CLASSIFICATION
Swallow ID:
1300
Partner Institution:
Concordia University
Source Collection Label:
SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds
Series:
The Poetry Series
Sub Series:
SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds
ITEM DESCRIPTION
Title:
L.E. Sissman at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 7 April 1972
Title Source:
Cataloguer
Title Note:
"TAPE #1 OF 1 L.E. SISSMAN MASTER I006/SR110" written on the spine of the tape's box. "I006-11-110" written on sticker on the reel. "L.E. SISSMAN APRIL 6/72 TAPE #1 OF 1 4-72--012-8 MASTER 3 3/4 ips 1/2 track" written on the front of the tape's box
Language:
English
Production Context:
Documentary recording
Genre:
Reading: Poetry
Identifiers:
[]
Rights
CREATORS
Name:
Sissman, Louis Edward
Dates:
1928-1976
Role:
"Author",
"Performer"
Notes:
Born on New Year’s Day of 1928, poet Louis Edward (L.E.) Sissman grew up in Detroit, Michigan. At the age of thirteen, Sissman won the National Spelling Bee in Washington and was aired on national radio as a Quiz Kid. He entered Harvard at the young age of sixteen in 1944. In 1946, however, he was dismissed, got a job as a stack boy in the Boston Public Library, and began writing poetry. Sissman and a few of his classmates founded a literary magazine, Halcyon, which only ran for two issues, but nevertheless received contributions from e.e. cummings and Wallace Stevens. Sissman was readmitted to Harvard in 1948 and received Harvard’s Garrison Poetry Prize. He graduated cum laude in 1949, elected class poet. He then moved to New York and worked as a copy editor, until returning to Boston in 1952. By this time, he had stopped writing poetry. Sissman worked as an aide to John F. Kennedy’s first Senate campaign as well as various smaller jobs. In 1956 he was hired as a copywriter for the advertising firm of Kenyon and Eckhardt. By 1969, he was the vice president and creative director of the same firm. In 1963, he started to write poetry again. Sissman was diagnosed with the then-incurable Hodgkin’s disease in 1965, encouraging him to write more and more verse. He was awarded the Guggenheim fellowship in 1968, a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1969. Sissman published his first book of poetry in 1968, Dying: An Introduction (Little, Brown and Company), and Pursuit of Honor in 1971 (Little, Brown and Company). He began writing reviews for the New Yorker, and in 1975 Innocent Bystander: The Scene from the 70’s was published (Vanguard Press). L.E. Sissman wrote up until his death in 1976. His unpublished poems were collected with previously published poems in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman (Little, Brown and Company) in 1978.
CONTRIBUTORS
Name:
Hoffman, Stanton
Role:
"Series organizer",
"Presenter"
MATERIAL DESCRIPTION
Recording Type:
Analogue
AV Type:
Audio
Material Designation:
Reel to Reel
Physical Composition:
Magnetic Tape
Storage Capacity:
01:30:00
Extent:
1/4 inch
Playing Speed:
3 3/4 ips
Track Configuration:
Half-track
Playback Mode:
Mono
Generations:
Master
Tape Brand:
Scotch
Sound Quality:
Good
DIGITAL FILE DESCRIPTION
File Path:
files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3
Duration:
00:50:52
Size:
122.1 MB
Content:
Stanton Hoffman
00:00:00
L.E. Sissman's three books of poems are Dying: An Introduction, Scattered Returns and Pursuit of Honor. The poet James Atlas made the following observation about Scattered Returns that it "engages a voice so casual, so tuneless that the depression which pervades each page is in danger of being overlooked. Not the shrill agony of despair, but the flat surfaces of the unfulfilled or what characterizes his diction". But also I'd like to take a line from a Sissman poem out of context, "evidently, even desperation leads a charmed life". Ladies and gentleman, L.E. Sissman.
