Funny Frontispiece

by Ernie on 04/02/08 at 10:24 am

I’m back from a long weekend in NYC. I hosted Contemporary Poetry Review parties at the Chelsea Hotel and (the next evening) at the Madison Belvedere. On Saturday I met with my publishers, who had flown in from the west coast on a GulfStream private jet. I also spent some time in the recording studio at Carnegie Hall with Afaa Michael Weaver and the new senior editor of Poetry magazine. Pictures and a video will be available soon. To tide E-Versers over till then, I present the prototype of the frontispiece to a proposed selection of my light verse I might publish with David Yezzi. The lovely and talented Jennifer Mercer inserted my countenance into the frontispiece portrait engraving used for John Milton’s 1645 Poems (both English and Latin, Compos’d at Several Times. London: Ruth Raworth for Humphrey Moseley, 1645). This was the first published portrait of the poet, engraved by William Marshall.
Funny Ernest Hilbert Frontispeice

And here is Mr. Yezzi’s, taken from a Herrick frontispiece (HESPERIDES : or, the Works, both Humane and Divine, of Robert Herrick, London, 1648. Engraved frontispiece also by William Marshall).
David Yezzi funny frontispiece