Robert A. Wilson, bibliophile, publisher, and proprietor of Greenwich Village’s legendary Phoenix Book Shop, died in Baltimore on November 29th at the age of 94. The store was frequented by many authors, including W. H. Auden, Diane di Prima, Denise Levertov, Edward Albee, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsbert, and Patti Smith
I mourn for the most lonely thing; and yet God’s will be done
I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.—William Butler Yeats, “His Phoenix”
And glory, like the phoenix midst her fires,
Exhales her odours, blazes, and expires.—Lord Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
Which came first, the phoenix or the flame?
—J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Up then, fair phoenix bride, frustrate the sun;
Thyself from thine affection
Takest warmth enough, and from thine eye
All lesser birds will take their jollity.—John Donne, “An Epithalamion, or Marriage Song on the Lady Elizabeth and Count Palantine Being Married on Saint Valentine’s Day”
And one cold starry night Whatever your belief The phoenix will take flight Over the seas of grief To sing her thrilling song To stars and waves and sky For neither old nor young The phoenix does not die.
—May Sarton, “The Phoenix Again”
PHOENIX, n. The classical prototype of the modern “small hot bird.”
—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
Ask me no more if east or west
The phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.—Thomas Carew, “A Song”
The phoenix are at play on their terrace.
The phoenix are gone, the river flows on alone.—Ezra Pound, “The City of Choan”
If there is, in fact, a Heaven and a Hell, all we know for sure is that Hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix…
—Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine
If over this world of ours
His wings my phoenix spread,
How gracious falls on land and sea
The soul-refreshing shade!Either world inhabits he,
Sees oft below him planets roll;
His body is all of air compact,
Of Allah’s love his soul.—Hafez
The phoenix hope, can wing her way through the desert skies, and still defying fortune’s spite; revive from ashes and rise.
—Miguel de Cervantes