L.E. Sissman
00:00:45
Thank you. Well let me begin by refuting one of those statements that Stanley just made, Stanton, I'm sorry, just made. I was not a singing vacuum cleaner salesman, that was a canard that was incorporated into my vita by my publisher, who misread a biographical note I wrote. I once worked for a vacuum cleaner company that made its salesmen sing pep songs before they went out to tackle the ladies in the neighbourhood, so we'd get up in the morning and sing all these ridiculous songs and then go out and try to sell vacuum cleaners but the two were not really related, it was just hyping oneself up for the gritty day of trying to sell these poor ladies on a vacuum cleaner. Now I've seen you've kindly reproduced, and incidentally you've been most kind here in Montreal, I've been received royally, more so than any place I've been lately to read poetry and I greatly appreciated, I feel it's kind of a homecoming since my mother is a Canadian, from Ontario
, not Quebec
, but I've been in Montreal
many times before and I'm very fond of this city and if I finally lose patience with the U. S. and A.
as Walt Kelly
says in Pogo
I'll migrate up here, I feel it an eminently sensible thing to do. So it's nice to have a pleasant reception here. And since you've kindly reproduced one of the poems from a group called "Mouth Organ Tunes: the American Lost-and-Found" on your mimeographed sheet, I thought I'd start off by reading that poem. I'm going to say a few words at the risk of being dull about what each one of these poems I'm going to read is for, what I meant it to mean. This particular one is talking about the well, kind of what James Atlas was talking about in his comment on my second book, this is in my third book, the terminal flatness and greyness of American life, United States life, and the attempts to alleviate this barrenness by all sorts of temporizing accommodations, going to Howard Johnson's
on a Sunday, or having a kinky party in New York
to show off one's new paintings or celebrating the death of a genuine antique American and New Englander and looking at the house that he lived in and so on. Anyway the tune is called, the poem is called "Mouth Organ Tunes", and I use the mouth organ as an instrument here to suggest the, well the mouth organ is something that can be played in a band, but is better not, it's a very solitary instrument and to me it always conveys the loneliness of an individual against insurmountable odds. The poem is called "Mouth Organ Tunes: The American Lost-and-Found" and the first section is called, as promised, "In a Ho-Jo's by the River".
L.E. Sissman
00:04:20
Reads "Mouth Organ Tunes: The American Lost-and-Found, part 1: In a Ho-Jo's by the River" from Pursuit of Honor.
L.E. Sissman
00:10:02
Let me contrast that with a poem about Middle America in the best sense. The old Middle America of people who knew their own way and found their own way in the land, and lost their own way in recent years because of encroachments on the land. The poem is called "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" and it's dedicated to the memory of my half-brother, Winfield Shannon, itinerant farm worker, 1909-1969. And it has an epigraph by Basil Bunting
which goes "a mason times his mallet to a lark's twitter, ‘til the stone spells the name, naming none, a man abolished".
L.E. Sissman
00:11:04
Reads "The Big Rock Candy Mountain", parts 1-5 [from Pursuit of Honor].
L.E. Sissman
00:21:25
Let me change to a slightly lighter vein, and read a poem that is a joke, essentially. It's called "The Birdman of Cambridge, Mass." It's about a man I once roomed with in college, who was an Audobonophile, or whatever the word is, a bird nut and has since become a bird expert. Anyway, this is how the poem goes, it's called "The Birdman of Cambridge, Mass.".
L.E. Sissman
00:22:05
Reads "The Birdman of Cambridge, Mass." [from Dying: An Introduction].
L.E. Sissman
00:22:55
That is also a description I should say, of the Least Bittern. This is another poem about being in college...good lord, twenty seven years ago, I can't believe this, 1945, yeah that is damn near twenty seven years ago. It's called "A College Room, Lowell R-34", a building at Harvard
, 1945.
L.E. Sissman
00:23:26
Reads "A College Room, Lowell R-34, 1945" [from Dying: An Introduction].
L.E. Sissman
00:25:12
And there's a footnote to this poem, dedicated to the maid, good lord, this is a long time ago, we had maids in those rooms. It was a very capable lady named Mrs. Circassian. And it's called "Footnote, Mrs. Circassian".
L.E. Sissman
00:25:28
Reads "Footnote, Mrs. Circassian" [from Dying: An Introduction].
Audience
00:26:07
Laughter.
