Every Poet Holds to These Dogmas

W. H. Auden explains:

Every poet, consciously or unconsciously, holds the following absolute presuppositions, as the dogmas of his art:

(1) A historical world exists, a world of unique events and unique persons, related by analogy, not identity. The number of events and analogical relations is potentially infinite. The existence of such a world is a good, and every addition to the number of events, persons and relations is an additional good.

(2) The historical world is a fallen world, i.e. though it is good that it exists, the way in which it exists is evil, being full of unfreedom and disorder.

(3) The historical world is a redeemable world. The unfreedom and disorder of the past can be reconciled in the future.

It follows from the first presupposition that the poet’s activity in creating a poem is analogous to God’s activity in creating man after his own image. It is not an imitation, for were it so, the poet would be able to create like God ex nihilo; instead, he requires pre-existing occasions of feeling and a pre-existing language out of which to create. It is analogous in that the poet creates not necessarily according to a law of nature but voluntarily according to provocation.

(stolen from Alan Jacobs)

Meet the Neanderthal man



Neanderthal Man



Things Learned While Looking for Something Else Dept.:

If you belong to one of those increasingly rare churches that still sings hymns occasionally, you’ve probably sung the hymn, “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty.”

If you look at the bottom of the page, you’ll note that it was written by Joachim Neander (1650-1680), and translated by Catherine Winkworth.

Neander, though born in Germany, somehow managed to be neither Lutheran nor Catholic, but Reformed. He experienced a Christian conversion while studying theology, and became a Latin teacher in Dusseldorf. A lover of nature, he used to preach to large open air meetings in the Dussel river valley. He also wrote more than 60 hymns.

Long after his death, in the early 19th Century, the valley where he used to preach was renamed the Neander Valley in his honor. Or, in German, Neanderthal.

And it was in the Neander Valley, of course, that scientists found the bones of the prehistoric humanoid who became known as Neanderthal Man.

So even when they look back at their evolutionary family tree, biologists must pay tribute to a Christian hymn writer.

Mwa-ha-ha-ha! You cannot escape us! We’re everywhere!

Critics Abound for Renowned Dan Brown

Lars shared this article on Facebook, and I was moved–moved I tell you–to share it here, because you can’t get good writing like this often: “The voice at the other end of the line gave a sigh, like a mighty oak toppling into a great river, or something else that didn’t sound like a sigh if you gave it a moment’s thought. ‘Who cares what the stupid critics say?’ advised the literary agent. ‘They’re just snobs. You have millions of fans.‘”

Michael Deacon writes in response to the Dan Brown’s upcoming novel, Inferno, which if you are going to buy it, you must use this link. Must! Support starving artists!

The novel is another unique take on art history and world conspiracy. From the book: “Against [the backdrop of Dante’s Inferno], Langdon battles a chilling adversary and grapples with an ingenious riddle that pulls him into a landscape of classic art, secret passageways, and futuristic science. Drawing from Dante’s dark epic poem, Langdon races to find answers and decide whom to trust . . . before the world is irrevocably altered.”

Dude! That is one unique thriller! I’ll go on record now by predicting this will tell of a Manx plot to manipulate world currency. Dante has been rumored to be Manx sympathizer among all the scholars who have studied him. Sorry, I should have given you a spoiler alert.

All the women are strong, and the men are good looking…

My brother posted this link on Facebook today. It’s from a recent news story on a Twin Cities TV station about the sheriff of my home town, where goodness abounds and the writ of Original Sin runs not.

You are interested in this story because it’ll give you some idea of the site of one of your favorite novels, Troll Valley. Which appears to be enjoying a better sales rank than Hailstone Mountain right now, for reasons that pass my comprehension.

Have a good weekend!

Dwarfish things

The word “dwarves,” was (more or less) invented by J. R. R. Tolkien. The “proper” spelling is “dwarfs,” but the Professor had his own secret purposes.

Someone posted the following video on Facebook, and it interested me enough to share it here. Armorer Tony Swatton creates a replica of Gimli’s axe from the “Lord of the Rings” movies, but does it in a traditional Damascus style. The results are impressive.

This particular axe (John Rhys-Davies actually carries three) is a stylized version of a Viking bearded axe (“bearded” refers to the extended lower horn of the cutting edge). The technique used here, however, is not the sort of damascening the Norse did. Viking pattern welding involved twisting together bundles of rods with differing carbon content, so that strength and flexibility would be maximized (or so they hoped).

