Remembered America - 20th Anniversary
Published on March 20th, 2024
This month marks the 20th anniversary of Remembered America (Rue Bella, 2004).
Remembered America was published in 2004 by Rue Bella who described the book as: …an uplifting reminder of the transcendent thrill of Beat poetry, mixed with a maturity hard earned by McBride in his long and colourful life
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Essentially two collections in one book, Remembered America is divided into two parts: One Morning in Paradise and Approaching the Year 2012. It is dedicated to his good friend and fellow writer Patricia Gerrard, with whom he shared his life with at the foot of the Malvern Hills in Colwall, Herefordshire.
Dick said that the contrast between the paradise feeling he gets when on the hills and in Colwall, with terrorism since the September 11 attack was a theme of the book
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The writer and poet, Philip Callow, wrote:
I have long admired his energy and his stubbornly hopeful vision against all the odds…I am especially taken with
Grass, its haunting refrain running through what is both an elegy and a rhapsody. In general I am gladdened by writing that can be wild like Ginsberg and is never far from ecstasy.
Looking back, Nigel Bird (editor of Rue Bella) recalled:
Remembered America was our last hurrah. Dick McBride had done the rounds. He'd worked in City Lights and been at the hub of the Beat poetry movement from its birth.
Like the Rue Bella itself, he wasn't one of the biggest fish, but he did have teeth and heart. As much as it was our final effort, it was also destined to be his. I think he had a desperate urge to publish one more grand work and we were the people who were able to grant him that.
Remembered America is available as a Kindle Edition from Sea Minor.