Robert Hass & Roger Zelazny

[Erick Wujcik]

Today's local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, featured a nice update on the poet, Robert Hass, which you can find on-line here:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/31/DDHDT2UOH.DTL&type=books

It reminded me of conversations with Roger, and how much he was pleased to hear that we would be publishing one of Hass' poems in Amberzine. The poem, of course, was the one quoted in Prince of Chaos:

...Mandor was seated before a bookcase directly before me, wearing black and white, feet propped on a black Ottoman, a copy of Robert Hass's Praise, which I had given him, in his hand.
   He smiled as he looked up.
   "'Death's hounds feared me,'" he said. "Nice line, that..."

In Amberzine #8, we published the poem, "Child Naming Flowers." We also quoted from elsewhere in the Robert Hass book, as follows:

   We asked the captain what course
of action he proposed to take toward
a beast so large, terrifying, and
unpredictable. He hesitated to
answer, and then said judiciously:
"I think I shall praise it."


It's good that life is good for Hass. I think on that, and miss my friend, gone these twelve years, and think that a perfect supplement for Amber Diceless would have been extrapolated from poems by Robert Hass.

Erick