Category: REMEMBERING JOHN M. RIDLAND (1933–2020)

MIKLÓS RADNÓTI I CONCEALED YOU Rejtettelek For a long while I concealedyou, a slowly ripening fruithidden by leaves on a branch,and now, like frost blooming coldlyacross wintry windowpanes,your blossom flowers in mymind. And now I know what itmeans when your hand fluttersdown on your hair; I guard inmy heart your

1 Six foot six, the both of us,the two tallest poetsin Santa Barbara,though you had thirtyyears on me and a superiorsense of song—not tomention that long patriciannose,an eyebrow thatarched at someone’sbalderdash, and avoice cultivatedby higher education,soothing even when itfaltered as you searched for abon mot. 2 Frost was your ‘subject’,but

The University of California at Santa Barbara enjoyed a steady stream of visiting professors from Budapest. John’s friendships with several of them opened for him a window on Hungarian culture. His encounter with Sándor Petőfi’s János Vitéz dates to a 1987 visit to Budapest, during which Gyula Kodolányi and his

Who would have thought of John M. Ridland as an ambassador of American diplomacy? Well, that is what he was, and while he would probably have rejected such a title, he was a very successful one, making friends for the United States. Most people think of diplomacy as a formal

Once one of his first students at the English Department of the University of California at Santa Barbara, Robyn Bell gave a succinct summary of the life of his former professor of English, the poet and translator John M. Ridland. Readers of this obituary article published by the Santa Barbara

John M. Ridland (1933–2020) John M. Ridland was born in London in 1933, of Scottish ancestry, but lived most of his life in California. He defined himself as an Anglo-Californian immigrant. He received a PhD in English Literature at Claremont Graduate School in 1964. While pursuing his doctoral studies, he

A Portrait of Winemaker Ferenc Takler Ferenc Takler was born in 1950, during the most hellish period of communism, into a family based in the city of Szekszárd which traced its lineage of peasant proprietors with a consummate mastery of farming going back two hundred and fifty years. However, when