Category Archives: Poetry

Fiction, Poetry, Reviews

Sir Gawain: What It Means to Be a Real Man

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I didn’t realize Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was set at Christmastime when I picked it up several days ago, so reading it during the Christmas break was seasonal as well as enriching. It could be the poem for modern men today. It’s focus on chastity in the face of strong seduction would make modern readers heads spin.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight begins with a striking man walking into King Arthur’s court.

“For all men marvelled what it might mean
That a horseman and his horse should have such a colour
As to grow green as grass . . .”

He says he’s looking for sport, which is the feeling of everyone in the court already. Arthur loved hearing the exploits of his men. The green knight offered a challenge: Any man could strike him with a fierce blow if he would agree to seek him out in one year’s time to receive a blow in kind from him. Even though everyone thought such a challenge was madness, they also couldn’t refuse it.

“‘By heaven,’ then said Arthur, ‘What you ask is foolish,
But as you firmly seek folly, find it you shall.'”

Sir Gawain, who is the greatest of Arthur’s knights (in the early tales) and his nephew, is the one to suggest to the king someone else accept the challenge in case it goes the way everyone suspects. No need to lose the king to a jolly green giant.

This is the part of the story you’ve likely heard. What follows is another regular year until All Saints Day when Gawain leaves to find the Green Chapel, because “Why falter I or fear? What should man do but dare?” He searched without any prospects until Christmastime. Then he prays and then comes across “the comeliest castle” that “shimmered and shone through the shining oaks.”

He stays there several nights enjoying great and chivalrous hospitality, and that’s when things get weird. The host and all of his men intend to spend the next day hunting, but he urges Gawain to continue resting at the castle, and he proposes this “bargain”: whatever gains they earn in the woods or in the castle will be exchanged. Gawain thinks it’s a great deal.

I found this bargain very strange. What could Gawain possibly achieve within the castle? Spoiler alert: It’s his good host’s wife!

Part three describes three temptations or seductions paired with the exploits of the hunting party. Readers and listeners are meant understand the hunting party illustrates the Gawain’s seduction. That’s the reason I say young men ought to read and talk about this poem. If a woman boldly invited you into adultery, how would you handle it? For Gawain, chivalric manners are high virtue, so he can’t just turn her away. In fact, he seems to agree with her proposal, “but Sir Gawain was on guard in a gracious manner.”

The text seems to say Gawain would not indulge this woman because he is his imminent death at the hand of the Green Knight (line 1285). Maybe that is one motivator, the other and primary one being Christian morality, and if it is factor, doesn’t that strike sparks against modern men who would likely argue the other way. Believing they were about to die, why not take the host’s wife?

One theme we can draw from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a common question that brings out bucket lists: If you knew you were going to die in a year, what would you do? The greatest knight in Camelot not only sought out the man he believed would kill him but also sought every virtue he could recognize.

Why would anyone choose to throw all morality in the bin because he believed he would die in a year? We’re all going to die–this winter or next, this decade or next. Does believing you can see your finish line approaching mean virtue no longer has value? Wouldn’t that argue that you believe virtue has no real value for you now, while your death is still hidden from you?

Poetry

“Let me not waste the days You’ve given me.”

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Bethel McGrew offers a poem for Thanksgiving that begins this way:

Let me not waste the days You’ve given me.
The mornings I might sleep away, the nights
When all my fears are all that I can see,
Trapped in the glow of flickering blue lights.

She notes our Internet-driven fears and her personal ones, asking the Lord to revive her with His goodness.

Let me believe that this, my grateful prayer
Is not in vain. Lord, let me not despair.

Music, Poetry

Sunday Singing: Dear Lord and Father of Mankind

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Today’s hymn is adapted from a poem by the American Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier. In that poem, “The Brewing of Soma,” Whittier describes a Hindu drinking ceremony over several verses before contrasting it with Christian repentance. “Our foolish ways” are both old pagan practices and the Christianized versions we may have replaced them with. Instead, may we hear the quiet voice of the Living God speaking through Scripture and natural disaster.

“For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel,
‵In returning and rest you shall be saved;
in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.‵
But you were unwilling . . . ” (Isaiah 30:15 ESV)

1 Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
forgive our foolish ways!
Re-clothe us in our rightful mind,
in purer lives thy service find,
in deeper rev’rence praise,
in deeper rev’rence praise.

2 In simple trust like theirs who heard
beside the Syrian sea,
the gracious calling of the Lord,
let us, like them, without a word
rise up and follow thee,
rise up and follow thee.