L.E. Sissman
00:26:10
Thank you, she was a very nice lady, and deserved a much less ironic tribute than that, she was a home away from home herself. Let's see now, I've got all sorts of possible choices here. Why don't I read a poem about a shattering experience I had which I think maybe all of you may have had at one time or another, going back to a place where you had lived as a kid, and finding how puny it was and how destroyed it was by the passage of time. This is a poem about a place in Detroit where I had lived in the 30's and went back to in 1964 when the poem was written. It's called "East Congress and McDougall Streets, Detroit, May 25".
L.E. Sissman
00:27:03
Reads "East Congress and McDougall Streets, Detroit, May 25" [from Dying: An Introduction].
L.E. Sissman
00:29:30
And finally, one more poem from this rue, if I can find it, called "The Museum of Comparative Zoology" and it is about indeed falling in love with an old beat up museum of Comparative Zoology, and finding one's place in the philia.
L.E. Sissman
00:29:56
Reads "The Museum of Comparative Zoology" [from Dying: An Introduction].
L.E. Sissman
00:32:19
Let me get onto a poem that is now again a little bit more serious, although not ultimately so, I hope. It's about being very sick at the hospital and knowing one is in good hands. It's called "A Deathplace".
L.E. Sissman
00:32:41
Reads "A Death Place" [from Scattered Returns].
Unknown
00:35:27
[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
L.E. Sissman
00:35:28
Reads “Small Space” [from Scattered Returns].
L.E. Sissman
00:36:12
Not entirely and seriously...I think this might be time to call a five minute break during which I will smoke a cigarette and get my wind back and then we will proceed. Ok?
[Audience applause]. Thank you. I won't take all this junk off, if I do I'll be in serious trouble.
Unknown
00:36:46
[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
L.E. Sissman
00:36:48
This is a poem about the same thing the last poem was about, called "Getting On", and I'll read only one part of it since that's all I've written so far. It's called "Grave Expectations".
L.E. Sissman
00:37:04
Reads "Getting On: Grave Expectations" [published later in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman].
L.E. Sissman
00:39:15
And this is a poem that is sort of mysterious and I'm not sure that I understand it either but I'll read it, called, if I can find the end of it, yeah. "On Meeting No One in New York". This is about doing a very daring thing in middle age, not taking a girl up on it. "On Meeting No One in New York".
L.E. Sissman
00:39:45
Reads "The Mid-Forties: On Meeting No One in New York" [published later in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman].
L.E. Sissman
00:41:46
And finally, not finally, there are two more I think. One is a true story, the other is a dream, but they are both nice to end on April 7th, even though there still may be snow on the ground, with a note of spring. This really happened to a friend of mine in Berlin
in 1945 in April, and it's called "A Comedy in Ruins".
L.E. Sissman
00:42:24
Reads "A Comedy in Ruins" [published later in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman].
L.E. Sissman
00:45:39
And finally, an all nice sweet, pleasant poem, except for the passage of time which none of us can do anything about, based on a dream. It's called "Cockaigne: A Dream".
L.E. Sissman
00:45:56
Reads "Cockaigne: A Dream" [published later in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman].
L.E. Sissman
00:50:38
Thank you.
Audience
00:50:39
Applause [cut off].
END
00:50:52
Notes:
L.E. Sissman reads from his first three books, Dying: An Introduction (Little, Brown 1968), Scattered Returns (Little, Brown 1969), and Pursuit of Honor (Little, Brown 1971), as well as poems that were new at the time and published posthumously in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman (Little, Brown 1978).
00:00- Introduction by Stanton Hoffman [INDEX: Dying: An Introduction, Scattered Ruins,Pursuit of Honor, Poet James Atlas]
00:45- Introduction by L.E. Sissman of “In A Ho-Jo’s by the River” [INDEX: Sissman’s mother from Ontario, Walt Kelly: Pogo, “Mouth Organ Tunes: The American Lost and Found”, American Life, Howard Johnson Restaurant and Hotel Chain]
04:20- Reads “In A Ho-Jo’s by the River”
10:02- Introduces “The Big Rock Candy Mountain” [INDEX: Middle America, Winfield Shannon: Itinerant farm worker, Poet Basil Bunting]
11:04- Reads “The Big Rock Candy Mountain”
21:25- Introduces “The Bird-man of Cambridge, Mass.” [INDEX: Bird life, Cambridge Massachusetts]
22:05- Reads “The Bird-man of Cambridge, Mass.”
