I received my copy of the chart that Bruno’s niece is looking for on November 10, 1989.
According to an Internet search, Bruno first published the chart in 1938. My copy is in a distinctive, dark blue, cardboard cover. The chart is nattily printed; pulls out from a four part fold, apparently glued to the inside of the back cover. The chart reflects that it was copyrighted in 1933. For something printed in 1938 it was done very professionally.
Entitled “Comparative Analytical Chart of the Forms of Poetry”, it catalogues 50 forms of poetry beginning with “Alcaic Stanza – Ode” and ending with “Villanelle”. Before the time of Excel spreadsheets it showed 12 different columns, completed with precision, describing various characteristics of each style.
More detail will be provided about the chart in later posts. Accompanying my copy was a handwritten letter from Bruno. It reads:
__________________
11-9-89
Dear Ray,
The poetry chart is sent under separate cover along with this, which is being written this a.m. (5:30!) — to give an example of my varying sleeping hours lately. An impromptu envelope for the chart was rigged from a larger last night and prepared last night for early mailing, but I thought something should be said that it was put together at a time when information on each “form” was available by hunting up separate volumes on versification not easily available. The Japanese “haiku” then was known (slighter) by the term used in the chart “hokku”. The dictionary carries both terms now. I think the Second World War poets who went to the Pacific, or writers who visited Japan later, were responsible for the change — to break from “tradition”.
The chart has been praised by two Pulitzer Prize Poets and used in NY University of Adults Study Catalog as a useful aid, and the South Carolina College for Women (Winthrop College) adopted it for several years. I do have numerous authorities who praised it highly.
Anyway, if you need help later on, let me know.
Bruno
PS — Avoided using the typewriter because of the early hours and there’s a baby downstairs from me.
________________
I trust you are beginning to see why this gentleman fascinates me and I must discover him and what drove him to the places he visited- and how he thought.