3 O Sabbath rest by Galilee!
O calm of hills above,
where Jesus knelt to share with thee
the silence of eternity,
interpreted by love!
Interpreted by love!

4 Drop thy still dews of quietness,
till all our strivings cease;
take from our souls the strain and stress,
and let our ordered lives confess
the beauty of thy peace,
the beauty of thy peace.

5 Breathe through the heats of our desire
thy coolness and thy balm;
let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
speak through the earthquake, wind and fire,
O still small voice of calm!
O still small voice of calm!

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Poetry

Have We Forgotten Too Much?

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Peter Hitchens blogged about memory a couple months ago, noting Orwell’s 1984 naturally, pointing out “Orwell’s description of the sort of things people actually do remember: ‘A million useless things, a quarrel with a workmate, a hunt for a lost bicycle pump, the expression on a long-dead sister’s face, the swirls of dust on a windy morning seventy years ago.'”

He spent half of the post on the former Communist novelist Arthur Koestler (1905-1983). He said at one point everyone with a decent education on world affairs knew about Koestler and the novel Darkness at Noon. “It was perhaps the most devastating literary blow ever aimed at Communist tyranny,” Hitchens said. Important because it exposed truths the world didn’t want to believe. In WWII, Stalin joined the Allied forces, and people wanted to forget any crimes he may have committed before that. Others wanted to believe Marxism was a force for good in the world, so they waved away evidence to the contrary.

“For a large part of my life,” Hitchens wrote, “this potent political novel, and its accompanying volume Scum of the Earth were vital parts of human knowledge and understanding.” Those who had read them were “the undeceived, and the hard-to-deceive.” Where are those people now?

“What if the past has already disappeared?”

Rings of Power: In far more trivial news, reviewer Erik Kain argues that defending Amazon’s ‘Rings Of Power’ by claiming Tolkien had no canon “would make Sauron proud.” A professor with ties to the show has said, “Tolkien’s ideas were ever evolving,” meaning all of his notes and drafts demonstrate none of his ideas, even the published ones, are fixed.

Poetry: To end on cheerful note, read this delightfully modern love poem by Daniel Brown. Here are the first three lines.

A first “I love you” still implies the start 
Of serious, but we moderns also have 
Recourse to a preliminary move; ...

Photo by Hans Eiskonen on Unsplash

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Non-fiction, Poetry

Travels to Worlds Unknown (Maybe Fictious)

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It’s been a full week and will continue to be so for rest of the month. I feel a deadline pressing upon me, so let me move quickly to these links.

Poetry: “While Observing A Summer Storm” by Joshua Alan Sturgill. “these I take as pathfinders and guides”

Art: Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901) painted moody mythological scenes, like Isle of the Dead (which you’ve likely seen whether you knew what it was).

Chariots of Fire: The story of Eric Liddell’s race in the classic movie Chariots of Fire took place at the 1924 Olympics in Paris. The Scottish runner won gold in the 400-meter, breaking Olympic and world records with 47.6 seconds. World’s Paul Butler talked about it on Friday’s podcast of The World and Everything in It. I listened to a tape of the movie soundtrack during my fruitful, cassette-tape-buying years. Here’s a nice tribute to the movie and music.

The Facts Fudged: Bill Steigerwald talks about the work he put into his book dividing fact from fiction in John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. “Taking on the great Steinbeck and challenging the existing narrative about his iconic book was no big deal. I was used to being an outsider, whether it was when covering a KKK cross-burning or attending a conference of public transit officials. The process of reporting and researching Steinbeck’s travels and book was no different from what I had done in a hundred big Sunday newspaper features, just a lot bigger and on my own dime.”

Photo: Elks Lodge, Tacoma, Washington. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Blogs, Socials, Bookselling, Music, Poetry, Publishing

Light Verse, Music & Silence, and Saturday Links

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I’ve got a busy day today, so let me start by sharing a little light verse.

You live a few days then you die
And sometimes you ask yourself why.
What could bring relief?
The next season’s release.
Go watch and the time will fly by.

They’re calling to all of the sheep
To occupy Ivy League Street
Don’t think of the issues
Just bring down your tissues
And cry, yell, scream, chant, and repeat.

What else can I share with you?

Music: “Both noise and total silence destroy all possibility of mutual understanding, because they destroy both speaking and hearing.”