22:55- Introduces “A College Room, Lowell R-34” [INDEX: Least Bittern Bird, Harvard 1945]
23:26- Reads “A College Room, Lowell R-34”
25:12- Introduces “Footnote, Mrs. Circassian”
25:28- Reads “Footnote, Mrs. Circassian”
26:10- Introduces “East Congress and McDougal Streets, Detroit, May 25”[INDEX: Detroit in 1920’s and 1930’s]
29:30- Reads “East Congress and McDougal Streets, Detroit, May 25”
29:30- Introduces “The Museum of Comparative Zoology” [INDEX: Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard]
29:56- Reads “The Museum of Comparative Zoology”
32:19- Introduces “A Death Place”
32:41- Reads “A Death Place”
35:28- Reads “Small Space”
36:48- Introduces “Grave Expectations”
37:04- Reads “Grave Expectations”
39:15- Introduces “On Meeting No One in New York”
39:45- Reads “On Meeting No One in New York”
41:46- Introduces “A Comedy in Ruins” [Berlin, 1945]
42:24- Reads “A Comedy in Ruins”
45:39- Introduces “Cockaigne: A Dream”
45:56- Reads “Cockaigne: A Dream”
50:52.51- END OF RECORDING
Content Type:
Sound Recording
Featured:
Yes
Title:
L.E. Sissman Tape Box - Back
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
L.E. Sissman Tape Box - Front
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
L.E. Sissman Tape Box - Spine
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
L.E. Sissman Tape Box - Reel
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Dates
Date:
1972 4 7
Type:
Performance Date
Source:
Accompanying Material
Notes:
Date written on the front of the tape's box and in written announcement "Georgian Happenings"
LOCATION
Address:
1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Venue:
Hall Building Room H-651
Latitude:
45.4972758
Longitude:
-73.57893043
Notes:
Location specified in written announcement "Georgian Happenings"
CONTENT
Contents:
le_sissman_i006-11-110.mp3
Stanton Hoffman
00:00:00
L.E. Sissman's three books of poems are Dying: An Introduction, Scattered Returns and Pursuit of Honor. The poet James Atlas made the following observation about Scattered Returns that it "engages a voice so casual, so tuneless that the depression which pervades each page is in danger of being overlooked. Not the shrill agony of despair, but the flat surfaces of the unfulfilled or what characterizes his diction". But also I'd like to take a line from a Sissman poem out of context, "evidently, even desperation leads a charmed life". Ladies and gentleman, L.E. Sissman.
L.E. Sissman
00:00:45
Thank you. Well let me begin by refuting one of those statements that Stanley just made, Stanton, I'm sorry, just made. I was not a singing vacuum cleaner salesman, that was a canard that was incorporated into my vita by my publisher, who misread a biographical note I wrote. I once worked for a vacuum cleaner company that made its salesmen sing pep songs before they went out to tackle the ladies in the neighbourhood, so we'd get up in the morning and sing all these ridiculous songs and then go out and try to sell vacuum cleaners but the two were not really related, it was just hyping oneself up for the gritty day of trying to sell these poor ladies on a vacuum cleaner. Now I've seen you've kindly reproduced, and incidentally you've been most kind here in Montreal, I've been received royally, more so than any place I've been lately to read poetry and I greatly appreciated, I feel it's kind of a homecoming since my mother is a Canadian, from Ontario
, not Quebec
, but I've been in Montreal
many times before and I'm very fond of this city and if I finally lose patience with the U. S. and A.