I inserted a dwarf into Hailstone Mountain, in a scene I like quite a lot. My dwarves (dwarfs?) are a little different from Tolkien’s, though.

The Darkest Valley, by Rick Dewhurst


Rick Dewhurst is a writer who confounds me, to a great degree. I wasn’t sure what to do with his mystery, Bye Bye, Bertie, which I reviewed a while back, and now I’m not sure what to do with The Darkest Valley, a very different sort of book. Bye Bye, Bertie was a farce. The Darkest Valley is a tragedy. Neither is easily classified or compared with anything else I’ve read (or you either, in all likelihood).
Tom Pollard is a pastor in the island town of Cowichan, British Columbia. He’s barely hanging on in his ministry. The elders are on the point of kicking him out, and the street ministry center he fought to establish has borne little fruit, but has become a heavy burden with which he gets little help. His only success is Will Joseph, a young Cowichan Indian man. Will dreams of going away to Bible school, but lives in fear that his father, who follows the old ways, will have him kidnapped and brainwashed.
Meanwhile Tom’s wife Ruby is dying of cancer, dreaming of a miracle but worn down with pain, bitterness, and guilt. Tom and Ruby become friends with Jesse Thornton, editor of the local paper, who holds Christians generally in contempt but is avidly pursuing a young woman who attends Tom’s church.
The only thing I can really tell you about the course of the story is that it won’t go where you think it will. This book is true to life, not to Christian fiction conventions. I think that, in Flannery O’Conner fashion, God’s grace is at work in the shadows here, but to be frank the whole thing’s kind of depressing.
The writing isn’t bad, but Pastor Dewhurst needs to watch his homonyms (reigning/reining, tow/toe), and sometimes his sentences are poorly constructed. I’ve seen worse, but I’m pretty sure this author could do better. Also the book is told in alternating streams of consciousness, a technique that bores me after a while.
I recommend The Darkest Valley for Christians eager to struggle with very profound questions of faith. Not for casual entertainment.
I got my review copy free.

Risking Enough to Fail

Joel Miller writes about how we guard ourselves from all kinds of failure, even in our walk with Christ, but that won’t mature our faith. Referring to Patrick Henry Reardon’s comments on the publican and the Pharisee, he notes, “His point was that our failures do not keep us from heaven. Only our pride can do that.”

Past Imperfect, by Kathleen Hills

A mystery set in a Norwegian-American community in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was bound to get my attention, so I took advantage of a free download of Past Imperfect by Kathleen Hills. The book wasn’t bad, but I can’t describe it as compelling reading.

The year is 1950, and John McIntire, a native of the lakeshore town of St. Adele, has returned at last after five post-war years in England, during which he did something unspecified for the US government and married an English woman. His neighbors have elected him constable, noting that he seems to have little else to do with his time. Nobody expects him to have to investigate a murder. But his childhood friend Nels Bertelson is found dead on his fishing boat, killed by a bee sting, to which he was allergic. But why is his syringe of antivenin missing? And why are bees found in his clothing, as if planted there? John has hardly begun asking questions before a local teenage girl is found strangled, though her body disappears before the police can get to the spot. What’s it all about? Who could benefit from these deaths?

The mystery plot of Past Imperfect was all right, but the storytelling only so-so, in my opinion. Author Hills seems to have the same problem I’ve noted in many female authors – her male characters don’t come to life. Even the ones supposed to be energetic come off as remarkably passive. And everybody talks on and on, and when they’re not talking they’re paddling the stream of consciousness. Relationships are subjected to detailed forensic analysis. Past Imperfect moves much more slowly than it needs to.

Not generally objectionable, and not a waste of your reading time, I still can’t recommend Past Imperfect very highly.

Call me a man of the world

This was the weekend of the annual Festival of Nations at the River Centre in St. Paul. And so I was there, but with an abbreviated schedule. I’ve noticed in the past that I’ve always come down sick shortly after this worldly debauch, and I’ve started to suspect that it’s not good for me to spend four long days in a basement. I’ll see if this works better.

Business-wise, it was pretty good. On Saturday I sold a whole lot of books. Sunday was slower, but OK. Things were probably slowed some by the fact that there was a hockey game in the same facility that day, and parking prices got hiked.

I often ponder during those long, long days whether “multicultural” events like this actually do anything to promote their advertised purposes. Certainly I encountered nice people of many colors and tongues, and a wide variety of costumes. But to be honest, most of the costumes made me grateful I’d come as a Viking. They tended to inflate my low, reflexive feelings of cultural superiority. Continue reading Call me a man of the world