookswagon upholds the quality by delivering untarnished books. Quality, services and satisfaction are everything for us!
Easy Return
Easy return
Not satisfied with this product! Keep it in original condition and packaging to avail easy return policy.
Certified product
Certified product
First impression is the last impression! Address the book’s certification page, ISBN, publisher’s name, copyright page and print quality.
Secure Checkout
Secure checkout
Security at its finest! Login, browse, purchase and pay, every step is safe and secured.
Money back guarantee
Money-back guarantee:
It’s all about customers! For any kind of bad experience with the product, get your actual amount back after returning the product.
On time delivery
On-time delivery
At your doorstep on time! Get this book delivered without any delay.
Quantity:
Add to Wishlist

About the Book

Portrait Before Dark is a poem cycle that constitutes an imaginary dialogue between the poet and patron of the arts, Edward James, and the eccentric Viennese ballerina and star of the 1920's, Tilly Losch.


Liana Sakelliou began writing these poems in August 2009, when she was serving as writer-in-residence at West Dean College in West Sussex, England. Three days before she was to leave for the U.K., a wildfire surrounded her home and neighborhood. In minutes the pine forest and hillside olive groves were lost. For days, the suitcase and the clothes she'd packed smelled of smoke.


Edward James, the Anglo-American millionaire, gave his estate to a charitable trust, the Edward James Foundation, which includes the mansion, West Dean House, where the college is located. She sat on the satin Mae West Lips Sofa, one of Salvadore Dalí's surrealist sculptures and read James's poems. Through the biographical films that were screened at West Dean, she discovered James's friendships with artists such as Leonora Carrington, Dalí, and René Magritte, and with writers such as Christopher Isherwood, Edith Sitwell, and Evelyn Waugh. He seemed to know everyone from his era. He spoke to Freud, knew members of the Bloomsbury group, and was one of the most generous English patrons of the arts in the early 20th Century. He helped Max Ernst and Dylan Thomas, as well as the aforementioned artists. In 1933, during his marriage to Losch, James funded Balanchine's first ballet company, Les Ballets 1933, which was the foundation for his American Ballet Company. He commissioned The Seven Deadly Sins, a collaboration by Kurt Weil and Bertolt Brecht, featuring Losch as prima ballerina and Lotte Lenya as vocal soloist. Their marriage from 1930 to 1934 was short and disastrous, and their divorce was a scandal in London society. In 1937, Magritte painted two faceless portraits of James: "The Pleasure Principle: Portrait of Edward James" and "Not to be Reproduced," to which Sakelliou refers in her poems.


The setting of West Dean seemed made for children-with topiary birds and spirals, lush flowers, conservatories, and sheep one could pet. Sakelliou saw portraits of the James family, as well as Man Ray and Pavel Tschelitchew photos of Edward and Tilly walking through the palace corridors. She liked their faces, their poses. She wanted to write quiet, allusive poems that speak through their voices. The English woodlands serve as a flexible space for Sakelliou's concerns about the Greece's beautiful and fragile environment and the wildfires that continue to ravage the country every summer combined with her imagining the spaciousness of Edwards's and Losch's love as conflicting emotions burn down their marriage.



Best Sellers



Product Details
  • ISBN-13: 9781955194037
  • Publisher: Saint Julian Press, Inc.
  • Publisher Imprint: Saint Julian Press, Inc.
  • Height: 229 mm
  • No of Pages: 114
  • Spine Width: 7 mm
  • Width: 152 mm
  • ISBN-10: 1955194033
  • Publisher Date: 15 Apr 2022
  • Binding: Paperback
  • Language: English
  • Returnable: Y
  • Weight: 177 gr


Similar Products

How would you rate your experience shopping for books on Bookswagon?

Add Photo
Add Photo

Customer Reviews

REVIEWS           
Click Here To Be The First to Review this Product
Portrait Before Dark
Saint Julian Press, Inc. -
Portrait Before Dark
Writing guidlines
We want to publish your review, so please:
  • keep your review on the product. Review's that defame author's character will be rejected.
  • Keep your review focused on the product.
  • Avoid writing about customer service. contact us instead if you have issue requiring immediate attention.
  • Refrain from mentioning competitors or the specific price you paid for the product.
  • Do not include any personally identifiable information, such as full names.

Portrait Before Dark

Required fields are marked with *

Review Title*
Review
    Add Photo Add up to 6 photos
    Would you recommend this product to a friend?
    Tag this Book
    Read more
    Does your review contain spoilers?
    What type of reader best describes you?
    I agree to the terms & conditions
    You may receive emails regarding this submission. Any emails will include the ability to opt-out of future communications.

    CUSTOMER RATINGS AND REVIEWS AND QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS TERMS OF USE

    These Terms of Use govern your conduct associated with the Customer Ratings and Reviews and/or Questions and Answers service offered by Bookswagon (the "CRR Service").


    By submitting any content to Bookswagon, you guarantee that:
    • You are the sole author and owner of the intellectual property rights in the content;
    • All "moral rights" that you may have in such content have been voluntarily waived by you;
    • All content that you post is accurate;
    • You are at least 13 years old;
    • Use of the content you supply does not violate these Terms of Use and will not cause injury to any person or entity.
    You further agree that you may not submit any content:
    • That is known by you to be false, inaccurate or misleading;
    • That infringes any third party's copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret or other proprietary rights or rights of publicity or privacy;
    • That violates any law, statute, ordinance or regulation (including, but not limited to, those governing, consumer protection, unfair competition, anti-discrimination or false advertising);
    • That is, or may reasonably be considered to be, defamatory, libelous, hateful, racially or religiously biased or offensive, unlawfully threatening or unlawfully harassing to any individual, partnership or corporation;
    • For which you were compensated or granted any consideration by any unapproved third party;
    • That includes any information that references other websites, addresses, email addresses, contact information or phone numbers;
    • That contains any computer viruses, worms or other potentially damaging computer programs or files.
    You agree to indemnify and hold Bookswagon (and its officers, directors, agents, subsidiaries, joint ventures, employees and third-party service providers, including but not limited to Bazaarvoice, Inc.), harmless from all claims, demands, and damages (actual and consequential) of every kind and nature, known and unknown including reasonable attorneys' fees, arising out of a breach of your representations and warranties set forth above, or your violation of any law or the rights of a third party.


    For any content that you submit, you grant Bookswagon a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, transferable right and license to use, copy, modify, delete in its entirety, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from and/or sell, transfer, and/or distribute such content and/or incorporate such content into any form, medium or technology throughout the world without compensation to you. Additionally,  Bookswagon may transfer or share any personal information that you submit with its third-party service providers, including but not limited to Bazaarvoice, Inc. in accordance with  Privacy Policy


    All content that you submit may be used at Bookswagon's sole discretion. Bookswagon reserves the right to change, condense, withhold publication, remove or delete any content on Bookswagon's website that Bookswagon deems, in its sole discretion, to violate the content guidelines or any other provision of these Terms of Use.  Bookswagon does not guarantee that you will have any recourse through Bookswagon to edit or delete any content you have submitted. Ratings and written comments are generally posted within two to four business days. However, Bookswagon reserves the right to remove or to refuse to post any submission to the extent authorized by law. You acknowledge that you, not Bookswagon, are responsible for the contents of your submission. None of the content that you submit shall be subject to any obligation of confidence on the part of Bookswagon, its agents, subsidiaries, affiliates, partners or third party service providers (including but not limited to Bazaarvoice, Inc.)and their respective directors, officers and employees.

    Accept

    New Arrivals



    Inspired by your browsing history


    Your review has been submitted!

    You've already reviewed this product!