as Walt Kelly
says in Pogo
I'll migrate up here, I feel it an eminently sensible thing to do. So it's nice to have a pleasant reception here. And since you've kindly reproduced one of the poems from a group called "Mouth Organ Tunes: the American Lost-and-Found" on your mimeographed sheet, I thought I'd start off by reading that poem. I'm going to say a few words at the risk of being dull about what each one of these poems I'm going to read is for, what I meant it to mean. This particular one is talking about the well, kind of what James Atlas was talking about in his comment on my second book, this is in my third book, the terminal flatness and greyness of American life, United States life, and the attempts to alleviate this barrenness by all sorts of temporizing accommodations, going to Howard Johnson's
on a Sunday, or having a kinky party in New York
to show off one's new paintings or celebrating the death of a genuine antique American and New Englander and looking at the house that he lived in and so on. Anyway the tune is called, the poem is called "Mouth Organ Tunes", and I use the mouth organ as an instrument here to suggest the, well the mouth organ is something that can be played in a band, but is better not, it's a very solitary instrument and to me it always conveys the loneliness of an individual against insurmountable odds. The poem is called "Mouth Organ Tunes: The American Lost-and-Found" and the first section is called, as promised, "In a Ho-Jo's by the River".
L.E. Sissman
00:04:20
Reads "Mouth Organ Tunes: The American Lost-and-Found, part 1: In a Ho-Jo's by the River" from Pursuit of Honor.
L.E. Sissman
00:10:02
Let me contrast that with a poem about Middle America in the best sense. The old Middle America of people who knew their own way and found their own way in the land, and lost their own way in recent years because of encroachments on the land. The poem is called "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" and it's dedicated to the memory of my half-brother, Winfield Shannon, itinerant farm worker, 1909-1969. And it has an epigraph by Basil Bunting
which goes "a mason times his mallet to a lark's twitter, ‘til the stone spells the name, naming none, a man abolished".
L.E. Sissman
00:11:04
Reads "The Big Rock Candy Mountain", parts 1-5 [from Pursuit of Honor].
L.E. Sissman
00:21:25
Let me change to a slightly lighter vein, and read a poem that is a joke, essentially. It's called "The Birdman of Cambridge, Mass." It's about a man I once roomed with in college, who was an Audobonophile, or whatever the word is, a bird nut and has since become a bird expert. Anyway, this is how the poem goes, it's called "The Birdman of Cambridge, Mass.".
L.E. Sissman
00:22:05
Reads "The Birdman of Cambridge, Mass." [from Dying: An Introduction].
L.E. Sissman
00:22:55
That is also a description I should say, of the Least Bittern. This is another poem about being in college...good lord, twenty seven years ago, I can't believe this, 1945, yeah that is damn near twenty seven years ago. It's called "A College Room, Lowell R-34", a building at Harvard
, 1945.
L.E. Sissman
00:23:26
Reads "A College Room, Lowell R-34, 1945" [from Dying: An Introduction].
L.E. Sissman
00:25:12
And there's a footnote to this poem, dedicated to the maid, good lord, this is a long time ago, we had maids in those rooms. It was a very capable lady named Mrs. Circassian. And it's called "Footnote, Mrs. Circassian".
L.E. Sissman
00:25:28
Reads "Footnote, Mrs. Circassian" [from Dying: An Introduction].
Audience
00:26:07
Laughter.
L.E. Sissman
00:26:10
Thank you, she was a very nice lady, and deserved a much less ironic tribute than that, she was a home away from home herself. Let's see now, I've got all sorts of possible choices here. Why don't I read a poem about a shattering experience I had which I think maybe all of you may have had at one time or another, going back to a place where you had lived as a kid, and finding how puny it was and how destroyed it was by the passage of time. This is a poem about a place in Detroit where I had lived in the 30's and went back to in 1964 when the poem was written. It's called "East Congress and McDougall Streets, Detroit, May 25".
L.E. Sissman
00:27:03
Reads "East Congress and McDougall Streets, Detroit, May 25" [from Dying: An Introduction].
L.E. Sissman
00:29:30
And finally, one more poem from this rue, if I can find it, called "The Museum of Comparative Zoology" and it is about indeed falling in love with an old beat up museum of Comparative Zoology, and finding one's place in the philia.
L.E. Sissman
00:29:56
Reads "The Museum of Comparative Zoology" [from Dying: An Introduction].
