We’d like to know what you think about this web site. Please leave your comments in this public Guest Book so we can share your thoughts with other visitors.

Congratulations on the website, a great tribute to Roy’s poetry, Charles and Freda Edelstein

Name:
Craig Edelstein (Webmaster)
Email:
craigedelstein@royjosephcotton.com

Thought I should be the second person to sign the Guest Book. I added a place for people to enter their name and E-mail, which is all optional. I hope everyone enjoys the site, and please recommend it to your friends!

Name:
Mark

Dear Craig You have done a wonderful thing in setting up this website love Mark

Name:
Nicole Scher
Email:
nscher@umich.edu

My father told me to look at this site, saying that Mr. Cotton was a friend of his in medical school at UCT. I am very impressed by what I see here, and wish that I could have gotten the chance to meet Roy. Great site!

Name:
Craig Edelstein
Email:
craigedelstein@royjosephcotton.com
Thanks for the kind comments, if you would like to contact anyone about Roy, or if your father would like – just check out the contact link on the bottom. There has been some problems with the feedback forms, but they should be fixed soon. (Right now it looks like, on this form that if you click submit, it will give an error but then still post what you said) Updates have been slow because I have been real busy with school. If anyone is out there reading, please sign the guest book! Would anyone be interested in say a message board to discuss any of the poems?

Name:
FRANK REZNEK
Email:
reznek@ftech.co.uk

Having known Roy very well as a schoolboy at Settlers High and having lost all contact with his family I cannot but admire what a pure genius Roy must have been.

Name:
Craig Edelstein
Email:
craigedelstein@royjosephcotton

This web site was switched to a new host as of 12/19/2001, just checking functionability. Unfortunately, the page counter was reset, but from what I remember there were about 300 hits on the main page before this. Please spread the word about this site if you are reading this and enjoying the site!

Name:
Colin Scher
Email:
MScher747@aol.com
This note is for any members of Roy’s family (Hymie, Sheila, Mark, and Freda). A mutual friend (Frank Reznek from Parow,now London, England) told me about this gentle site many months ago. I told my eldest daughter, Nicole,and I think she might have left a message. She can’t remember, but we bumped into Roy in Cape Town soon after she was born in 1981. He was so excited to know we had a baby, and I recall being so touched at his softness with her. So many years have passed, but it is amazing how powerful memory can be. I cannot but recollect Roy’s continuing pushing of the cutting edge of music and litereature. I still listen to Dylan, and when I saw The Lord of the Rings, I wondered how he would have made the movie, or whether he would have even wanted to have one made. Each time I see a play that has SA connotations, or is experimental in nature, I look back to sitting with him at the old Space Theatre watching Yvonne Bryceland and Athol Fugard and their wonderful troupe. And watching the ocean, or the mountains, in an art gallery, or reading a challenging novel, I think of Roy. Of all my friends, he was, and in a real way still is, able to show me the beauty of art and music, literature and nature. Roy has made me appreciate the creative side of life, and has helped to make me a fuller person, husband, father and physician. So I thank him, and you also, for the blessing of having known him. If any of you ever get to San Diego, please email me in advance. My home # is 858 457 4225 Address 8491 Clifridge Lane La Jolla CA 92037-2119 USA

Name:
Laura Klein
Email:
lxklei@hotmail.com
I think I met Roy once when I was a little girl. I remember his beard. It was a long time after that, in the 90s, after my family had moved to America that I found the slim blue book of poems that would serve as my introduction. I remember turning the book over to look at the black and white sketch of Roy, my eyes resting immediately on his beard. The day I found the book (and I did feel for some reason that I had found it, or more specifically, discovered it), Ag, Man, I locked myself in my room and read the whole thing. I was a kid at the time, fifteen, and I was obsessing over the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel and, of course, Bob Dylan. I was reading Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau and I had just finished The Catcher in the Rye. When I discovered Roy’s poetry, I felt like I had discovered a small piece of myself. This was the first South African poet I had ever read! And to feel like there was something at stake for me in the poetry was overwhelming. I felt like we had a shared past, layers of history overlapping. I felt like I understood. As I have grown older, I can now appreciate Roy’s use of rhythm, his gentle irony, his passion and the lingering image of his beard that comes when I read his poetry, taking me back to my childhood. Thank you Craig for this Web site. It serves as such a beautiful memorial