Scotland: From the land of the free and the home of the brave comes this tale of Black Agnes, who held Castle Dunbar against the English for several months in 1338, saying among other things”

‘Of  Scotland’s King I haud my house,
He pays me meat and fee,
And I will keep my gude auld house,
While my house will keep me.’

A New Review: John Wilson imagines a Christian review periodical and what it’s pushback would sound like: “We’re beset on every hand by attacks on our core convictions, by enemies of our faith, and you are whining about book reviews?”

Publishing: More on the book business and where the money goes.

Of publishers it may be said that like the English as a race they are incapable of philosophy. They deal in particulars and adhere easily to Sydney Smith’s dictum that one should take short views, hope for the best, and trust God.

William Jovanovich, Now, Barabbas

Photo: John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Blogs, Socials, Bookselling, Music, Poetry

Are People Buying Books or Not?

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Point: Few people buy books that aren’t celebrity aligned. Britney Spears’s autobiography, released October 24, 2023, is currently #1 in Kindle, #10 in hardcover on Amazon. Aside of these, publishing houses stay afloat through backlist sales: Bibles, coloring books, and Don Quixote.

Counterpoint: Plenty of people are buying books, and the big publishers aren’t objective reporters on their own business.

“Someone from a prestige big 5 imprint whose books are often award-contenders and bestsellers once told me any book that sold less than 25,000 in print was a failure for them. OTOH, when I was in an MFA program—where many of the professors wrote experimental literary novels and such—I was told anything more than 5,000 sales was a success. Some small press editors might be happy with 1,000 sales.”

Topping Amazon’s fiction list for most sold this week are The Women,
by Kristin Hannah (12 weeks on the list) and The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese (33 weeks).

As booklovers, we may want many more people to join us in reading, sharing, and enjoying the written or recorded word, but I don’t think the sky is falling yet.

Also in this vein, Ted Gioia offers “10 Reasons Why I’m Publishing My Next Book on Substack.“

What else do we need to know?

Poetry: On April 26, 1336, a great poet climbed into the Alps just for the thrill of it, which people didn’t do in those days. Petrarch climbed to the top of Mont Ventoux (which is much higher today because of inflation) and read from Augustine’s Confessions, “Where I fixed my eyes first, it was written: ‘And men go to admire the high mountains, the vast floods of the sea, the huge streams of the rivers, the circumference of the ocean and the revolutions of the stars – and desert themselves.’ . . .”

Memoir: Writing about his life, Marvin Olasky says to be open to change. Don’t set a groove early and try to stay there.

C.S. Lewis: Screwtape praises certain celebrities and the sheep of their flock

Music: Ted Gioia writes western music isn’t what we think it is. “Just stop and think for a moment about the importance of Venice in the history of music. Everything from madrigals to operas found their home in that bustling port city—a key connecting point between West and East in the modern imagination.”

Poetry, Uncategorized

On the Discovery of Old Things

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To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man.

Matthew Arnold, “Growing Old”

Matthew Arnold captures something in his 1867 poem “Growing Old.” I don’t know what is exactly. Seems a bit obtuse to a spry Gen-Xer like me. But I was thinking of old things today, because I’ve caught wind of many recent archeological finds and thought I’d share them with you today.

Vikings: Let’s start with the unearthing of over a couple thousand fragments of combs and brooches, some “carved from the antlers of red deer, and a few were made of bones from animals like whales.”

Ice Skating: Archeologists with the Comenius Museum in Přerov, the Czech Republic’s Moravia region, discovered a 1,000-year-old ice skate. “It dates back to the time when there was a very important fortress in the area of the Upper Square. It served as a stronghold for Polish King Boleslav the Brave, who occupied Moravia at the time and had his soldiers stationed there.”

Greeks and Romans: Pompeii got even more impressive with the discovery of gorgeous frescos depicting Helen of Troy and Cassandra

Caesar: A team from the University of Tokyo have found an ancient villa that they believe to have been owned by Caesar Augustus.

And researchers working in the area of Rome’s Colosseum have uncovered a home with an exceptional mural showing “weapons and musical instruments as well as ships and tridents.” The director general of museums at the Italian culture ministry said, “There is nothing else like it from this period in Rome. There is nothing like it even at Pompeii.”

Swedish Longsword: And finally, the grave of a tall Swedish man with an impressive longsword was violated by the Halland Cultural Environment in their unrestrained excavations of the Franciscan friary in Halmstad. I fear for the townspeople who will be troubled by his vengeful ghost.