L.E. Sissman
00:32:19
Let me get onto a poem that is now again a little bit more serious, although not ultimately so, I hope. It's about being very sick at the hospital and knowing one is in good hands. It's called "A Deathplace".
L.E. Sissman
00:32:41
Reads "A Death Place" [from Scattered Returns].
Unknown
00:35:27
[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
L.E. Sissman
00:35:28
Reads “Small Space” [from Scattered Returns].
L.E. Sissman
00:36:12
Not entirely and seriously...I think this might be time to call a five minute break during which I will smoke a cigarette and get my wind back and then we will proceed. Ok?
[Audience applause]. Thank you. I won't take all this junk off, if I do I'll be in serious trouble.
Unknown
00:36:46
[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
L.E. Sissman
00:36:48
This is a poem about the same thing the last poem was about, called "Getting On", and I'll read only one part of it since that's all I've written so far. It's called "Grave Expectations".
L.E. Sissman
00:37:04
Reads "Getting On: Grave Expectations" [published later in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman].
L.E. Sissman
00:39:15
And this is a poem that is sort of mysterious and I'm not sure that I understand it either but I'll read it, called, if I can find the end of it, yeah. "On Meeting No One in New York". This is about doing a very daring thing in middle age, not taking a girl up on it. "On Meeting No One in New York".
L.E. Sissman
00:39:45
Reads "The Mid-Forties: On Meeting No One in New York" [published later in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman].
L.E. Sissman
00:41:46
And finally, not finally, there are two more I think. One is a true story, the other is a dream, but they are both nice to end on April 7th, even though there still may be snow on the ground, with a note of spring. This really happened to a friend of mine in Berlin
in 1945 in April, and it's called "A Comedy in Ruins".
L.E. Sissman
00:42:24
Reads "A Comedy in Ruins" [published later in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman].
L.E. Sissman
00:45:39
And finally, an all nice sweet, pleasant poem, except for the passage of time which none of us can do anything about, based on a dream. It's called "Cockaigne: A Dream".
L.E. Sissman
00:45:56
Reads "Cockaigne: A Dream" [published later in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman].
L.E. Sissman
00:50:38
Thank you.
Audience
00:50:39
Applause [cut off].
END
00:50:52
Notes:
L.E. Sissman reads from his first three books, Dying: An Introduction (Little, Brown 1968), Scattered Returns (Little, Brown 1969), and Pursuit of Honor (Little, Brown 1971), as well as poems that were new at the time and published posthumously in Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman (Little, Brown 1978).
NOTES
Type:
General
Note:
Year-Specific Information:
Sissman’s second book of verse, Pursuit of Honor was published in 1971; he was writing reviews for The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly.
Type:
General
Note:
Local Connections:
No direct connections known between L.E. Sissman and Sir George Williams University, however Sissman was an important and influential poet in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
Type:
Cataloguer
Note:
Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones
Additional research and edits by Ali Barillaro
Type:
Preservation
Note:
Reel-to-reel tape>CD>digital file
RELATED WORKS
Citation:
“Georgian Happenings”. The Georgian. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 14 January 1972.
Citation:
Mann, James. “L(ouis) E(dward) Sissman”. American Poets Since World War II. Donald J. Greiner (ed). Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol 5. Detroit: Gale Research, 1980.
Citation:
Sissman, L.E.. Dying: An Introduction. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1968.
Citation:
Sissman, L.E.. Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L.E. Sissman, Peter Davison (ed.). Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1978.
Citation:
Sissman, L.E.. Pursuit of Honor. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1971.
Citation:
Sissman, L.E.. Scattered Returns. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969.
Citation:
Symons, Julian. "Sissman, L(ouis) E(dward)". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton (ed). Oxford University Press, 1996.
Citation:
“L.E. Sissman”. Poets of Cambridge, U.S.A.. Harvard Square Library, 2006.
Citation:
“Poetry 6: Sir George Williams Poetry Series, Fifth Reading, L.E. Sissman”. Montreal: Sir George Williams University, 1972. Found in “The Stephen Morrissey Papers, 1963 - 1998”, McGill McLennan Library, Special Collections and Rare Books, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.