Authors, Poetry, Reading

What’s in an Oscar?

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Tonight, because such exercises please me, I wish to discuss (which means I write, you read) the history of a name. The name is Oscar. Not a terribly common name, but it shows up now and then in unexpected places. Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple. Eddie Murphy’s character in Beverly Hills Cop. Sylvester Stallone did a film called Oscar. And of course – speaking of films – there’s the famous statuette of the Academy Awards – said to have been informally named by Academy librarian and historian Margaret Herrick, who remarked that it reminded her of her uncle Oscar.

Also Oscar the Grouch.

The book I reviewed yesterday, Armored, featured a Mexican character named Oscar. But I think of it primarily as a Scandinavian name. So I wondered, where did it come from and what does it mean?

My finely honed librarian’s skills led me to an arcane scholarly source known to insiders as Wikipedia. There I learned the story of the name, which is not without points of interest.

What does Oscar mean? It actually comes (purely by chance) from two different languages. In Old English, it means “Spear of the Gods” (cognate with the Norse name Asgeir).

But its modern use springs from Old Irish, where it means “One Who Loves Deer.”

The name was one of those indigenous ones that turned out insufficiently popular to survive the coming of Christianity, with its multitude of saints’ names to hang on babies. So it went out of use and was largely forgotten.

Then along came a man named James MacPherson (1736-1796), a Scottish writer, politician, and all-around scoundrel. Though he sprang from an old Jacobite (Stuart-supporting) family, he jumped wholeheartedly over to the Hanoverians (the English conquerors) and profited thereby. He also participated in the Highland Clearances, evicting poor cotters from their homes so their lands could be repurposed for sheep grazing. Countless Scots were made homeless by this treacherous betrayal of ancient trust.

But McPherson is best remembered for a series of poems called the Ossian Cycle, which he claimed he collected from ancient Scottish lays he learned from simple bards. Most scholars and critics have long agreed that McPherson wrote them himself, throwing in a few borrowings from Scottish and Irish folklore.

Whatever their source, the published poems were a huge success with the reading public. The Romantic Movement was blossoming just then, and people were hungry for tales of high adventure in ancient times – tales that came from somewhere further north than Rome or Athens. I’ve written here before about the popularity of Tegner’s Saga of Frithjof. The Lay of the Nibelungs and the Icelandic sagas were also objects of fascination. The Ossian Cycle fit right in.

Three of the main characters in the Ossian poems are Fingal, the great hero, Ossian, his son, who is supposed to be the poet, and his son Oscar, now dead.

Among McPherson’s many admirers was no less a figure than Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France. He hung the name on his godson, Joseph Bernadotte, son of his marshal Charles Jean Bernadotte. Charles Jean would go on to become king of Sweden (later of Norway too), and Joseph was eventually crowned King Oscar I. Thus did Oscar become a popular name with Scandinavians.

So hail to you, if your name is Oscar. Or if you live in Ossian, Iowa (nice town; I’ ve been there).

Poetry

My Daughter Has Published Her Poetry

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Earlier this year, my oldest daughter told me she had published a book of her poetry. She didn’t ask me about it ahead of time. She didn’t come to me with an idea and say she understood I’ve looked into writing and publishing for years so maybe I would have some thoughts. No. She just made it happen behind my back.

As you would expect, I reacted as gently and affirmingly as could be imagined. I think I yelled at her. I tried to keep a level head and ask questions like, “What do you mean?!” and “Are you kidding me?”

But this is the world we have. Little girls can earn their own money and pay for publishing services, not unlike those which have employed me in the past, and get their words in print on actual pages and physical books–without their father’s involvement.

Her book is Silent Beauty Speaks. It’s a collection of nature poems, efforts at capturing the sunrise or a night’s calm.

The gentle swell of airy song,
The lullaby of breath belongs
To quiet winds that round the ear,
Whispering softly,
"Do not fear."

That’s a stanza from “Lilac Night.” Here’s her opening poem, “A Marbled Sky.”

When first I rose, and laid my eyes
Upon the marbled sunrise,
The moving clouds of dark and gold,
I saw a story yet untold
The expectation of the day
A light to hold, to hope, and pray
May I find grace enough today

I’d love to hear your thoughts on her work, not that I would share them. I’m too critical on my own. Any criticism you have will stay between us. But if you say you’ve been moved to invest in the future of humanity, I might pass that on.

Photo: Luke Ellis-Craven via Unsplash